Podcast: Resigners’ Regrets
Been a whole lot of quitting goin’ on these past couple years. Early on we celebrated triumphant stories of the over-worked and under-appreciated declaring that enough was enough. These days we’re hearing less inspiring tales, where reasonably content employees change jobs and find that the greener pasture they sought was actually an algae-covered swamp. Join us as we lean heavily on internet dating metaphors to describe the simple tactics employees and employers can use to look before they leap.
Mentioned in This Episode:
72 Percent of Workers Regret Resigning–and It’s Not Their Fault
Woman goes on Tinder date to get a lift to other man’s house during Uber strike
Transcript:
Frank Butler 0:17
Hello Busybodies, welcome to another episode of the Busyness Paradox. I’m Frank Butler here with Paul Harvey.
Paul Harvey 0:23
Good day, Frank.
Frank Butler 0:24
Good day, Paul. So, this morning, I was giving a talk to our local Rotary Club about the great resignation, right, that whole thing of people quitting their jobs and really misnamed because it’s really the great migration.
Paul Harvey 0:41
Right. They’re not just quitting their jobs and retiring, they’re quitting their jobs and starting other jobs.
Frank Butler 0:47
Correct.
Paul Harvey 0:48
For the most part
Frank Butler 0:48
For the most part, There’s…you know something like last year alone, there was 47.4 million people who voluntarily quit their jobs and took new jobs. For the most part right, there’s about 4 million who actually retired have those and yeah, so I was having that conversation this morning about it and sort of talking about it. Because it’s still going on. And the latest data was an, I believe, January, of another 4.3 million people voluntarily quit their jobs. I mean, these are big numbers, right?
Paul Harvey 1:22
Those are huge numbers man.
Frank Butler 1:23
Yeah. And so it’s not slowing down. We’re not seeing an abatement of this great resignation phenomenon. However, it kept getting me thinking it’s like, people were had been saying, oh, yeah, people aren’t really thrilled about the changing these jobs. And so I went and looked at and found this on in on inc.com. Their website, and it gets Fox News had done a survey. Well, it was through the muse was the actual organization, but they survey 2500 millennial and Gen Z job seekers, and found that 72% were surprised that their jobs, their new roles were not really as advertised in some way. Right? They, they it actually turned out that they have some some type of regret having changed jobs.
Paul Harvey 2:08
That’s, that’s a high number too, I wonder how that compares to the normal average. I think everyone, when you start a new job, you’re always kind of usually optimistic about like, this is gonna be the best job ever. And usually, once the polish wears off the honeymoon phase ends. Hopefully, you still like the job. But it’s usually there’s a few things that you’re not so excited about. So I wonder what that percentage is, normally, versus this great migration group?
Frank Butler 2:38
Yeah, that’s a great question. And I don’t have an answer for but you’re right, right. I think we all go through a honeymoon phase with our jobs. And, you know, and I think this is true with anything. I think there’s always a honeymoon phase. I mean, we talked about a honeymoon phase and relationships and jobs in
Paul Harvey 2:53
A literal honeymoon.
Frank Butler 2:54
Yeah
Paul Harvey 2:54
Sometimes.
Frank Butler 2:54
Right. Exactly.
Paul Harvey 2:55
Two-way relationship.
Frank Butler 2:56
Yeah.
Paul Harvey 2:57
It’s always kind of funny. If you ever sit down, sit in on a new employee orientation session ever, at a larger company. There’s always so much optimism in the room. Yep. And you just kind of look around and think like a year from now, how many of you are going to be like, I hate this job.
Frank Butler 3:16
It’s true, though. I mean, I think even if you like the place you’re working at, there are moments where you just sort of get flat on it, you know, and so you’re like, Ah, I need to do something different or any change jobs. And sometimes, if just by sticking through it, you know, it gets better again, because you know, things change managers change. Life goes on.
Paul Harvey 3:38
But yeah, there’s highs and lows and ups and downs at every job.
Frank Butler 3:41
Exactly. I mean, everything has its ups and downs. Right? I mean, that’s why when you get married, you answer the in sickness and in health, right. And for better or worse, you know, because
Paul Harvey 3:50
It’s the whole “worst” part that gets you.
