192. Will your job exist in 2030? PLUS! Mindful maneuvering and why Gen -Z isn't the problem, with Sophie Wade – This Week in Work, 29th April 2025
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Coming up this week in work, will your job be obsolete in five years? According to the World Economic Forum's 2025 Future of Jobs Report, catchy title, about 92 million jobs will become obsolete by 2030. Is your job title on their list? As a business leader, are you keeping your best people? Well, new research shows that recognition, not pay or perks, is the biggest factor in whether employees stay or leave.

And in this week's workplace surgery, can business owners really put their well-being first? One listener shares what it's like to run a company and still feel like you're losing touch with your own health, family and life outside of work. This is Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture. We are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a Chartered Occupational Psychologist. My name is Al and I'm a business owner. And together we help organisations build amazing

We'll be diving straight into this week's episode right after a very quick message from our sponsors.

Al, you've spent hours on Tumblr, haven't you? Yes, I have. I jump on for just like five minutes and look up and it'll be 11 o'clock. Well, guess who's just solved a huge problem for Tumblr? Mm-hmm. I think I know the answer. You do? It was HubSpot. HubSpot to the rescue yet again. So this is what happened, right? Tumblr needed to move fast to produce trending content, but their marketing team was stuck waiting on these engineers to code every single email campaign. And Al, you know how engineers want everything to be perfect.

Well, fast forward to today and they now use HubSpot's customer platform to email real-time trending content to millions of users in just seconds. And the impact? Well, it's had three times more engagement and double the content creation. Very nice. I know. If you want to move faster like Tumblr, visit HubSpot.com.

Welcome back. It's Leanne's favourite time of the week. It's time for the news roundup. Yes, it is. Cue that jingle out. It's being cued whilst that's being cued. Leanne, what have you seen this week? I have a new word. You always have a new word. Go on. I have two words, actually. Okay. Two separate words or one two-word phrase? Let's find out. Ha, ha, ha.

Are we ready? I'm juggling. Well done. Well done. Nice. Okay. My words are mindful maneuvering. Now, how are you spelling maneuvering? Because it's a tough word to spell anyway, but the Americans leave some vowels out, whereas the UK one, it's like a bingo on Countdown. You get like hundreds of vowels in it. You get a high score on Scrabble. The way I scored it, yeah. Spelled it.

You know what I mean? Anyway, came up in a work-life article by Tony Case. So he was writing about a new book by former Google exec Jenny Wood, who apparently openly admits to using manipulation as a management strategy.

Controversial. Yeah, I mean, the word manipulation does make us all feel a bit uncomfortable, doesn't it really? And rightly so, because it seems like there's some malicious intent there. But as the article goes on to explain what Jenny Wood and the experts quoted in the piece are really talking about here isn't manipulation, it's influence. And the way they describe it, I thought was actually kind of useful. So we have an organizational psychologist, we like them, Caitlin Collins from BetterWorks.

She reframes this manipulation as mindful maneuvering. So mindful maneuvering is the intentional, empathetic art of guiding others towards shared goals. So it's not about pushing people or playing games. It's just about understanding what motivates the people you work with and using that to move things forward. Althorst.

thoughts. I'm all for this and by the way it's usually marketers who like come up with legal terms like this where they'll where they'll like find something like do you remember in the big short the movie the big short? Love that film. Yeah I've watched it twice still don't understand it but how they uh how they rebranded some toxic bonds into something that was a bit cooler so it's not so I'm surprised it's a psychologist but I'm kind of pleased that they're getting on board that in itself is possibly a little bit of mindful maneuvering. Maybe it is maybe it is but I think that the key difference here is

is the intention behind it. You know, managers do need to influence behavior. Psychologists need to understand behavior to understand how to influence behavior and create positive change. So it's all about the intention here. And there's actually a really good example from a coach

called Francesca O'Connor. She worked with a senior leader who always held what he called the meeting before the meeting. You call it something else, don't you? As we learned a couple of weeks ago, it's one of those corporate buzzwords called pre-wiring the meeting. Yeah, pre-wiring. So the meeting before the meeting. So yeah, it's not to sway people or pressure them. It's to check in, understand what they're worried about, answer any questions. So when the actual meeting comes around, everyone's feeling included, ready, ready.

and there to make some decisions. So, as I said, I don't think it's really about manipulation. It's about influence. And that influence can be empathetic. It can be respectful and can work to get stuff done. Influence is such a powerful thing. I talked about it last week as well. Robert Kiel Deeding's book, Influence, is like, it's a seminal tome

I believe it's been described as by me just then. But yeah, influence is incredibly important for anything, whether you're trying to change behavior, lead people, sell, market. Influence is great, but obviously you can take it the other way, as we found out with certain people who I can't remember his name, but he's Romanian prison.

