0:00:02 - Briar
Hello everyone, welcome. I am Briar Harvey. This is the Neurodiversity Media Network And I am here today with the incredible Joa to Fix Work. So we talked last week about solopreneurs and freelancers and small businesses. This week, we're going to talk about anything larger than five employees And there's a lot of differences, categorically, in how you fix that work. In fact, if you were at a very large company, you should join me Thursday because I'm talking with Faith Clarke And we're going to dive into how to create community in larger businesses when you are not at the top. But that doesn't fix the institutional problems And that's what we're here to do today is to talk about. I mean and we were doing it before we hit record like this is just what you and I talk about every time we get together all the ways in which work is broken. So let's start with some broad strokes. What is it institutionally that people are missing at work? that makes work valuable.
0:01:42 - Joa
Yeah, i think that what are they missing? I think that they're missing a sense of connection and a sense of meaning. Largely, the sense of connection is what is what keeps us engaged in what's happening. If we are feeling connected to the people we're working with, the topic that we're working on, the mission of what it is that we're doing, those connections all weave together to keep us really integrated and engaged And I think that the meaning making comes from those connections.
The meaning making is about how it is that we kind of answer questions in our own minds of well, why am I going to work? What am I doing here? And I think that a lot of the narrative around work coincides with narratives around purpose What is our purpose? And I think that, ultimately, when we spend eight hours a day, eight to 10 to 12 hours a day doing a thing day in and day out, that's a huge percentage of our lives. And are we doing it just so that we can make money and then live our lives outside of that, or are we doing it because the things that we're actually doing for those eight to 10 to 12 hours a day are something that actually create meaning for ourselves?
0:03:10 - Briar
So how does an institution help to craft meaning?
0:03:27 - Joa
Well, i think that one of those ways is around the mission of what it is that they're doing. I think that there's been a lot of spotlight more recently on what is the mission, what is the value of what it is that an organization is doing, and I think that that is one of the ways that you sort of draw people in, draw people in who are going to want to contribute to that.
0:03:58 - Briar
So at an institutional level, I have to indicate the ways in which people will be able to contribute value to my organization. Well, we're fucked because they don't understand that.
0:04:23 - Joa
The organizations don't understand that. Yeah, so let's unpack.
0:04:32 - Briar
If the organization has to indicate that it's hiring or building a team to contribute value, what are the? what are the ways in which people contribute value?
0:04:53 - Joa
Yeah, i mean, i think that it well it's. these are real broad strokes, right? So would it be advantageous to think of like a hypothetical example where we can nail down some details?
0:05:07 - Briar
I think so.
0:05:09 - Joa
All right. So let's choose an industry, let's choose sort of a template of what kind of organization we're talking about and then play out some of what that would look like.
0:05:24 - Briar
I think let's talk about something that could. All right. We can't fix education. There's just way too much there.
0:05:40 - Joa
Education is a particular kind of beast. And then we talk about what level of education. are we talking about early childhood education? Are we talking about university level, right, i don't think there's fixing education.
0:05:56 - Briar
So let's see, Let's pick something with lower stakes Entertainment, perhaps media companies, Disney. Let's talk about Disney, Don't sue me Disney.
0:06:09 - Joa
Please don't sue us, Disney.
0:06:13 - Briar
Okay, So I am. I work in the marketing department at Disney. And it's been. It's been a rough time over there. There's all that stuff going on with the state of Florida.
0:06:36 - Joa
That's right.
0:06:37 - Briar
And losing special status tax status. In addition, disney has said they are not building a business complex in Florida now that billions of dollars.
They were going to invest in this, not doing that now, and they've had some pretty significant setbacks in terms of their budget. Disney just came out with some terrible numbers in terms of streaming for Disney Plus and Hulu, and they had floated Hulu as up for sale. Nobody bought, so now they're trying to figure out what they're going to do with Hulu, if they're going to buy out Comcast and assume this massive amount of debt for a streaming company that does have a lot of subscribers but also fits in kind of weird in the ecosystem right.
0:07:45 - Joa
Right.
