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United States Businesses

US Employee Engagement Sinks To 10-Year Low (gallup.com) 137

Employee engagement in the U.S. fell to its lowest level in a decade in 2024, Gallup reported Tuesday, with only 31% of employees engaged. This matches the figure last seen in 2014. The percentage of actively disengaged employees, at 17%, also reflects 2014 levels. Gallup: The percentage of engaged employees has declined by two percentage points since 2023, highlighting a growing trend of employee detachment from organizations, particularly among workers younger than 35.

These are among the findings of Gallup's most recent annual update of U.S. employee engagement. Though engagement increased slightly midyear, it declined through the rest of 2024, finishing the year at its decade low. In Gallup's trend dating back to 2000, employee engagement peaked in 2020, at 36%, following a decade of steady growth, but it has generally trended downward since then.

Each point change in engagement represents approximately 1.6 million full- or part-time employees in the U.S. The declines since 2020 equate to about 8 million fewer engaged employees, including 3.2 million fewer compared to 2023. Among the 12 engagement elements that Gallup measures, those that saw the most significant declines in 2024 (by three points or more in "strongly agree" ratings) include:
Clarity of expectations. Just 46% of employees clearly know what is expected of them at work, down 10 points from a high of 56% in March 2020.
Feeling someone at work cares about them as a person. Currently, 39% of employees feel strongly that someone cares about them, a drop from 47% in March 2020.
Someone encouraging their development. Only 30% strongly agree that someone at work encourages their development, down from 36% in March 2020.

People of all ages come to work seeking role clarity, strong relationships and opportunities for development, but managers, combined, are progressively failing to meet these basic needs. However, managers themselves are faring no better than those they manage, with only 31% engaged.

US Employee Engagement Sinks To 10-Year Low

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  • "Currently, 39% of employees feel strongly that someone cares about them, a drop from 47% in March 2020"

    • by bjoast ( 1310293 )
      I thought we were aiming for a human society. The moment we stop caring about feelings is the moment when society is no longer made for humans.
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        You aren't employed to find validation, acceptance and your inner self.

        If this is what you're expecting, you're broken and should take your feelings elsewhere. They mean nothing too anyone other than yourself and making external parties responsible for them is delusional behaviour at best.

        • by chthon ( 580889 )

          This also means we can disregard all the feelings of conservatives and religious people.

          • Re:Feelings (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @10:15AM (#65087681)

            This also means we can disregard all the feelings of conservatives and religious people.

            Feelings in the workplace are a real problem, no matter the political leanings. You are there to work, not to demand ideological uniformity.

            • not to demand ideological uniformity.

              From what I gather your boss is 100% there to demand ideological uniformity, see what happens when you want to raise their taxes or start a union.

              • not to demand ideological uniformity.

                From what I gather your boss is 100% there to demand ideological uniformity, see what happens when you want to raise their taxes or start a union.

                My people I report to have no idea what my politics or sexual proclivities are. Performance is the metric. We do not discuss those things. There is another ld saying that people shouldn't discuss politics or religion. I'd add sexual orientation as well. In today's world, too many young people are making those things the overriding factors of a job. the core employability metrics.

            • by Teun ( 17872 )
              Uniform employees are a recipe for a badly run company, diversity is often working better.
            • Feelings in the workplace are a real problem, no matter the political leanings. You are there to work, not to demand ideological uniformity.

              If you want robots, hire robots. Don't hire humans and whine about how they are humans. People are not going to sacrifice their entire humanity on the alter of you wanting unreasonable things as an employer, and neither should they.

        • by Paul Fernhout ( 109597 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @09:27AM (#65087571) Homepage

          RSA Animate with Dan Pink from 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
          "This lively RSA Animate, adapted from Dan Pink's talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace. "

          Essentially, motivation as Dan Pink describes it comes mainly down to autonomy, mastery, and purpose / community.

          These things are also sometimes called "psychic income". Meaning when you provide these things people are paid more; when you take these things away it is like a pay cut. Why do companies wonder why employees are disengaging when they give them unjustified big pay cuts?