All round. Andrew Tate. Yes, all round bad guy. So, and he's got influence, but it's more of a, do you know what? It's Machiavellian maneuvering. Oh, nice. Yes, rather than mindful maneuvering. Nice. So yeah, just be really careful with that. But as great leaders have influence, you remember back in the days when you had a job that your boss, John, you absolutely loved him. And why do you love him?

because he is really nice. And he also, he influenced you in so many different ways, both from the way he behaved and also the ways that he taught you. So, yeah. Yeah, he did. And that's a good point, actually, to emphasize from the article. Caitlin Collins, who is our organizational psychologist, she did make it clear that this only works if it's paired with emotional intelligence and ethics. Love it.

Otherwise, it is just self-interest. So there you go. Mindful maneuvering. I will leave a link to the article in the show notes. Al, what have you seen this week? Well, your job will be gone in four years. Yours will. To be fair, podcasters already, we already potentially. Yeah. If you use Notebook LM from Google, then you can basically upload a couple of PDFs or even a PDF and it'll generate a podcast you can listen to where two hosts will talk about the PDF. Not as good as this one, though, because they don't come up with terms on the fly like Machiavellian maneuvering. Exactly. Wouldn't like to spell it.

Anyway, so according to the World Economic Forum's 2025 Future of Jobs Report, about 92 million jobs, roughly 8% of total employment, will become obsolete by 2030. That's not far away. That's what? Four and a half years? McKinsey Global Institute predicts that AI and automation, of course, we all knew that was coming,

could eliminate up to 12 million jobs in the US and Europe within the next five years. However, it sounds bleak, but they also anticipate the creation of 170 million new jobs, representing 14%. So if we do some basic maths there, which is probably not

the right math for this stat, but essentially it's not saying we're getting rid of jobs. We're just basically 8% of people are going to be changing to one of these new jobs, which can take up 14%. Now, most of these are sort of involving predictable, repetitive tasks, data processing, that kind of thing. There was a couple which surprised me on there. Any thoughts and guesses about what will become obsolete? Eh,

Stuff that AI can replace, I guess. Some customer service type store. Yep, yep. So they had bank tellers, they had data entry, they had postal service clerks. I don't know what the US postal service is like, but in the UK and also in Bosnia, I hate going to the bank or the post office.

because you just queue up for hours and there's nothing going on. There's always one person working and three other people chatting over a cup of coffee. So yeah, I can definitely see that working. There's also things like administrative assistants, executive secretaries. Yes, I can see that. It's almost here because if you've got someone who's recording your meeting, an AI who's recording your meeting, they can summarize that really well. One thing surprised me, but now I think about it, maybe it doesn't, was accounting, bookkeeping, and payroll.

I suppose on some level, you can see that, yep, that might be taken because it is just data analysis. Probably a bit more accurate. So I can see that. But I do think that they'll be moving up into a more supervisory role of the AI agent because you can't just feed load numbers in and go, great, okay, let's go make a load of decisions on that. Let's go and pay the tax bill that AI has worked out. Lee, travel agents was on this list.

Now, we travel quite a lot. I suppose we've never actually used, have we used a travel agent? No. Well, we kind of started booking our own travel in our 20s, didn't we, when it was all online. So you wouldn't have to go down to it. Maybe I was a teenager, I booked a holiday through a travel agent a couple of times. 18, 19, you know what I mean? But now, the only thing I would pay for is maybe more of a personalized thing because it takes a lot of time to book your own stuff.

It'd be nice to just say to someone, just do that for me. Or like the luxury. What is the name of the guy who we had on Sideways Life? James something? Yeah. Yeah, basically he did for the rich and famous. He booked their entire holidays. So there's a guy called, what's Gary Lineker's brother called? Wayne? Wayne, yeah. A guy called Wayne Lineker, who's quite famous in the UK and also in one of the Balearic Islands because he's got a nightclub there called Lineker's.