Frank Butler 3:54
But, you know, that’s the thing is that you stick through some things, and it does work out. And I think that’s one of the challenges that we see. The average, I think I saw the numbers… the average 80% of millennials and Gen Z workers say it’s okay to leave a new job in six months. And
Paul Harvey 4:10
That’s the side you don’t always hear as much about, there’s a lot of complaining about how companies don’t show employees the loyalty that they used to. It kind of goes both ways. It does. It’s a bit of chicken and egg, I guess. But I think that’s anecdotally at least I would say that’s been my observation. The younger the employee, the more kind of comfortable they are saying, Nope, this wasn’t the right fit for me, I’m gonna go somewhere else. And that can be a good thing. Like, if it’s not a good fit, it’s not a good fit, but also sometimes, are you giving it enough time to really establish whether or not it’s a good fit for you?
Frank Butler 4:39
I would argue that six months is not enough time. I mean, I think there are times that you clearly know okay, this is bad.
Paul Harvey 4:46
Sometimes, you know on day one. This was a mistake.
Frank Butler 4:49
Right. You know, it’s that very obvious that there’s that you made a mistake. But you know, I think there’s there’s some interesting elements to this, I think The first one that stood out to me is that a lot of these bodies, people who are migrating to new jobs, you know, their interviews were done through zoom. And the point they make, and this is a very valid point, it’s very hard to get a sense of the culture through a zoom interview. And I think that’s another area. This is where it’s really interesting. I think this is a good learning lesson for us as professors for those who work in hiring or for those who work with people who are developing others, or whatever. We got to think about how do we ask the right questions in that environment, because you know, when we do trainings, and such, for teaching kids how to do interviews and mock interviews, we’re not always preparing them for now, this new way of interviewing for jobs, especially if there’s going to be more remote or hybrid or work from home type environments, of asking the right questions about things like the culture about the expectations through zoom.
Paul Harvey 5:50
I have direct feedback on that. Small sample, but a friend of mine was interviewing some students from my university, University New Hampshire. And as he has done in the past, and said that this was the first time he had done zoom type interviews, said they were awful. If somebody says like they, they’re still the worst interviews I’ve ever had, like, either work on your students’ like zoom interviewing skills. And I thought, That’s a good point. But yeah, blind leading the blind here. Does anyone have this down pat yet? I think as a society, we’re getting there. But yeah, it’s it’s tough for both sides to, to establish to evaluate potential fit, when the medium you’re using to communicate is not as foreign as it was two years ago to a lot of people but still not the most natural setting.
Frank Butler 6:40
Right? And it leads to questions that we don’t have great answers to, or the lack of questions that we need answers to, to make sure that this job is a better fit for me, or for you as an organization. So I agree, I think this is a this is a really big learning lesson for a lot of people. And it comes back to Hey, this is a really interesting survey result. We’re seeing that the it is the kind of more baby burn up. But but the millennial and Gen Z folks who want more flexibility with their work environment, rightfully so, they grew up with technology, they’re really good at using that stuff. And they would just want a different approach to work. And I, I don’t have any faults of that it’s just we have to, both sides have to work on understanding what that means. So there’s no, we don’t go through this process every six months.
Paul Harvey 7:31
But I am just gonna call you on one thing he just said, I’ve always felt that this notion of like the younger generation, so tech savvy is a little bit, I don’t know, I think the pandemic has really put the light to that. Like, I have been just absolutely stunned by the unfamiliarity with anything beyond surface level use of technology. A lot of students and recent graduates, like the simplest like trying to help a student with an assignment through Zoom, like, Okay, go to your documents folder. My what?
Frank Butler 8:00
So
Paul Harvey 8:01
You’re kidding. Like, they’re used to using the stuff a lot, especially smartphones and things. But to actually dig into the nuts and bolts of more complex activities on those things. I don’t know man.