          Why do companies spend a lot of time thinking about monetary "fringe benefits" while ignoring non-momentary ones?
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]
          "rewards (as in prestige, leisure, or pleasant surroundings) not measurable in terms of money or goods but serving as an incentive to work in certain occupations or situations"

          https://www.expiviausa.com/psy... [expiviausa.com]
          "Studies show that 9 out of 10 employees are willing to trade a percentage of their lifetime earnings for greater meaning and satisfaction at work. ... After all, workers need more than just a paycheck. They also desire respect, recognition, responsibility, and meaning in their work to stay motivated. "

          Or from another perspective:
          "Buddhist Economics" By E. F. Schumacher
          https://centerforneweconomics.... [centerforn...nomics.org]
          "The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure."

          All that said, humans are complex and their are no doubt plenty of nuances of all this related to motivation and many special cases in special circumstances.

          • by XXongo ( 3986865 )

            Why do companies spend a lot of time thinking about monetary "fringe benefits" while ignoring non-momentary ones?

            The opposite: too many companies have tried to implement "non-monetary" fringe benefits as a substitute for actually paying people what they're worth. Usually without any notion of what non-monetary fringe benefits the workers actually want or need.

        • I'm glad you're not my supervisor.

        • The entire thing of 'employee fulfillment' came out of the boomers, because employers expected employees to spend 100 hours per week at their salaried job. Personally I'd rather come in, work for 8-9 hours and go home and not think about work. I get fulfillment and joy with my personal life relationships and my out of work activities.
        • by Teun ( 17872 )
          Hmm, insightful eh?
          You guys must be from the US...
          In my very international experience the best companies are those were people feel they are part of it.
          Or does this have to do with no longer working at the office?
      • As always with these things, it is a balance act. You can't continuously ignore your feelings nor can you put them continuously in the spotlight.
        So neither is good, or bad. I guess the scale is correcting itself more towards the feeling side. Do not worry. Black and white thinking is a common made mistake. A lot of people grow out of it when they get older.
        Want to read more on the subject? Read the splitting (psychology) page on Wikipedia. Enjoy.
      • Re:Feelings (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Hodr ( 219920 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @07:34AM (#65087369) Homepage

        Have you not read any of the last thousand or so posts about telework? People apparently do not want to socialize and are not looking for human interaction. They prefer to work in their pajamas and not have to look at another person before noon. Hard to imagine people at work care about you if you only represent a 2 inch image on their screen twice a week.

        • by XXongo ( 3986865 )

          Have you not read any of the last thousand or so posts about telework? People apparently do not want to socialize and are not looking for human interaction.

          Some people apparently do not want to socialize and are not looking for human interaction.
          (These people are highly overrepresented on slashdot.)

          They prefer to work in their pajamas and not have to look at another person before noon. Hard to imagine people at work care about you if you only represent a 2 inch image on their screen twice a week.

          I'm laughing only because this is true.

        • Hard to imagine people at work care about you if you only represent a 2 inch image on their screen twice a week.

          You present an interesting problem for new employees. I work in a global role so video conferencing has been a primary way to engage with our sites across the world for years before working in our PJs became a thing. In my role I was adamant that we met in person in a global face to face meeting every 2 years so that the people at our sites build a personal connection.

          The differences before and after in communication between our teams is dramatic, but quite critically it was also incredibly lasting. People

          • At yesterday's team tag-up, a total of two people (out of ten) turned on their camera. At today's monthly meeting of a different project, nobody did.

            Only if you're good at recognizing voices do you have much of a feel for who's who.

            No, teleworking is not the same as in-person.

      • I thought we were aiming for a human society. The moment we stop caring about feelings is the moment when society is no longer made for humans.

        You thought wrong. We're aiming for a maximization of profit potential, and if at all possible, centering that profit potential on only the top few percent of society. The rest of us are just fodder for the machine. Every aspect of our society is set up to emphasize the importance of monetary value, and working towards increasing monetary value. Those of us that are still a bit deluded with daydream think we can maximize our own monetary value, but that's really just a fantasy. The real purpose of society i

  • Engagement? (Score:4, Funny)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @04:38AM (#65087181)

    People don't even get married these days, so who cares about getting engaged.

  • RTO (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Njovich ( 553857 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @04:45AM (#65087185)

    Motivation is a huge factor in work speed and quality.