And so this guy planned his engagement. And so he wants to be underwater in a, not like underwater, but in a cafe or a restaurant underwater. Sorry, not cafe, restaurant underwater. He wanted the shark to come past with a ring in his mouth and all that kind of stuff. I don't think that really happened. And so I can see that. And I could also see travel agents just rebranding and going, we're an experience agent now. Oh,

So, yeah, so we're going to, you know, if you do want something really special, we'll put that together manually. But otherwise, an AI agent probably can very much quicker and find out what you like and find a holiday that matches you. Anyway, really quickly, let's go on to what the article said that you can do to avoid this happening.

So there's three sort of key things you can do. First of all, you can learn skills that companies actually want. So a bit meta here, but understanding AI basics or being really good at making sense of data or problem solving, something which AI can't, well, it's good at problem solving, but it's kind of difficult to put. If you've got experience, I think you will trump AI. AI's got some great ideas. You don't need to become an expert overnight, this article says, but being comfortable with those areas does give you a huge leg up.

The second thing it says, and I really like this one, stop obsessing over job titles and focus on what you're genuinely good at. I really like this. And the final one is don't put all your eggs in one basket. Have a side gig or freelance work or some kind of other income so you're not totally stuffed if your main job disappears. I think it makes sense. I don't think it's a new thing.

you know, think how much jobs have changed over the past 20 years, 50 years, 100 years. Yeah, it happens. I think as you say, it's keeping yourself up to date, trying to reskill where you can and just be a bit less precious about the kind of work you do. We might all just need to pivot a little bit in the future. Leigh, anything else that caught your eye this week? I saw a news study that asked what actually makes employees want to stay? Not just tolerate their jobs, not quite quit

but actually want to stay engaged and perform? And it is the question that we help our clients answer. So yeah, this week an article by Jeff Hayden on Inc.com caught my attention for focusing on one very important way of engaging your employees that isn't talked about enough, I don't think. Recognition.

Yes. Oh, yes. Now we're talking. So the article was titled Want Better Employees? Richard Branson says you need to start with one simple strategy and revisit... That's a click-baity title. It is. You've slotted Branson in there as well. It's not succinct, but it is clicky. So yes, it revisits a quote from Branson that so many of us would have heard.

So Hayden's point is that while this sounds like common sense, many businesses still don't act on it. They focus on perks and benefits or tech, but overlook the human basics, being seen, being valued, being appreciated. We all like to be appreciated now, don't we? We do. Yeah.

He also draws on some Gallup data to show how serious the gap is. So currently 55% of US employees say they never receive recognition. Only 3 in 10 say they've been praised in the past week.

And those who feel invisible, well, they're twice as likely to leave. The article also outlined what meaningful recognition looks like based on organisational research. The article also outlined what meaningful recognition looks like based on organisational research. So first of all, recognition needs to be specific.

It needs to be tied to a clear action or behavior. Recognition needs to be frequent. It needs to be given in the moment, not months later. It also needs to be personal, tailored to that individual and how they like to be recognized. And it needs to be impact orientated. So showcasing the positive effect on their work.

And there's a bit Jeff really emphasises here as well. Recognition only works if it's genuine. If it feels like a box taking exercise, people switch off, you can't fake care. You just, you have to mean it. Al, what do we think? 100%. I mean, it's just obvious, isn't it, when you think about the best jobs?

The best companies that you, like suppliers. So if you buy something, think about a brand that you just like, yeah, okay, I love them. You, it's often you'll have had a really nice encounter. Like on your birthday, can I say what number birthday it was? It was, whoops.

Yeah, on your 40th birthday, we went into a department store, like a really fancy department store. Hobby Knickles. Yeah, in the UK. Went up to your favourite counter, your makeup counter. One of, yeah, plenty. And basically, you were buying just a couple little bits. And I said, look, it's Leanne's 40th birthday today. Is there anything you can do? And she went, of course. And basically went, got a bag and filled it up for her, lots of little goodies and stuff, and gave it to Leanne.

How do you think Leanne, that was recognition for buying from that. How do you think Leanne feels about that brand now? Very committed to said brand now. Very committed. Anyway, back to the people. Yeah, you can't fake care. Everyone knows a boss who's a bit slimy. You go, I just don't trust him. This is great. I'm slightly disappointed they've not created the framework called SPF, which is specific. What was that? The four of their specific impact. Let's move on. We don't need any SPF in our life. Okay, Leanne.