Frank Butler 8:14
So I want to take it, I want to take it from that and say, no, they don’t know the laptop as well, they definitely know the smartphone and the tablet side of it really well. And here’s Yeah, but that’s like push a box. Well, they’re not trained on Microsoft stuff. Most of them is really interesting, isn’t it? Most of them were trained on Google Docs, because it’s free, and they can use it in their schools. It’s free, they use it in schools. And so they’re really good at that stuff, the browser based stuff. And this is why we think that they’re not necessarily as technologically savvy, but the reality is that they’ve learned a whole different set of tools that are actually much better for collaboration in these work from home remote work type environments, where
Paul Harvey 8:51
Until you get to specialized applications,
Frank Butler 8:53
That’s a different thing
Paul Harvey 8:54
Writing a paper. Sure. But once you get into like, Okay, now there’s a specific app that does this specific thing, like Microsoft Excel, or statistics software, like SPSS, or, you know, the more specific you get, the more you have to kind of know how to find a file that you just saved.
Frank Butler 9:09
Right? That’s a different See, that’s the thing that’s so interesting, because they’re really good on the online cloud based versions of the software’s it is definitely different, especially with a desktop, right, like teaching them where stuff goes in a desktop. And because I mean, I see it as as, like, just loaded with files.
Paul Harvey 9:25
Oh, my God. Yeah. The files.
Frank Butler 9:27
But that again, that’s the evolution that that’s, that’s an evolution of how they work. And it gets stuff done, right. They’ve done all their school assignments, or using things like Prezi or Google’s dot google docs, things Google Google numbers, or whatever their version of Excel is. They’re fine with that. And then you try to teach them the word based and Microsoft based stuff and you start realizing go, man, it’s not that they don’t know how to do some of this stuff. It’s just they don’t know how to do it with what is probably a little bit older technology now, right? Because it’s, it’s you have to have a more traditional No environment like a desktop laptop to make it optimal. And so corporations I think, are still having to play the catch up on that game to it. But they’re also naturals with with any of these texting type situations like the different communication apps imagery, like Instagram. I think that there’s there’s things that they’re certainly way more skilled at.
Paul Harvey 10:22
I think it’s a comfort thing more than a skill, because I mean, how much skill is there in sending a text message? But there’s a comfort level in community and being able to communicate your thoughts effectively through a text message? That’s a skill that they have.
Frank Butler 10:34
Yes. And I think here’s the thing is that we’ve got to do a better job of exploiting those things that they do well, where we might not be as comfortable with. But yeah,
Paul Harvey 10:45
There’s limits to it, though. All that stuff is good for presenting information like Google Docs, present Prezi, you know, presenting things.
Frank Butler 10:45
Right.
Paul Harvey 10:45
But actually creating the things like creating the knowledge that you want to present requires the more specialized tools. And that’s where we kind of have a disconnect.
Frank Butler 11:02
Yes, that I will say is probably more of where we run into things. And that’s that also means that those companies that make those software products probably need to rethink how they approach. Usability.
Paul Harvey 11:14
Well it’s tough, because they’re that’s built on this whole, like said, arguably dated logic of how a computer is set up, like you have a hierarchy with files and subfolders. And there’s only so much a software designer can do with their app to hide that, you know, I think that’s the disconnect I see is that you can teach someone how to use the specialized software tool. But we’re where people get confused is that they don’t understand that some of the younger employees, you can’t take for granted that they understand the underlying organizational rights system that those apps use.
Frank Butler 11:48
I agree. I agree,
Paul Harvey 11:50
Way off topic here, so
Frank Butler 11:52
Well, but I think I think this still plays in is that this? These are the challenges that we face, when we’re preparing our students and not just our students. I mean, if you’re an organization and you’re trying to hire people, right now, it goes to some of these elements of, we got to ask the right questions, and we need to figure out what those new questions are to ask. Because we understand that we’re not seeing inside the office, we no longer get to see the culture, we no longer see the little cues, like if you walk into some offices, and there’s no pictures up anywhere, well, that could mean one of two things, either they have a very dark, like no personal crap at the office thing. Or the office, I was just at today where it’s not so much that it’s not, it’s that it’s more along the lines of nobody has an office or a desk or a cube that they have, they just get to pick whatever they want, they get to go in and just plug in and work. And then you know, there’s no expectations at their office five days a week.
Paul Harvey 12:42
Right
Frank Butler 12:42
They say two, but you know, you don’t have a sitting space that’s for just for you. It’s just plug and play, you just say every every desk has all the same stuff. It’s like two monitors, you just kick into it and go, you know, make sense. So but you got to see that right? You got to understand what that is. In the last video.
