What 3000 People Want In 2022
What people searched for on Google in 2021 may explain many things around us
Dear Santa
I have to explain why I am asking for a long list of goodies. Let me explain the context.
Santa, you will agree that 2021 was a strange year. From a Dreamer to a Unicorn to a Market Shaper, everyone wanted to speed up their digital transformation. They needed lots of techies. They went shopping for techies. That made even the Incumbents and Laggards panic.
They too went shopping for techies too. The result was that soon there were more offers per techie than potholes on the road. Some call it The Great Resignation. (read more)
According to Google’s Year in Search 2021, the term soulmate was searched more than before
“2022 will now see employees in other departments like Supply Chain, HR, Finance go job-hopping to create The Great Resignation 2.0”
The non-techies have seen that employers can offer 50% and 200% pay hikes to techies. 2022 will be the year when non-techies in business-critical roles will go job-hopping.
Here is my Wishlist for the Workplace in 2022
1. Work must generate a positive emotion
The Great Resignation is a sign of restlessness. Career 1.0 looked like a tunnel. After studying we entered the job market and stayed put until we retired. Career 2.0 was often the fork on the road when people pursue a career choice that was different from what they had studied to be. Career 3.0 is people pursuing a portfolio of career options. Different skills that get paid at different rates for different kinds of jobs/ clients.
Read more: Google's Year in Search 2021
The pandemic has shown that work must have an emotional component to it
You will notice an increasing reference to emotions in the pop culture.
When a manager demonstrates how the work done impacts a human being - not the bottom line of the business, it creates a sharply defined meaning that people can never forget. In 2022, can we focus on the human experience.
Lego announced recently that it was getting rid of its plastic bags holding the Lego bricks. They switched to paper bags instead based letters from kids said, "I know this isn't good." Listening to the customer or the employee and then DOING something about it is the human experience we crave.
2. Relationships form the experience of work
When you ask someone, "What was it like to work there?" people start thinking of the people who they worked with. The relationships with the colleagues can often play a vital role in shaping those experiences.
Santa, can you help the bosses see their work as building the relationship and not only the tasks. Relationships become the lens with which they look at the teams they lead. They are managers of a complex web of relationships and emotions.
There are 24 dimensions of emotions that have been plotted.
Copy paste this link in a Chrome browser to hear what that emotion sounds like https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/vocs/map.html#)
Learning about emotions may be a skill gap that will be harder to teach
3. Work means different things to different people
Unilever has recently introduced an option called "Flexi-curity" (flexibility plus security). If an employee commits to 6 weeks of work in a year, they get to choose the assignments they can work on and get a structured pay and medical/retirement benefits.
Experts and specialists can get pay and benefits under the Open2U initiative. The traditional 40-40-40 model of employment has been challenged when people work for 40 hours a week, 40 weeks a year and for 40 years of their life in the same company. It offers flexibility to the employees and security to gig workers. (read more)
When I drive to work on a Monday morning, it depresses me to listen to radio jockeys who talk about "Monday blues". Can the workplace also be a source of joy and meaning in 2022?
What 4000 people ACTUALLY want in 2022
We keep hearing that The Great Resignation is all about people getting more money. That is partly true. Some pundits say that they workplace must provide flexibility. We have all heard that people don't leave organisations, they leave their bosses. I had posted a poll on LinkedIn to ask people what they would wish to have in 2022. 3000 people had responded to it. Since then many more have,<see the poll>
50% of the people wanted to have the skills to grow faster. Only 33% people wanted more money. We are in the skills economy.
When my poll went live on LinkedIn, I had more than 200,000 people have viewed these results
The verdict is clear
They want the SKILLS needed to grow. When the people learn new skills other things follow. They get paid better and grow without having to switch jobs. As one of my clients put it crisply in their first conversation with me, "Lets build domain expertise, digital skills, the related soft skills and then help them build their personal brand." That is their gift to their employees in 2022.
“Let’s build their domain expertise, digital skills, the related soft skills and then help them build their personal brand.”
I hope the employers are listening. This is the most precious gift we can give to each other.