Maybe it's not. I think the point is, I understand that like giving praise can just feel a bit vacuous and a bit warm and fluffy and whatever. Thank you. But the point is, people want to feel like they're appreciated. Of course we want to feel like we're appreciated. Otherwise, what's the point? And I think what's really interesting about the conversation around recognition, I think over the next 12 to 18 months, it's going to really expand. And it's going to talk about much more about those individualized personal solutions being recognized as a whole person. So whether, you know, I'm not just,

um a woman I have I'm a wife and I have dogs and I have um parents who are a bit older and you know what I mean all of those things that I recognize what you need as an individual to do your best work I think that's gonna really um yeah really be

focused on the conversation. That's something I hadn't considered before, Leanne. The recognition, I was just thinking like rewards, so you recognise someone, but recognising them for being individual, I never... Do you know what? We've been talking about this for about five years and I've never once cottoned on that that was it. Yeah, recognition also will include things like organisational justice, so making sure that people know that decisions around promotion develop and made...

fairly and clearly and transparently because then people understand that they're getting the recognition they deserve. So it's not going to, it's going to kind of beat off any feelings of imposter syndrome. Like why me? Why am I being chosen to be promoted or invested in? But also for those people who maybe didn't get that promotion, that they're recognized and being shown to recognize what development they might need in the future or what point they need to get to to get that development. There's a lot to recognition, but I think the personalization of it is going to be really key, especially in a world with AI.

Fabulous. That's brilliant. All the links are going to be in the show notes. If you've seen an article or maybe you've written an article that you'd like us to talk about, check out the show notes. Hello at truthliesandwork.com is the email. And just send it over to us. And if it's good, we'll talk about it. If we disagree with it, we'll still talk about it. Remember that guy who kicked off with you because you disagreed with his article and he sent you an email going, I didn't like that at all, or a LinkedIn message. It was a woman, actually. Oh, was it? Yes. I don't know.

I do. I did offer for her to come on the show, but she declined. So there you go. But if you look at the show notes of a certain episode around child-free bosses, you'll see a little editor's note in there. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. So after this very, very short break, we'll be back with the incredible, the queen of LinkedIn, the incredible Sophie Wade with her hot take. And I think you're going to like it. See you in a second.

Leah, do you know who I think is awesome? Me. Well, yeah, of course. Yes, of course. But also my long-term hero and former guest, Joe Thea, who's the host of Hustle & Flowchart podcast, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. Of course. I remember when you booked Joe as a guest last year and you were so excited. Yeah, he's just an awesome guy. I've been listening to his podcast since about episode 100, long before we joined the network. And I tell you what, if you like systems...

mindset tweaks, reframes and strategies to actually enjoy the process of being in business. And this podcast is right up your street. Now it's true. Joe does love talking about building business systems, which isn't entirely my bag. But when you bear in mind that he loves talking about these systems so he can work less and live more, I'm there for it.

He also has loads of guests I know our listeners are going to love too. Yeah, like episode 644 with a guy called Robert Glazer, who's an author and an employment expert. He's advocating for a new way to manage the resignation process. He's got a book called Two Week Notice and explains why two weeks notice is the wrong way of doing things. And well, obviously, I'm not going to spoil the surprise. You need to go listen for yourself. Episode 644 with Robert Glazer. Listen to Hustle and Flowchart wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome back. If you are a regular listener, you'll know that every week we ask a workplace expert to share their hot take on the world of work, something we should all be thinking about a little bit differently. This week, we're talking about Gen Z because it's been a while.

gen z every freaking week we talk about gen z we haven't talked about gen z for a while no to be and to be fair they are you know they are the biggest consumer of podcasts so if you're a gen z say hello just let us know just drop us an email or get on linkedin or something yeah or snapchat go on snapchat that's what you use you guys use snap snap me don't do that so everyone's got an opinion including ours that all gen z use snapchat although my feeling is that's more of a younger millennial kind of thing but tell me if i'm wrong

But yeah, Gen Z, we all have opinions, they're entitled, they're hard to manage, or maybe they just lack the right attitude to work. But what if Gen Z isn't the problem? What if it's you? Well, for today's hot take, we're joined by Sophie Wade. She is a work futurist, empathy advocate, and host of the Transforming Work podcast. Her work focuses on helping leaders build workplaces that are ready for the future, not stuck in the past. So,

Sophie is here to explain why understanding this COVID generation properly isn't just important, it's critical if we want to grow our businesses. So my heart take is really some concern about the youth employment and 16 to 24 year olds or Gen Zs and the concerns that people have about the economic inactivity of this group particularly.