Paul Harvey 13:00
The visual cues, like going back to what I was saying about the software technology stuff, I found when this pandemic started, if students would be having trouble with the statistics software, I have them use trying to explain that through like email or even zoom, it was difficult because I didn’t I couldn’t see what what it was that they were not understanding. Like, I download the zip file and then but I tried to expand it or extract it or whatever. And it says you can’t do it turns out like if you’re over their shoulder, you’d see like, well, that’s because your 128 gigabyte hard drive has 127 gigabytes of junk on it, and you need to clear some room for it. But you can’t really see that when you’re zooming with somebody you know. So it’s not just evaluating fit. It’s also I think, those early days of training, and trying to figure out how to do the job. Like, you could have an employee who’s struggling, because trying to figure out that stuff. They don’t know what they don’t know. And you don’t know what they don’t know.
Frank Butler 13:57
Right
Paul Harvey 13:57
And so you’re like, What do you mean, just install the damn file. I don’t know, install the app? I can’t help you with that. But if you’re actually in the same room as them, you can say, oh, yeah, here’s your problem.
Frank Butler 14:05
Right
Paul Harvey 14:06
It’s not just fit in hiring challenges. It’s those early days training, and establishing, socializing, but just getting a feel for your new employees, what they know what they don’t know. So they could be having a whole world of frustrations that you’re just not aware of, because you’re not sitting there in the same building with them.
Frank Butler 14:26
Right. I agree. I mean, that’s that I mean, these are the things that help me now you know, you have the ability of people to remote in so your IT folks can remote in and control your desktop and kind of look around and help you out. But you know, that’s, that takes its own challenges too. And it takes your certain set of resources to and it’s cost right and time and money and what have you. Now, the next one that came out that I think is all too often is that your hiring managers and recruiters talked only about the upsides of working at your business.
Paul Harvey 15:00
So this is one of the most fundamental things that we try to teach in human resource management type courses. The realistic job preview our gap. So tempting just like you know, online dating, only put all the good stuff in your in your profile, like the best picture ever taken of you.
Frank Butler 15:16
The skewed pictures. I mean, gosh, I mean, I’ve seen some of these where they show like The, it’s like the tinder picture, and the person’s angle they’re taking that makes them look super skinny. But then it turns out like there are bowling ball.
Paul Harvey 15:29
Yes. And so what’s going to happen the first time you actually meet that person in person, that person in person, you’re gonna see, you’re gonna see the bowling ball, not the once in a million moonshot picture that they put of themselves. And you’re gonna say, and that disappointment is just going to hit you like a brick. Because there’s a loss of trust right off the bat. There’s disappointment. So same thing with a job. If you promise sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. The first time they show up and see something that’s a little bit like, Okay, what else do they lie to me about?
Frank Butler 15:59
Right? Well, and let me go back to the bowling ball thing that I think the thing is, is that if you provide the realistic view, you’re going to be more likely to find the person who wants you for you and is going to be attracted to you. Not trying to say anything, not fat shaming anything, like just just saying that, you know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder? Absolutely. People need to be truthful about some of the stuff. I mean, you know, there’s every company, there’s no company that’s perfect. At the end of the day, there is literally no organization that everything is just so awesome. And you’re like in that Lego movie where you’re seeing everything is awesome. You know, that’s just that doesn’t
Paul Harvey 16:35
I haven’t seen that. So take your word for it.
Frank Butler 16:37
Should watch the movie, it’s fantastic.
Paul Harvey 16:38
Sounds pretty good. Based on that one tiny little scene that you’re described I kind of want to see it.