0:07:46 - Briar
And there's We have a new CEO for the second time. Bob is back by, iger has returned to I don't know Cleanus up again. It's dismal. How do I feel any investment in this? How does the company help me to feel an investment?
0:08:13 - Joa
Yeah Well, i think that when we think about I mean, let's just take a moment and say, boy, for a hypothetical example you really show that Sorry.
0:08:27 - Briar
I chose something that happens to be a special interest. Now I have all of this background information.
0:08:35 - Joa
Yeah, it's top of mind, it's in the news. The Florida situation is a really significant move. I'm into it. But Disney is like a large, many moving parts organization. We're starting big. I love it. Let's do it.
0:08:50 - Briar
We're talking about corporate, because this getting me to appreciate my value as, say, a branded in-person Disney character actor in the park is a whole nother ballgame entirely. We're just talking about the aspects of being in the building at Disney.
0:09:15 - Joa
Right.
0:09:17 - Briar
With all of these things going on.
0:09:20 - Joa
Right, right. So when we're talking about something that's as big as Disney, with as long a history as Disney has, i think that the task for leadership is to really create an idea of direction. Where are we going as an organization? What are we doing with this organization? Right, and I think that the real task at hand for leadership is to say we're creating the sense of direction, we're getting buy-in from people and we're going to attract people to us because that sense of direction is compelling. Right, and part of Disney's sense of direction is their history Right, their rich history, what.
No matter who you are, actually, I've worked with a number of people who have had an aspiration to work at Disney in various capacities. Right, and almost across the board. Anybody who I've talked to who falls into this category wants to work there because it's quote, disney Right, like it's. Like. It's the name, it's the idea, it's this, what they represent, right, and so like.
Then you need to dig into okay, well, what do they represent? Right, if you are trading on your name and your reputation and your history, then what do all of those things represent And how do you convey that to the people who are coming on board? Part of it is out of your control because it is what is already established in sort of the public consciousness about your organization. But to your point that, like things are a bit dismal, right, things are going off the rails, there's these sort of flailings of like Comcast, no Comcast, hulu, no, hulu, right. Like all of these pieces which are business decisions also have to somehow make sense to that larger direction piece, right, and they can't dilute the sort of purity of whatever it is that you've already established as your identity in the world as an organization.
0:11:37 - Briar
Which is in fact why Bob Iger is back, because Bob Chappick destroyed their identity in very little time There is. It's really critical here. I think that we understand that the identity of something shapes our relationship with it as an entity When it comes to the work which shapes how motivated I'm going to be to do that work, and it's not always going to be smooth sailing. So what do we do when everything seems to be swirling the drain pipe to get us back into even footing?
0:12:30 - Joa
Right, exactly, and with that very idea in mind, it makes a ton of sense to be bringing back somebody who had a previous good track record, right to sort, of course, correct do some of this damage control in order to be able to get back at least to where we were before the damage started. Right, if not even a little further along.
0:12:58 - Briar
Okay. So assuming that leadership is making decisions, that gives me confidence in the direction the overall company is going. That's going to affect the ways in which I do the work and the ways in which I show up. How does a business build that deliberately?
0:13:38 - Joa
Are we still talking about Disney, or are we smaller, scaling it?
0:13:42 - Briar
I mean, you can go either way here.
0:13:45 - Joa
Yeah. So I think building this deliberately it has a lot to do with getting really clear on it before you start talking about it. You know to a certain extent, right, like you need to. You need to put in the effort to figure out All right, what is my business doing in the world, what problem am I solving? what Issue am I addressing? Why am I doing that? and I say I, but like it's a we question. When we're talking about Organizations, what are we doing collectively? and I think that you know the.
The organizations that really take hold and are successful often are the ones that are Extremely clear on that, extremely clear on what problem they're solving and how it is that they're going to do it right. They're clear on it and that clarity resonates with people, brings them in and encourages them to Get on board easily. Right, you want a vision that in some sense, is very simplistic, that allows people to say, all right, i heard that sentence, i understood it and I I'm on board, let's go for it. Right, there's, i think there's a lot of complicating and Over detailing when it comes to missions and sort of organizational direction That really get in the way of clarity.