And it has been around the world for me of concern, this, whether it's Gen Z 2.0, Gen Z 2.0, the COVID generation, the COVID, you know, the cohort that have really been disrupted by the pandemic. I think companies really need to be paying attention to this cohort. It's a large age group here.

never mind the generation, but the people who were at the end of secondary school, high school, and in college, going into college and university and coming out and had the first years of their working experience during the pandemic. This group really does have some greater issues connecting. What they know is working from home. What they know is being more sort of separated from

isolated potentially, but there are the social interactions and I'm not blaming any phones. And like, that was what they knew. That's what they had. That's how they were able to connect and

They do do things differently. A lot of it really is actually manifesting the future of work and they understand the future of work a lot better than most people, but they don't have any of these other experiences. And there is so much blame or criticism or titles, entitlement and lazy and different work ethic. Well, they have grown up in a very, very different

Their circumstances were very different and how they've had to try and, you know, upskill themselves when they didn't have great education in high school, university. So I think that's the group that I really want people to be paying attention to because we cannot ignore them. That group of people is the fuel. That's the engine of change.

company's growth, whether if you particularly if you're a sort of small organization, you have 100 to 500 people, you need to get to galvanize those people, energize them and engage them. And there are different needs that they do have to try and overcome some of the gaps, some of the things they missed out on during those pandemic years. And what impact has that

COVID impact had that makes it different to other generations because millennials were entitled, the Gen X were slackers, the baby boomers were rebels. It seems to be that youth were used, you know, these words to describe this disruption or different way of operating. How is this COVID generation different?

Yes. The youngest generation have always been potentially maligned for not having the work ethic, you know, in general. However, there are a couple of things about this group, the sort of the early career professionals now as an overall before we talk about the pandemic.

which is very much to do with how much technology understanding and education they had. So I would also include in that the younger millennials, the older millennials didn't necessarily have a really digitized education, but the younger ones did and all of Gen Z. So they've had smartphones in their hands for a long time. They've mostly had laptops in school. And so they're very, very comfortable and intuitive people.

with technology, and they've had access to extraordinary amounts of information. So the information power pyramid, as I call it, when I went into the workforce, you couldn't find out information about companies. Maybe you had a friend at a bank who could sneak off and Xerox a copy of the 10K of the company. That was the only way you could find out about a company. Now,

Everybody has information. And, you know, so the information power pyramid has collapsed. Therefore, if you are my boss or my boss's boss, I have the same information as you for the most part. And that really changes the dynamics and sort of flattens how people feel in terms of hierarchy. And then companies have also flattened their hierarchies to be more nimble.

So that really changes the dynamics between senior and the most junior employees. So I think there are some very different situations circumstantially and economically and technologically that are really making it different for this generation and how disconnected they have been. So very, very connected technically, but also socially.

disconnected from what was before. This generation really is much more separated and much more isolated in terms of how different they have experienced the world. And that's why I think we are seeing, you know, some conflict and, you know, dismissiveness and complaints. You know, what does it

I think it's 75% of managers don't want to hire Gen Zs or they find them the most difficult to work with. And, you know, 17%, I think, of managers are hesitant to hire this group. That doesn't work. Saying I'm just, you know, I don't find that they're really engaged and, you know, understanding the work ethics. You know, let's look a little bit deeper.

closer and find out what's going on because that's what we need to do in order to really engage and align with these folks and understand what they can contribute and how to get them contributing. What's your thoughts on these managers who don't want to hire, don't want to work with

with Gen Z? The way I see it, that it can be very much a win-win because the way that we can, leaders can step up and really start to have a human-centric way of leading, it benefits everybody. And that way it's much easier for everybody to be working together across, you know, multiple generations or wherever people are on their career are, because that really is the sort of what changes how people approach work. However,

that is very different from how we have worked in the past. There were phrases like, it's not business, it's not personal, it's business. Well, business is personal. And we really, really saw that during the pandemic. We saw into people's homes and lives and we understood more about them when we got war and real together. That's what we need to do more of now to try and connect

with this group. And that helps everybody. You don't have to be friends, but we just have to relate to people better and listen more carefully and be checking in to see what's going on and giving people flexibility to understand who they are and how they work best. And that will benefit everybody and it will benefit performance across the board. So, you know, the things that I suggest are really appropriate for everybody, all generations, everybody in the workforce to