Frank Butler 16:42
It’s fantastic. It is a great movie. But of course, I’m a geek. But here’s the thing is that they talk about things. It’s like cranky customers, unrealistic dag deadlines. micromanagers. There’s a lot of different things at play here. And as you said, you got to give them that realistic job preview. And here’s something else that I tend to do I like to this is a question I used to use a lot is, if there’s something you change, what would it be? Right? So if there’s a if I’m in an interview, I’m like, there’s something that you could change about working here, what would it be? And it’s not so much that it’s saying anything’s bad. It’s more along the lines of, I’m trying to triangulate with the different people I’m meeting with, if they’re saying similar things, because that way I can be prepared for, okay, there’s one thing that everybody seems to think is it could be better, or there’s these little things that are not necessarily bad, but at least I’m getting a better understanding of what tends to be bugging some folk,
Paul Harvey 17:38
Right. Some things are bad to some people, not so bad to other people, at least you, you’re getting information from all these different perspectives. But, you know, it’s easier said than done. So, it’s so tempting to want to put your best picture ever on your dating profile, or put your absolute best foot forward when you’re hiring and interviewing job candidates, especially ones that are really impressive candidates near really want to land this one. It’s really, really tempting to just say, here’s all the wonderful things about working here is that there’s a bit of a risk either way, you know, if you’re totally realistic, about the good, the bad, and the ugly. You might scare away that person. And maybe they would have turned out to be a good fit anyway.
Frank Butler 18:20
But it seems less likely.
Paul Harvey 18:22
The the research shows it’s much less likely that it’s far more likely that you’ll you’ll land that big fish. And on day one, they’ll see that you weren’t fully upfront with them. Or they’ll perceive that you weren’t fully upfront with them about this thing or that thing. And right off the bat. It’s so hard to recover from that.
Frank Butler 18:39
Yeah, that makes sense. And I would jump ship to if it was like that. Yeah,
Paul Harvey 18:46
Because you know, just like that first date, when you see like, okay, the picture is nothing like, you look nothing like your picture. How long until I can go home?
Frank Butler 18:54
Right
Paul Harvey 18:54
So you’re already…the enthusiasm’s gone.
Frank Butler 18:56
Man. here’s the here’s one just just as a quick aside, has nothing to do with it. I was reading one the other day it was the person had gotten linked up on Tinder, one of the dating apps and picked up the person they and they were going somewhere and on the way the girl was like, Hey, can you just stop by my friend’s house here real quick. I got to pick something up and the guys are cool because it was on the way. So she goes inside she’s in there 10 minutes, and he finally goes What the heck. So he gets up and you had been texting he knocks on the door. Apparently the dudes roommate answered the door and said Oh, no, she’s she’s with so and so back there. And she texted me the next day saying, you know, with Uber being so hard to come, she’s using Tinder dates.
Paul Harvey 19:35
Oh my god.
Frank Butler 19:37
Your boyfriend’s place?
Paul Harvey 19:42
That is
Frank Butler 19:42
Talk about bait and switch. That person is gonna earn a terrible reputation.
Paul Harvey 19:48
That’s just evil man. Oh, man, you get what you got coming. I thought you were gonna say that. Like instantly she could tell okay, this isn’t going to happen. Just drop me off over there. This is second date, but
Frank Butler 20:00
Karma is gonna kick in somewhere online.
Paul Harvey 20:03
Oh, yeah. Creative.
Frank Butler 20:07
Resourceful. Yes. Terrible.
Paul Harvey 20:08
Yeah. terrible person. But
Frank Butler 20:10
Yeah
Paul Harvey 20:11
She’ll do, she’ll do well in life
Frank Butler 20:12
Don’t be that terrible person just, you know, find find a friend drop you off.
Paul Harvey 20:16
If that girl’s listening, please contact us. We’d like to have you on the show you
Frank Butler 20:22
Right, share your stories. So here’s one that I didn’t think about. And it makes consummate sense. And I wish I had, and it’s the you resent paying higher salaries. It makes perfect sense. I had to hire this person, I lost somebody that I was paying, let’s say 40,000 to. But then I hired this person for $55,000. And it just seems like I’m paying them so much. And this was a question that came up to, you know, is that, hey, they’re getting paid so much more. What do you do when they started to get paid more than the rest of the team? And it’s like, yeah, that’s, that’s a tough situation for companies. You know, I know that we saw something like 5% increase in payrolls, that companies are anticipating in budgets this year. That means that you’re probably going to have to give your people all a bump in certain teams for this to work out
If they can.
Yeah you can’t alwaysTthis came to my attention from students in my class right now saying that they’re working part time jobs and such. But, you know, they’ve been involved with hiring new employees who make more than them. And they’re like, this sucks. I’ve been working at this same job for a year, two years, new person just started making $2 an hour more than me. Like, they understand the reality of the situation that their supervisors are in, like, they need to they need bodies, like they need to hire people that they can, at least some companies, I’m sure can but not everyone can afford to just backfill everyone else’s salaries. And so welcome to wage compression, we hear in academia are pleased to me. It’s rare to see that outside of academia, though, where you have the newer employees making more than the more senior employees.