0:15:16 - Briar
That way, You know I mentioned faith already and we've talked a lot about the ways in which you have to build that from the small entity out So that it radiates and that's true and also it has to come from the outside, within, or those individual groups Never become cohesive. They, a Small team, can be a functional unit, but if five other surrounding adjacent teams are completely shitty, it will affect the way that one Functional team networks out and does its own work. How do we? We Make those points of connection clearer so that we are Building together.
0:16:29 - Joa
Well, i think that I'm gonna. I'm gonna pretend I'm a politician and answer a question that I want to answer rather than yours, but I think that totally fine. You know the. I think that It's making me think about hierarchies within organizations and you know, quote-unquote, leadership teams and things like this, and I generally am more of a fan of kind of decentralizing leadership structure and power structure, and And then I think that those, those functional Units are allowed to be even more functional if they're not beholden to some higher power Leadership structure. I also recognize that in, in the scheme of things, is not always the most pragmatic way to structure something And it's certainly not the norm across the board. So I it's making me think about leadership structure and What part that plays in the. The context you just painted the picture of of these Different teams. Five of them are on fire. One of them is doing great, but you know that one team that's doing great is not going to be able to be as great as they could be when the other five teams are on fire. Right, and I'm thinking about the part that a leadership team plays in terms of setting the tone and modeling For all of these other teams, what it looks like and I can't tell you the number of organizations I've seen where the leadership team is on fire, you know Really creates an issue when it comes to Modeling the tone and tenor of how to be a functional group. Because I think I, you know, i love everything that faith does and and I've watched a number of her more recent appearances on these podcasts and You know, i think, absolutely I am also of the mind that you start from the inside out, like you start with the individual, you work your way out, but there does have to be like a holding structure in place that is reinforcing Those things that the individual from the inside out is doing. And so that's where I think part of it comes down to a modeling and a setting of the tone.
And I'm thinking back to an experience that I had early in my career, where you know What one of the things that gets talked about a lot in American workplaces is. You know, nobody takes time for lunch, like they eat at their desk. We talked about this last time too, and I worked at an organization that was I mean, it was a, it was social work Like there was never not something to do, but we took lunch breaks collectively as an entire office every single day, and part of that was because the director Came out and had lunch with all of us every single day. She stopped her work and This this was a long-standing thing before I entered this workplace. So I come in as a relatively new graduate and this is just the norm.
Nobody ever Implied that I should eat lunch at my desk. In fact, like there were people who would like go door to door and like Ask you why you weren't at lunch if you weren't at lunch. So you know, it's just this real, like structural Example of setting the tone from the leadership perspective of no, we will have lunch every day. The reason we're gonna have lunch every day partially is because I'm gonna come out of my office and I'm gonna be at lunch every day. You know there was no working through lunch at the director level and therefore there was very little working through lunch at any level underneath.
0:20:15 - Briar
You know, i think at a fundamental level we do have to talk about the idea that maybe the way that we structure things and How leadership is designed in very large companies Maybe needs a work over huh.
0:20:37 - Joa
Yeah, yeah. What are you thinking of as like the major indicators of things that would need a work over?
0:20:46 - Briar
So when we look at what makes a business accessible, the first thing that we are evaluating is Job descriptions and policies and procedures. Procedures, it's. Do I know what my job is? Do I know what other people's jobs are, and is there a clear Policy for how I do my job and how other people do their jobs? Almost always, the answer to those questions is no right?
0:21:30 - Joa
Is there transparency around any of it?
0:21:33 - Briar
right. And if we can't even be Transparent around what the job fucking is, we are not Transparent about the leadership culture or the ways in which our leaders are responsible for determining the culture mm-hmm and Faith talks about that from a middle management perspective, which is fabulous and And truly. if we're talking about very large companies, then this has to come from the CEO and the C suite and the board, and that is not the way companies are currently designed in this country, or in most countries, i don't think.