    Sooo, it seems that with the more and more time spent at the office in the past two years we are seeing lower and lower motivation.

    Apparently telling people you don't trust them and putting people in overcrowded cages and letting them commute in misery two hours per day doesn't create motivation to work harder. Who could have predicted it?

    CEO's could perhaps try things that treat employees like human beings instead of cattle that needs to be caged?

    But who am I kidding, I'm sure the next attempt will be something like china's 996 culture or firing everyone over 35.

    • by skam240 ( 789197 )

      So the stat is at a 10 year low but you're tying it to an issue that's far more recent than that?

      • Re:RTO (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Njovich ( 553857 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @07:28AM (#65087361)

        Taking something away affects motivation way more than never having had it in the first place. People that never have had the opportunity of flexible working location (like 99% before 2020) obviously don't know what they have been missing out on. I think that that's a context you should keep in mind when looking at such a graph.

        But, yeah it's actually a reference to what the 'Restricted To Office' people are doing all the time. They tend to take some numbers that are obviously affected by interest rates and use them as 'proof' that WFH is bad. So just applying that logic.

      • Re:RTO (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Brandano ( 1192819 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @07:30AM (#65087365)

        There is a different way to look at this statistic.
        Something is driving down employee engagement, it seems rather low right now. Let's see how far back we have to go to find the same low level of employee engagement... guess what, even going 10 years back it was not as bad as today.
        So, yes, even the current "return to office" mandates could be the cause.

        • There is a different way to look at this statistic. Something is driving down employee engagement, it seems rather low right now. Let's see how far back we have to go to find the same low level of employee engagement... guess what, even going 10 years back it was not as bad as today. So, yes, even the current "return to office" mandates could be the cause.

          We all take out our favorite axes to grind. And apparently many in here believe that they represent the majority of employees, who can work from home. This is a subset of working people, not the majority.

          Reading the actual article, one can note that this lack of engagement is following the trend of GenZ people entering the workforce. And there are well documented articles about GenZ's expectations, attitudes, and interaction with other humans ftf, and many employers finding them to be difficult and ofte

          • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            Reading the actual article, one can note that this lack of engagement is following the trend of GenZ people entering the workforce. And there are well documented articles about GenZ's expectations, attitudes, and interaction with other humans ftf, and many employers finding them to be difficult and often unemployable.

            Here we go again, blaming the next generation coming into the workforce. Guess what? We did the exact same thing last time - the same articles all held millennials entering the workforce were

            • Here we go again, blaming the next generation coming into the workforce. Guess what? We did the exact same thing last time - the same articles all held millennials entering the workforce were less motivated and had different expectations and etc. etc. etc.

              The real reason is that the boomer C-suite, after screwing over GenX thanks to the Jack Welsh school of greed, is seeing the effects.

              What is it like being a loser and self identifying as the victim?

          • I don't really like blaming generations. I've seen lazy people of all ages, and I've seen hard working people old and young. I don't like trying to further the causes that want to divide and conquer by pitting generations against each other.

            My previous job, I've interviewed Gen Z college grads, and had interns which were inexperienced (we all were, at one time or another), but were sharp and willing to learn and own up to their mistakes. I don't go by age. Yes, there are some crazies out there, but I'm

        • I am self employed and I don't know how to answer the question. For me, 2024 was the most draining and exhausting year of my life. And everything was fine - normalish. I have no idea why it was so difficult by comparison. I am also less engaged in my own work and I was working from home before and after 2020.

          • Some of it may be economic conditions. There's never a day when there isn't something startling. Example: yesterday I bought a used paperback on amazon for 21 cents. The shipping was $5.99. Four months ago the shipping was 3.99. It's not amazon, it the post office raising rates, again. I still bought the book but I'll think twice next time. I'm not saying that buying a used paperback is terribly motivating but everything takes its toll -- seeing a minor item in the supermarket that used to be $1.49 n
    • Everything that happened during COVID showed another way to do things that mostly worked just fine. And it was also a dramatically less draining way of doing things because of how American cities are set up with long commute times and underfunded public transit.