Yeah, it’s really amazing, isn’t it? It’s, and it’s not, you know, I think, again, it goes back to the problem is that if you let that go on, and you don’t try to extend that bleeding, you’re going to lose a significant amount of institutional knowledge. And we dealt with that, too. I mean, like, I know, in one of our offices in the College of businesses or marketing crew, we lost one of our employees there, she, she just, there was a lot of intuition among the team, right? They just, they knew what other they could anticipate what the other person would need. They could respond, they knew what you know, to do. If somebody else wasn’t there, they could fill in each other’s shoes, for whatever thing, and I mean, they just they just gelled, right, that person’s gone, they’ve on boarded a new person. But again, you know, that took years and years because that person been working there years, years and years. But her lifestyle, her her, her life situation changed. She had a kid, you know, now she’s in a new job, where she’s one getting paid more, she doesn’t have to be in the office every day. Our job, unfortunately, for that role is a on campus everyday presence. So she’s home, I think it was like three days a week, she goes in the office too. And she’s getting paid more she gets to spend time with her kid, you know, you can’t fault her for that. But it sucks. That’s but that’s the specific situation, I think there’s a lot of people who are just looking to leave,
Paul Harvey 23:14
Sometimes you can’t avoid it,
Frank Butler 23:16
Right.
Paul Harvey 23:16
The the loss of institutional knowledge, but sometimes you can’t avoid it
Frank Butler 23:19
You can. And I think that comes back to you’re not listening to your long term employees, that was something else ain’t brought up in their article. And it was something actually talked about in my presentation this morning. I hadn’t seen this this when I was setting up that presentation. But I said, sometimes you just gotta listen and talk to your people and find out what it is that they’re, you know, needing or wanting something along those lines, right? Are they? Is it more vacation time that would make them happier? Is it a hybrid work environment that would make them happier? You know, it’s just being prepared and starting to make plans and getting those things to start rolling out because you can stage your way into it, you can make it work without having to rip the band aid off, right? You can say, okay, you know what, we’re gonna just give people a few more days off here and there be more, or we’re gonna go one day, a week or two days a week and start with that and just see how it works. while also trying to bump up the pay a little bit to get them to be happier. You know, even if it’s just a bonus, right? Something that you don’t have to put into the permanent budget, something just to allow you in buy you time to make sure you’re hearing the employees so that way you’re not losing the institutional knowledge so that way you’re being ahead of the curve. You’re providing that caring environment that’s necessary to retain your good people and be an attractive place to work for for the newbies.
Paul Harvey 24:34
And there’s ways to to deal with this challenge. You know, not every, not every business can pay new employees more and retroactively give other longer term employees raises. I think it’s going to be an uphill battle if you’re not able to do that, again, psychology 101, equity theory. It’s very hard to overcome the motivational deficit caused when the the noob, who you’re training, how to do the simple aspects of the job is sitting there making more money than you drooling on themselves, because they’re like so confused. But there are things there’s more than there are things besides money, there’s things you can do. You know, the older employees have been there longer what what do they want? They want more flexibility in their schedule, that can you offer a different form of compensation? If you can’t balance out the the monetary thing, at least in this in the short term? Can you make up for it in some other way?
Frank Butler 25:30
Hours, it could just simply be hours work, right? I mean, think about that, again, going back to our four hour workweek, you know, and talking about things like productivity and how productivity has increased so drastically in the, in the in the office work side, right. It’s not just like the manufacturing side that we’ve seen massive gains in productivity. But even technologically, we’ve seen massive gains in productivity, instead of filling their days with busy work being much more intentional with, hey, my employees don’t need to be here, eight hours a day, let’s go ahead and cut a couple hours out of the day, because we know that the average millennial Gen Z ish type person spending three hours on social media, because their days full of busy work, or they’re just trying to look busy, you know, and so some of those things can go a long way just to help with retaining people, because you’re making it a better work environment. And you’re still able to get your time done. And I think that’s where you get into sort of flex time type aspects of things of hey, making sure that if it’s important that people in the office, even where there’s gonna be overlaps, but they can be much more flexible with that time, as long as they’re getting their stuff done, it goes back to the output, right, let’s make sure we’re output focused.