0:22:36 - Joa
Right. I think that the accountability and responsibility of leadership often gets lost And leadership and an increase in structural power sort of ends up sort of being synonymous with not having to be accountable to anybody anymore, you know, having greater and greater latitude to just do what it is that you want to or see fit in the moment to do. So I think that you know that's part of the reason why I think hierarchy in these situations is kind of damaging, because it's very hard culturally to kind of shake that notion no matter, and you have to work harder to sort of create these structures and checks and balances, to sort of work against the cultural norms.
0:23:41 - Briar
Well and, at the end of the day, so much of this comes down to pay and pay structures, right? If the CEO is making 40 million a year and our lowest level employees are making less than 40,000 a year and cannot survive on that job alone, then there is a problem with the ways in which we are operating as an entity.
0:24:18 - Joa
Absolutely, absolutely.
0:24:23 - Briar
So this is a big question which you may not have an answer to, but I am curious, like is there a reason that you feel that salaries have not kept up with the level of productivity expected?
0:24:57 - Joa
Well, i think that there's a lot of reasons to it, but certainly I think that the decline of collective bargaining of unions in the workplace is certainly one of them. I think that when we look at, you know, labor movements and the gains that are made through labor movements, we saw things kind of keep up for a while As soon as we started seeing a systematic decimation of those structures, those protections. that was when salaries really flatlined but expectations continued to climb.
0:25:39 - Briar
Well, and we've talked about the number of hours that individuals work, much less individuals in a corporate structure. And if this is the expectation that we have all of the time and there are no boundaries around work and there are no unions for white collar workers, how do we fix this?
0:26:06 - Joa
I think that we need more unions. I think that that's a major answer. We were talking briefly about academia before we started recording today and I think that there's been great moves within academia for more unions. Graduate student groups are unionizing, lecture groups are unionizing. The tenure track and tenure system is like a whole different ball of wax entirely which we won't get into, but there are more and more positive inroads being made, with people unionizing. Interestingly, i think a lot of people at the white collar level, who don't necessarily have a situation where they're living paycheck to paycheck, oftentimes they're not used to needing protections. I think a lot of them began to understand things differently when the pandemic hit, when they were part of organizations where, all of a sudden, the ground was changing underneath our feet every single minute of every single day and people who had unions in place, had protections in place, even if they hadn't understood the value of them prior to that moment, understood them in a really different way all of a sudden.
0:27:28 - Briar
Here's another question that you may not be able to answer What's the difference between governmental regulation and collective bargaining?
0:27:44 - Joa
Oh, i probably don't have a great answer for that, and that's okay. What are your thoughts on that?
0:27:51 - Briar
Truly, i think I'm going to add that one to the list of why's I've got. my partner is working on a show about history and I may have to ask that one, because there's really something here where coaching right now is a hot button issue and a lot of people are talking about how desperately it needs to be regulated as an industry, and my response to that is always I don't favor any governmental regulation for most things because it only makes it cost more and it almost never yields better results. You can look at the post office or NASA or the housing industry. I mean, every time there are regulations placed around mortgages, it gets more difficult for the average person to get one.
0:29:02 - Joa
So protections or about that one.
0:29:06 - Briar
So that's a good question.
I tend to believe that this is a place where the consumer should put their money where their mouth is, because companies are much more likely to change business practices because their consumers have revolted than their governmental regulations. And Nestle is one of the best examples of that, because I truly think Nestle is evil as a company And I don't use that word lightly evil and the only thing that's ever markedly changed their behavior is local demonstrations and protests, not regulation. So I think that, that said, collective bargaining allows a group of people to come together and say that these are our needs and we won't go forward until those needs are met. And I think the writer's strike right now is a really great example of this, because what they're actually trying to negotiate isn't how much they're getting paid. It's what the industry is going to do about AI and how they are going to prioritize the humans that are doing the work versus the robots. So I think that when it's a collective action, we're much more likely to get the results that are actually net beneficial.
0:31:08 - Joa
Yeah, it's interesting because in your description of all of these different pieces, it's almost like consumer action is a collective action of one sort as well. It's a group of concerned people who are saying we have a need for companies that produce products that we buy to not do a thing. If you're doing that, we're not going to be buying your thing.