      It kind of reminds me of the Grinch:

      And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow,
      stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and

    • It's hard to be engaged when you spend two years working from home, doing the same things you did while working in the office, hitting the same milestones and same deadlines, then suddenly we have to go back to the office, and they try to gaslight us about "in person collaboration" and other nonsense. We all know the real reasons:

      - Keep Corporate Real Estate from crashing
      - Keep those tax abatements flowing from shitty southern theocratic states flowing

      It becomes real clear that our value to the corporation

  • by devslash0 ( 4203435 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @04:47AM (#65087189)

    Sherlock Holmes one said:
    "My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. "

    Why would you engage any kind of engagement in a menial job? Manufacturing, services, restaurants... Just the tip of the iceberg. If you want engagement, give people something interesting, worthwhile to do, something worth engaging with that actually excites your employees.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Sherlock Holmes one said:
      "My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. "

      Why would you engage any kind of engagement in a menial job? Manufacturing, services, restaurants... Just the tip of the iceberg. If you want engagement, give people something interesting, worthwhile to do, something worth engaging with that actually excites your employees.

      Careful, Sherlock (and Watson) ejaculated a lot in those books.

      Jokes aside, it's less about having something to do than feeling that your work has meaning and value... this is most easily expressed in remuneration although a positive and supporting manager is also a boon.

    • by mkoenecke ( 249261 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @09:55AM (#65087635) Homepage
      Actually, (speaking as one who has been practicing law for 40 years) I have rather fond memories of working at a pizza restaurant when I was in my teens, mainly because of the interaction with customers. I also did some construction work during summers, and liked the fact that I could go home and not have any work problems hanging over my head. There is a certain satisfaction in getting something tangible accomplished. Even menial jobs can be engaging, provided that the managers/officers appreciate the employees and provide a decent work environment.
      • I've done physical labor and while your hands are busy your mind is free. With knowledge work you are completely trapped.
    • Sherlock Holmes one said: "My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. "

      Why would you engage any kind of engagement in a menial job?

      Ever go to a restaurant with a really good waitress or waiter? They make the job interesting. They interact, they'll even chat the customers up. The work is what you make of it.

      But to specifically answer your question, to be successful, a dose of self motivation is pretty darn important. No job is full time stimulation with meaningful self affirming tasks, and the famous "making a difference"

      IOW, my mantra though my entire career has been "I will bring value added to my work, whatever that work may be

  • Don't worry, Trump has the solution for this. He's going to apply tariffs so every man, woman, and child needs to work 150% of their lives away just to keep their house and get medical care. Musk looks forward to your kids assembling his Tesla's after their two hours of morning schooling.
    • by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Don't worry, Trump has the solution for this. He's going to apply tariffs so every man, woman, and child needs to work 150% of their lives away just to keep their house and get medical care. Musk looks forward to your kids assembling his Tesla's after their two hours of morning schooling.

      Erm... getting a bit ahead of yourself, along with the tariffs Americans won't be able to afford, Trump plans to bring in cheap immigrants to do the jobs for wages Americans won't accept.

      But he'll sort out health care any day now.

      • Hey, we'll go back to the glorious past where we are bound to the land and part of the year we have to work on our feudal liege's lands.

    • by JustNiz ( 692889 )

      If you would just stop with the sensationalist crap and look at actual facts/data, you'd see that Trump wants to lower taxes on working people, such as (but not only):
      Exempting tips from income taxes.
      Exempting Social Security benefits from income taxes.
      Exempting overtime pay from income taxes.
      Creating an itemized deduction for auto loan interest.
      Making the individual TCJA expirations permanent (set to expire in 2025) thereby effectively doubling the Standard deduction and Personal exemption.
      Allow parents w

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        What you are talking about is a drop in the bucket compared to what 25% tariffs will cost you.

        Exempting tips from income taxes.

        Except most servers will be put out of work by his expansion of the H-1B program. So, maybe a decent deal if you keep your job but tips are not steady so no way to build a life. Certainly no way to support a family.

        Exempting Social Security benefits from income taxes.

        Except how many social security benefits will there be after Musk cuts the budget by $2 trillion as he has stated. Social security is the biggest place for him to cut.

        Exempting overtime pay from income taxes.

