We are experiencing mass migration, with some reports indicating people are voluntarily leaving their employer in the largest percentages experienced this Century. Without placing too much focus on the percentage itself, I'd like to suggest one concept to encourage the quantification of joy and incentivization to celebrate innovation.
For what reason(s) are people quitting?
One insight derived from this study and general human behavior is that various personality types are incentivized by various motivators.
Computers have advanced substantially in the past 20 years and our increase in wages has not kept pace with increase in productivity. A significant population allocates inadequate compensation and there a widening gap between cost of commodities and value of the dollar is an off-spring of this gap between productivity and (lack of) income. To avoid diverting this into a problem of economics, I will focus on the productivity paradox.
"every company should consider rewarding employees who can automate their own tasks"
A company who realizes this gap, and values their retention rate must avoid applying the solutions of the past to solve the problems of the future, we must apply the solutions of the future. The future indicates AI will be able to automate an increasing amount of tasks, especially for knowledge job sectors, throughout the next 10-20 years. To manage the inevitability that certain tasks are better handled by a robot or a script, an automation of any sort, every company should consider rewarding employees who can automate their own tasks, while maintaining their current wage, or consider to offer bonuses to reward innovation. This is the case for deflation for economic sustainability. Deflationary tactics now would increase joy for both the company and company employees, especially when we collectively value innovation. And if companies are not yet quantifying joy then employees will migrate toward career opportunities where joy is quantified so they can experience more joy in their creative and technical labor. This paradox will especially be prevalent to the generation of workers growing up in the information age. This is partially why the return to the office isn't working for some employees. Certain employees adapted to remote work and enjoy the alternate schedule remote work allows. Other employees now consider remote work a human right as exposure to various level of immunity is a risk people aren't quick to re-embrace. On the surface level remote employees enjoy the escape from their commute which can be upwards of 45 minutes. When spanning a business month that can accumulate to 15 hours per month. Executives and employees seem to be unaligned as to what is the purpose of the office. As with anything else that is complex there are multiple gears affecting these streams and movements, but a general tide stems from CEOs making ultimatums for their employees to return to the office or face consequences. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic European countries were alredy experimenting with 32-36 hour workweeks and 4-day week. It must be stressed post-pandemic that American companies must find the balance between innovation, automation and employee well-being and joy. The data and the great resignation trends both indicate the same insight, that employees want to be successful in both their career and personal lives without sacrificing quality at either of their full-time and demanding roles, and technology is a great way to strike the balance locally to reach harmony globally. The time has never been more ripe to quantify knowledge and experience via an automation of a sequence of events. If a task that pre-automation took 30 minutes that can be automated into one-click, the employee or division responsible with this automation should benefit from their innovation in perpetuity with the aim of reaching six-hour shifts from previous eight hour shifts. Six-hour work blocks is a step in the right direction, and is in harmony with deflation for economic sustainability. Beyond offering the flexibility of 6-hour days, under this concept 6-hour employees can be compensated for a full-time 40-hour wage when correcting for improvement in productivity, accuracy and automation in perpetuity, especially for knowledge workers. If you are a CEO taking active and measurable steps to decrease labor hours and maintain productivity what has your experience been like?