0:31:36 - Briar
I mean, there is no better example of that right now than Budweiser, who continues to just. I mean, it's not about their support of trans rights And I talked about this a couple weeks ago with Haley Shane on BrandWild And it has nothing to do with how you feel about those issues. What is very apparent is that Budweiser did not understand their audience and they have lost a significant portion of them through not properly managing this crisis. So the collected masses here of buyers, for better or for worse, have made their feelings. No, and it will or won't change how Budweiser does business in the future, but it certainly made people aware of how they're doing business now.
0:32:58 - Joa
Well, you know, it's interesting that the commonality here is like this idea of collective right, like we are coming together because we have a shared vision or idea of a thing and we want to work together in order to enact something related to it, and I think that ultimately, that ends up being the key to fixing anything is a collective effort towards it, you know, and how that collective effort starts is another question, but it doesn't. Nothing happens based on one or two people, or, i should say, very little happens based on one or two people. The chances of one or two people actually being able to have the most impact is if they have disenfranchised enough people to, so that they're the only ones who are kind of left. And that, i think, is in some way how our system really operates at this point. You know, the more people who are disenfranchised and disinclined to participate whether we're talking about voting, whether we're talking about engagement at work, whether we're talking about any of these things the greater power the individuals who are left in the vacuum are able to hold.
0:34:14 - Briar
This is literally the only argument I've ever heard against quiet quitting that I could support. It's because that's exactly it. When you become disenfranchised, you no longer do the work to make it better And unfortunately, the expectation of the disenfranchised to make it better is part of the problem here. But I don't. I don't know how to fix that.
0:34:51 - Joa
I don't, i mean I don't know that there is fixing it. I and I mean I've I've thought about this from a lot of different directions and about a lot of different things, but ultimately, like we all bear responsibility to try to fix a thing, like we can have feelings about it. it can be unjust, it often is unjust, but if we want it fixed, we got to stick in it and try to do it Right. And I think that that's where, that's where the community comes in, that's where the connections come in, that's where the collective comes in, to be able to buoy and support the people who need it, because you can't just stay in it at your own detriment forever. Right, you need to be filled back up, but you need support of other people to do that. You know, no, no one person can do this. We have to do it together And we have to figure out how that looks as a community and as a collective.
0:35:57 - Briar
Which I think pretty tidily leads us into the next three episodes in this series, because we're going to talk about the disenfranchisement of women, we're going to talk about the disenfranchisement of blacks and people of color, and we're going to talk about the disenfranchisement of the LGBT community within work. So, knowing that the burden is on those who are most affected by the brokenness, how do we collectively help support that?
0:37:00 - Joa
I think that it looks a lot like leaning in to doing our part to ally with any groups that we hold more privilege than in all of these intersections. And so, while I would lean on, you know, male presenting folks in order to ally with me in situations where women are getting the short end of the stick in a situation, i would look to myself to ally with people of color to support that in situations where somebody who's white presenting is going to hold more power and more privilege to be able to support what they're doing. And I think that it's a lot of flexibility to be able to negotiate at these different levels and in these different positions, you know, as we move through the world.
0:38:01 - Briar
I think too, there is a lot of room for finding the intersectionality of these groups and figuring out the ways in which we can support each other together.
0:38:21 - Joa
Yep, absolutely, absolutely Forming. forming collectives that that are explicitly and intentionally diverse across all of these different areas, creates a much powerful hole than if we're to be siloed.
0:38:39 - Briar
Okay, so structurally, organizationally, what does it look like when an organization is actually supportive of the disenfranchised? And I'm not asking for specifics, maybe just some examples of things that you might have seen. That felt good.
0:39:15 - Joa
Yeah, i think.
I think that recognition of holidays, of days of celebration, of days of community for people who are part of these different groups makes a huge difference.
I think that there's a lot of people who will say that that would just be you know, kind of lip service, but I think that having you know, having policy around like these days are recognized holidays, these days are recognized days of celebration right, i think that having overt policy around that does make a difference for people feeling like they can show up as their whole selves at work if they choose to. I think that that is one example of something that feels really good. I think that transparency around pay makes a huge difference for a lot of these things, because it gives people a sense of being able to understand the lay of the land and a sense that their organization takes it seriously and that they have to be able to disclose the information in a public, or at least semi public, sort of way to everybody, right, i would not even look at a job ad at this point in time that did not at least have some kind of pay window, right?