Paul Harvey 26:37
So this is where management actually involves thinking. The the non thinking approach is, alright, give everybody the same race back to back to work. That’s fine. That might be the right answer. Often it is, but like, you’re saying, Frank, this can be an impetus to make a whole lot of other improvements in your managerial style and the way your companies run, that just makes it a better place to work in general. And makes makes it so employees aren’t there solely for the money, but because they like working there. Sometimes the sometimes these beneficial changes come out of difficult situations, right? And so we’re in a difficult situation.
Frank Butler 27:18
Well, again, it goes back to I always say we inherently don’t like change as much as people will say, Oh, I love change. That’s BS, most people don’t. That’s why we stay in relationships far past our expiration date, those kinds of things, right? The grass isn’t always greener, I mean, we have expressions around these things. And so that’s comes back to you’ve got to be willing to think about change and accepting and embracing change. And it’s hard for us to do, especially as we get older, because we’re so entrenched in the past. And we’re because we’re comfortable with right, it’s easy. But that’s not always the right answer, in fact, that usually it’s not the right answer. And a lot of
Paul Harvey 27:52
Especially something like your job, or how your how you do your job. Those can be a big stable part of your life, it’s scary to, to think about changing that, the older that you get. Now,
Frank Butler 28:04
I agree. And here’s the last little thing I gotta get here in a minute. But I just wanted to talk about this, you pulled the bait and switch was what they put in here. And coming back to that idea of flexible schedules, hey, you advertised it, you better provide it because if you don’t, you know, people are gonna be unhappy. And I do know that I’ve seen this with certain organizations that they had too many people leave. And so they hired some people, and they’re still trying to fill jobs. And they’ve had to put more work on the newbies. Because they just don’t have the headcount necessary to do all the jobs that are there. And next thing, you know, they’re burned out already, or they’re just not happy because that wasn’t what they were hired to do.
Paul Harvey 28:41
The job they’re doing is not what they’re hired for. I think this is an extreme example of the realistic job preview situation we were talking about, where instead of putting like your best picture on your, I just can’t get off the dating profile analogy. Instead of using your best picture. For your profile picture, you’re using the picture of your hot younger friend. It’s not even you
Frank Butler 29:03
It’s not even you, right,
Paul Harvey 29:04
That’s a big. That’s like, I’m promising you this, I’m giving you that. Definitely, you’re not just putting your best foot forward, you’re just flat out telling them something that is not not true. Whether or not you realize it’s not true at the time you say it, and that can vary, but you want to be Don’t you want to be too optimistic and say, oh, yeah, now you’ll never have to work a Friday. When you’re thinking who geez, I wonder if that’s true or not. You got to err on the side of caution. They know you can hire people. It’s hard. It’s hard times but you’re, you’re so much better off being a few people short than you are having a few people that don’t want to be there.
Frank Butler 29:40
Right. I agree. I agree. And so with that, everybody think about how you’re bringing in new people think about how you’re dealing with your your long term employees. Because your long term employees are going to have a hard time ripping that band out for ongoing but you know, you think about the amount of money that people are making. I just I use the site this morning. If you change jobs, you had a 5.8% pay raise approximately on average. If you stayed in your same job that pay raise was about 4.7%. That adds up
Paul Harvey 30:09
You still come out behind with like eight percent inflation.
Frank Butler 30:15
Go look at our inflation episode on that. Yes. So with that, good day.
Paul Harvey 30:21
Good day
The Busyness Paradox is distributed by Paul Harvey and Frank Butler. Our theme music is adapted from “It’s Business Time” by Jemaine Clements and Bret McKenzie. Our production manager is Justin Wuntaek. We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode, and we’d love to hear from you. Please send any questions, comments or ideas for future episode topics to input@busynessparadox.com, or find us on Twitter. Also, be sure to visit our website, busynessparadox.com, to read our blog posts and for links to the articles and other resources mentioned in today’s show. Finally, please take a moment to rate and follow or subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Google Podcasts or…I don’t know, wherever the heck you get your podcasts.
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