        Yes, as I said they will be happy

      • Re:Tariffs (Score:5, Insightful)

        by fropenn ( 1116699 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @09:05AM (#65087525)
        It's a bunch of nonsense.

        Exempting tips from income taxes.

        Most people who make a living off tips are already in a very low tax bracket; the likely tax savings is quite small.

        Exempting Social Security benefits from income taxes.

        Similarly, this does not benefit low-income social security recipients at all (who already pay no tax on their benefits), and is a tax cut primarily for wealthy individuals (https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/whats-wrong-with-trumps-pledge-to-repeal-taxes-on-social-security-benefits).

        Exempting overtime pay from income taxes.

        Project 2025 opposes this and, in fact, wants to reduce eligibility for overtime.

        Creating an itemized deduction for auto loan interest.

        Only benefits those who have enough itemized deductions to get over the standard deduction - essentially only benefits the rich.

        Making the individual TCJA expirations permanent (set to expire in 2025) thereby effectively doubling the Standard deduction and Personal exemption. Allow parents with up to four children to deduct child care expenses from their income taxes. Adding tax credits for other dependents

        These laws were popular on both sides of the aisle.

        Trump's tax cut proposals heavily favor cutting taxes for the wealthy while doing very little to help working-class or poor.

        • Re: Tariffs (Score:2, Interesting)

          Trump's tax cut proposals heavily favor cutting taxes for the wealthy while doing very little to help working-class or poor.

          You hit the nail on the head there; in fact I was sorry I didn't say this. The right wing LOVES tax cuts because they can look like they are helping the little guy while really helping the wealthy and it looks like an even cut across the board.

        • by Ksevio ( 865461 )

          Don't forget that the tip exemption would be broad enough that allow gratuities to say your lawyer or supreme court justice to be tax exempt as well

      • Re:Tariffs (Score:5, Insightful)

        by caseih ( 160668 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @10:28AM (#65087719)

        Sensationalist? Trump has proposed the biggest, across-the-board tax hike in decades. 25% tariffs on just about everything. You realize a tariff is a tax, right? One that you will pay. Even if the intention of the tax is to punish foreign companies by making domestic goods more attractive, it is still you who pays that tax, even if you buy a domestic good that's not covered by the tariff. Ultimately the tariffs might be a good thing. But make no mistake. You will pay them and they are taxes, straight up. Huge taxes.

        • I could understand the logic if thousands of factories could be built by Americans in a couple years and the US would then be independent. But that is impossible to do at American wages and impossible to do quickly. Maybe in 20 years it could happen but that would require Americans to be paying the 25% tariffs all that time until domestic factories are built. And even then, now people are working for American wages in those factories so the things they produce may very well exceed production in China + 2
    • by jsepeta ( 412566 )

      Lol I'll never be able to afford a house, even under Biden.

  • All they care about you getting the job done, nothing personal about it.
    • Surely "knowing what is expected of you at work" is quite important to getting the job done? I mean, if you don't know what's expected of you then you can get "a" job done, but it might not be the job management wanted you to do.

  • I quit my job in the tech sector 5 years ago. I liked the technical side of the job, but management had a, what I call, a laserpointer attitude. The entire project they would point the laser to somewhere completely different and you had to run as hell to be there with a solution ASAP. (Overtime was of course unpaid) Worked there 9 years. After a while I figured it out. Whenever there was a big issue, I ignored the "laser dot" and did due diligence, and often found and fixed the issue easy. I left when they
    • by JustNiz ( 692889 )

      >> We were used for profit.

      Did you really not know that's how all for-profit businesses have to operate? I.e. Employees adding more value than they cost to employ == profit == continued existence.

    • I quit my job in the tech sector 5 years ago. I liked the technical side of the job, but management had a, what I call, a laserpointer attitude. The entire project they would point the laser to somewhere completely different and you had to run as hell to be there with a solution ASAP. (Overtime was of course unpaid) Worked there 9 years. After a while I figured it out.

      Do you consider this a universal attribute of all companies?