0:40:40 - Briar
I don't know exactly, but you got to have some kind of range listed for me to believe that you actually do pay people well and appropriately at this stage of the game, right?
0:40:59 - Joa
that's right And it's interesting. I mean, as part of my job is to read a ton of job ads all the time, right, i'm always reading job ads. It's been very interesting to watch the shifts in language that people are using around these things, like the companies that are just like getting on board and saying this is the spirit of our times. This is like the actual law in many places now, like we're going to put the pay range on here. There's that end of the spectrum. Then there's the mid range. Mid range is just sort of not saying anything, just sort of hoping that maybe someone won't notice that we haven't said anything about it. And then the other end of the range, which I've seen recently, is explicitly not stating it and laying out in no uncertain terms that if you live in states where it is a law to have the pay range on job ads, you are explicitly disinvited from applying to this role.
0:42:07 - Briar
See, and that just feels gross, slimy skivvy to me. I have seen many, many postings, especially on Reddit, from people who have been disqualified from further interviews because they asked for the pay range up front. Like that's just ludicrous to me.
0:42:36 - Joa
Yeah, yeah, it's um, yeah, but, but I mean this is an example, right, of like, i don't know that all the workers, right? I mean maybe if all the workers, literally all the workers, rose up, right, i don't know that we would have gotten enough traction from people just saying, hey, we deserve to know what the pay range is, for that to be actually turning into the norm on job ads if it weren't for actual legislation and regulation around the expectation of having the pay range be available on job ads. So that's, that's an interesting, you know extra piece for your, for your line of thought about you know regulation and what that looks like. Do you think that we would have structurally gotten there at this point in time had it not been for actual legislation and regulation around it?
0:43:30 - Briar
You know who knows I often I often wonder if that has. I mean, obviously we know in the states where that is a requirement that that has in fact, made a difference in terms of pay equity, and so there is definitely something to that. There is also, i think, an argument to be made here that now that we have established this, something else will come along to make this unnecessary right. I look particularly at, like, the legislation around AI and intellectual property and the fact that we will never be caught up on any of that stuff, especially with the way that AI is developing now, and I think trying to probably burdens us more. But again, it's such a complex argument, so I don't know.
I do know that having a pay range at this point in time does make a difference, and there are certainly places where you can advocate for legal requirements. And that is our very last episode, when we talk about accessibility.
0:45:09 - Joa
That's right.
0:45:09 - Briar
Right, because so much of what is required in terms of accessibility is because of the Americans with Disabilities Act And we've rolled things into it over the years Pregnancy, neurodivergence, right All of these things are now covered by the ADA. That would not have been before. However, pregnancy is a really great example, because I can name a bunch of women I know who have been mommy-tracked or terminated while pregnant, or even with those regulations in place, it hasn't forced better behavior.
0:45:56 - Joa
That's right. That's right, right. I think that definitely part of the conversation is how easy is it to disregard. what is the follow through and accountability for adhering to regulations?
0:46:12 - Briar
Like that has to have teeth If there is no enforcement of that regulation and a fine just doesn't cut it. In most business cases I don't think, because obviously and we've talked about Amazon at length they plan for those fines, they plan for the turnover rates. They'd rather pay that than have people stick around long enough to organize that union.
0:46:41 - Joa
That's right, it's built into their cost of doing business. Literally, right, yeah, yeah, absolutely Without the teeth, i think that you can legislate, you can regulate until the cows come home, but without the enforcement, without repercussions that make you recalculate, i think that we might as well have saved our energy.
0:47:14 - Briar
Okay, so all that's very dismal, i'd like to let's see if we can wrap this up on a positive note. Okay, are there clear signs of things getting better?