But they're really, really important for helping bring and connect and engage the particular, the youngest cohort. I think one of the interesting disconnects that I find is

That, for example, one of the complaints about Gen Zs are they are, you know, they speak up, they, you know, they say things that, you know, they should be keeping quiet. Well, they're taught by their parents, who are Gen Xs and boomers, to speak up, to advocate for themselves, to be independent, to be self-starters. So if the manager or leader has a Gen Z child, you know,

Talk to them. Ask them. Because those are the people who are in the workforce who are very like their own kids and who have been raised by parents quite like them in many cases.

asking them, thinking about them and connecting with what their experiences are. If you ask more questions and you really start to dig into where some of these differences come from, why people have some of these different ideas or perspectives, that's when people can connect. And there are a lot of aha moments and it really can bring people together because the more people have common ground and more people can see each other's perspectives, the

It's so much easier to work well together and communicate with much more clarity and achieve good results.

That is a fantastic Sophie Wade. I will leave a link back to an episode that she did right in the early days of the podcast and shared some wisdom there and probably some predictions that have now come true. The key thing is, you know, Gen Z have grown up in a completely different way in terms of the world of work. Their expectations have been just shattered and crashed and not even formed. You know, it is...

work is more flexible, it is more technology led, it is less hierarchical. So it's not necessarily about a poor work ethic. It's about workplaces being slow to adapt. If you're a tech native, you're not going to tolerate an organization who has clunky tech that slows them down. That is going to make them frustrated and make them a

peer entitled. The fact is you need to invest in these things, not only for your business, not only to attract the best talent, but also to have a chance of surviving in a world of AI. And let's not forget about MAP, who are on episode 127, who have built an entire organization by just recruiting Gen Z.

Yeah, definitely go and listen to that episode 127. I think you'll really like it. This is your bag. The other thing which I think was quite interesting and we need to consider as managers or business owners is that we're no longer the source of power in terms of information. Like in terms of thinking or actual data or whatever, AI...

can make a junior employee just as good as us because they can have access to the same information. They can plonk the same information into ChatGPT or Claude or whatever and come up with the same strategies that we would have come up with because, and we've kind of shot ourselves in the foot because my generation has been writing online to become thought leaders. So we basically put all our thinking out there, which AI has consumed over

like me at a buffet, all-you-can-eat buffet, consumed it all. And so now they know how to think like us. So this does break down like the hierarchy. No longer it's like seniority or title. It's just you need to basically earn your place as a leader with influence, like we talked about before, trust, confidence,

collaboration, and of course, recognition. Yes. And I think this is the key now. If leadership isn't about holding the knowledge, then it is about the relationship building. It's about the listening. It's about the flexibility. It's all those really essential parts of good management that have been overlooked for so long. And I want to shift from soft skills to core skills because I think it's just fundamental human-led leadership.

In an AI world, it's the only thing that makes sense to me. And I think as well, what managers are going to be grateful, yes, AI has the information. We still need somebody who's going to help us connect the dots. And that's going to come from somebody who has experience, who has emotional intelligence, who understands the strategy that is needed in the organization and what needs to be achieved. So I think, yeah, there's leading with empathy and adapting to the individual, as we've talked about again with recognition, isn't just going to be good for Gen Z, it's going to be good for everybody. All of us are in no doubt in is that work isn't what it used to be.

and pretending otherwise ain't going to help. And actually, Sophie put it really nicely. She said, we're not waiting for the future to happen. We're already living it. That woman can talk. She's got some lovely, lovely turns of phrases. I know, I'm getting goosebumps out of that one. If you want to hear more from Sophie, and of course you do, you can find Sophie Wade on LinkedIn. Explore her LinkedIn learning courses. She's got some good ones on Gen Z and how to engage and manage them. And of course, her podcast, Transforming Work.

You can also subscribe to her newsletter, Work in Progress. Everything you need is in the show notes. Yeah, I think with her learning course, if I remember, there's like 52,000 people who've taken them or maybe 520,000. There's a lot of people who've done them. Very, very good. Okay, so on to my favorite time of the week, which is the world famous weekly workplace surgery, where I put your questions to Leanne.