  • I know Marx has no relevance to our successful Western democracies but his theories on alienation might resonate with some, especially as we outsource more and more of our day jobs to AI: "The theoretical basis of alienation is that a worker invariably loses the ability to determine life and destiny when deprived of the right to think (conceive) of themselves as the director of their own actions; to determine the character of these actions; to define relationships with other people; and to own those items o
  • by JustNiz ( 692889 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @08:20AM (#65087411)

    As a hiring manager, I've found time and again that US gen Z applicants/employees come with a laundry list of massively unrealistic entitlement and expectations/demands that applicants from other generations or countries simply don't have.

    The worst seem to genuinely believe that companies exist only to support their required lifestyle, and that they should continue to be supported even when their average productivity approaches zero.

    • by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @10:02AM (#65087649)

      Companies taught their parents that employees are not valued as human beings, and are treated as disposable cogs. That companies believe they should find joy in making owners and shareholders wealthy while expecting nothing in return but their pay.

      Is it any wonder that their kids don't give a shit about companies beyond getting paid? Why should they care about the company and working hard for it, when the company doesn't care about them? Your predecessors sowed the seeds of this cultural change.

    • As a hiring manager, I've found time and again that US gen Z applicants/employees come with a laundry list of massively unrealistic entitlement and expectations/demands that applicants from other generations or countries simply don't have.

      The worst seem to genuinely believe that companies exist only to support their required lifestyle, and that they should continue to be supported even when their average productivity approaches zero.

      Did you ever get the helicopters coming to job interviews? I just love this quote from a (woman - cannot tell from the name on how these GenZ'ers will reshape the workplace by 2025.

      "Gen Z—or ‘Zoomers’—approach work with a mindset vastly different from their predecessors. For them, the workplace is not a static institution but a dynamic ecosystem aligned with personal values. They seek flexibility, prioritize inclusivity, demand mental health support, and expect ethical leadership

    • ...I've found time and again that US gen Z applicants/employees...genuinely believe that companies exist only to support their required lifestyle....

      So Gen Z learns faster than everyone who has come before them. It took this Gen Xer 25 years at my current company to learn what has become instinct for Gen Z.

      I've always been a top performer at my company (my boss and his boss call me a miracle worker, like Scotty). Long before Covid, I had been trying to convince the top brass to implement work from home, which they vehemently rejected. It took a Covid death in the company before work from home was greenlit. As a result, the company saw sustained product

  • "It's OK to love your job. Just don't expect it to love you back." If experience has shown you that layoffs don't necessarily correlate to an employee's ability or effort, why would you feel "engaged" to the degree your employer would like?
    • "It's OK to love your job. Just don't expect it to love you back." If experience has shown you that layoffs don't necessarily correlate to an employee's ability or effort, why would you feel "engaged" to the degree your employer would like?

      While a cool story, how long do you think a business will last if they pay no attention to employee ability on layoffs? Over my career, I've survived quite a few downturns because I bring value added.

      On occasion when we had to lay off a good worker, we've hired them back later when possible. The rest were people who had bad attitudes, and more likely had grossly overestimated their abilities.

    • by jsepeta ( 412566 )

      Not engaging one's self for a job that doesn't care about the employee sounds like a proper response to stimuli.

      My best boss ever explained, "Never let your job get in the way of your career." He then followed up with bi-annual meetings where he asked us about our career goals and sought ways to find opportunities within the organization to support our career development. Invest in your employees, and you'll get better work effort from them (engagement). It doesn't cost a lot of money to be a good manager;

  • Well marriage rates are probably down anyway

  • A good thing to consider the next time some cringe manager or CEO refers to employees as a family.

    FYI, Zuckerberg is going to lay off 5% of his low performing family members this year.

    • Well, hey, my company's CEO refers to people as "heads." Not sure which one is worse! At least a CEO who calls his people "heads" is being honest about how he feels about his peolpe.

  • Megamillionaire and billionaire CEOs, who, along with their execs, get huge bonuses, but that's not for "mere employees". Meanwhile, the employees are being forced to live further and further from work, because they can't afford to live closer

    And it's clear that the US election was swung by huge money.

  • GenX here.
    I'm tired of all these reports whining about employees when it's usually the Baby Boomer managers who suck at their jobs.

    Lead, follow, or get out of the freaking way.

Business will be either better or worse. -- Calvin Coolidge

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