0:47:36 - Joa
My sign that things are getting better really comes with the assessment that my clients are making in terms of where they're choosing to even apply for roles, let alone accept roles. Right, i think that the tone that I'm picking up from the workforce at large is that they're choosing who they want to give their treasures to, who they want to give their eight or 10 or 12 hours a day to, and they're choosing that based on whether the company has a mission that aligns with their individual values. They're doing it based on whether the company has policies and procedures that are transparent, including pay. They're doing it based on whether it feels like something that's aligned with their vision of who they are in the world, and I think that that's categorically different than it's been in recent times. When I take a look at sort of the tone previously having been oh, they're going to hire me, oh, they're going to pay me. Okay, right, and don't get me wrong, there's still a lot of that. There's still a lot of that, but I see a shift. I see a shift And there's a generational component to it. The way we've talked about on the show before But it's also the pandemic changed people's outlook on how they were spending their time, and part of it is because we all had, by and large, we all had a giant pause button where, all of a sudden, we had time to actually think and reflect in a different way than we have ever had before.
And the US did relatively little compared to a lot of other countries in terms of, you know, providing financial support to people to be able to pause and reflect. They could have done a lot more, but even the minimal amount that the US did was more than we've ever had before in terms of having a compensated window of time to really think things through, and I mean that's not good for capitalism, it's not good for the system to allow people to really reflect thoughtfully about what it is that they want to do with their time.
0:50:04 - Briar
You know and here's what I come back to The universal complaint that people don't want to work anymore, and that's old as mud. Right, we have tablets, bronze tablets, but in a sears bad bronze. People don't want to work anymore. That's always been a thing. But what does stand out for me is that, despite the number of people who are still actively seeking employment, there are still more jobs than there are people to be employed in those jobs by a wide margin at this point in time, which says that we're not doing those bad jobs anymore. We're just not doing them. It's not that people don't want to work anymore, it's that people don't want to work where they don't have dignity anymore. People don't want to work where they aren't treated like a person anymore and they're simply not going to do that work. That's right And truly.
I think the old saw people don't quit jobs, they quit bosses right. If the job is whatever with the best boss in the world and I still don't want to do it then that's perhaps something that we should look at automating or getting robots in, for. If there are not enough people to do this particularly demeaning job, regardless of how good my boss is or how much you pay me for it. Then we get rid of those, we outsource those, we find ways to make that a non-entity, and then everybody gets to do the work that they love. I still think that's possible. I truly do think that it's possible that everybody gets to do the work that they love.
0:52:25 - Joa
There's no reason why it shouldn't be possible.
0:52:29 - Briar
Not at this point.
0:52:30 - Joa
There's no good reason. There's no good reason. There's a lot of reasons.
0:52:34 - Briar
There's a lot of reasons, but there's no good reasons at this point in our technological development that we can't figure out ways to get rid of the shit that nobody wants to do.
0:52:48 - Joa
That's right, that feels pretty helpful.
0:52:51 - Briar
It does That we are technologically in a place where we can say that.
0:52:57 - Joa
Yeah, yeah, it's a remarkable time.
0:53:01 - Briar
All right, my friend. So next time first week in June. We are talking about gender.
0:53:17 - Joa
Mm-hmm. Yep, okay Yeah, we're going to talk about women, femme-coded people in the workplace. Okay Yeah.
0:53:27 - Briar
It's such a fun, delightful ball of horrors right now.
0:53:36 - Joa
It's not great, but we're going to talk about it.
0:53:41 - Briar
All right y'all. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for listening. This series is available on the Narrow Diver City Media Network. If you would like to hear more from Joa, where can they find you, my friend.
0:53:57 - Joa
They can find me on LinkedIn. That's where I hang out most times. There's a link there to click and book a discovery call with me if you'd like to work with me on any of your own career strategy. Love working with people to find out places where they're going to thrive and be their best selves.
0:54:17 - Briar
And it's not where you aren't treated like a human being. So let's get you someplace better. That's right.
0:54:25 - Joa
That's right.
0:54:26 - Briar
All right, my friend, we will see you next time. Y'all, i appreciate you being here. Have an amazing day and go fix work in your own community.
0:54:37 - Joa
Do it.
Transcribed by https://podium.page
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