Who's sitting over there? This is your first time here. Leanne's a business psychologist or organizational psychologist, or you call it in America. Industrial and organizational psychologist. Catchy. But basically, she knows everything about creating an amazing workplace culture. And I'm going to put the questions from listeners to her. So question number one, can business owners really put their well-being first?

Since launching my business four years ago, I've been neglecting my health and personal life. My family feels more distant and I've realized I'm not the only one struggling with this. How do you make time for self-care and fitness whilst running a business? I've heard a lot about corporate wellness trends, but I'm more interested in real personal experiences. Interesting.

I'm always running out of time and tasks pile up. Any advice? This is very normal. Very, very normal. And I think there's a couple of things here. First of all, and this is a bit of tough love, you haven't run out of time. You've just chosen to prioritise other things.

And sometimes that's what we need to do when we're building a business. But as you're starting to clearly see, this isn't sustainable for very long because it starts to impact on mental health and we start to burn out. Now, the weird thing about

when we're struggling psychologically is it's not our body and brain reacts in the most unhelpful ways possible so when we're stressed stress hormones increase that triggers our threat response and you know that fight flight type thing um so that threat response basically means that we start to withdraw we start to become more isolated we start to become more isolated from the people around us from our family from our friends from our colleagues we

And what we know about well-being over long periods of time is that social connection is one of the most powerful things you can do to build your resilience. So your body is reacting in a way that is really freaking unhelpful for your psychological well-being. So with that awareness, it's really essential that you prioritize these times to connect socially with yourself.

your loved ones, with your colleagues, with your peers. I heard one technique from Ross Simmons, who is on the show, early days, early days, has a fully remote company. I'll leave a link in the show notes. One of his techniques that he had, which I thought was really cool, is he basically took like, right, all the things that I need to fit into my life as a founder in terms of

work in terms of life and in terms of work that's also when do I need to fit in time to nurture my team to work on my culture to improve myself as a leader but within that he built time into his diary it's like this is family time this is friend time and that is non-negotiable not getting changed unless the office is literally burning down this is happening at that time and it's having that discipline knowing that as indulgent as it might feel when there's lots of things to do

This is the best thing you can do to rebuild your energy, to rest and recover, to still have the energy you're going to need to keep building your business. That'd be one technique is to actually put these things in your diary and make them non-negotiable in terms of cancelling. That'd be things like spending time with your family,

Spending time with your peers. You know, leadership is lonely. Look for networking events. Look for groups like entrepreneur groups. I will be able to give you much more advice on that. But opportunities to be able to speak about your business and your problems candidly to people who fully understand what you're going through because they're going through it too. Finally, I would say engage a coach. And I always come back to this for leaders, but leadership...

is lonely. Leadership is a lot of accountability and leadership is tough. All the statistics show us that mental health of leaders isn't great. All the statistics show us that leaders are lonely and that loneliness, as I've said, can cause some real serious and significant mental health problems.

engaging a coach gives you the opportunity to speak openly and honestly about things that are working things that aren't where you're getting your energy from where you're getting your joy from how your purpose is being fulfilled that one person in work is doing your own thing and you just need to vent about it and then actually come up with a constructive action plan of how to move that forward i can't express enough the power of speaking to somebody who knows how to listen

And if it is at a critical point, we do always leave the number for the Samaritans in the show notes, which is a fantastic listening service. So that would be my kind of three points of advice. One, set aside time in your diary and it's non-negotiable that this doesn't happen. This will not get cancelled. Two, look at events, groups where you can meet your peers to learn, share and not be so lonely. And three, engage a coach to have that conversation.

set aside practical, listening, constructive, action planning time. And if it does ever slip into something more critical, and it can very quickly and very easily, the Samaritans is a really good resource.

Fantastic answer. And I would say just a little addendum to those number two and number three. That could be part of the problem. You're saying you're running out of time and your tasks pile up. Perhaps your expectation is too high. I know because I've done this myself, so this is not preaching or anything. I've done this yourself. You go, right, okay, well, you know, I think I remember when I was

22 i was like i want to be a millionaire by the time i'm 25 i was actually bankrupt by the time i was 27 so it didn't really go that well for me but subsequently made some money that's a different story but the difference is that i was like okay everything's got to happen right this has to happen so this week i'm going to do all these nine goals and i'm going to achieve every single one of them that just meant that i was working 20 hours a day i was sleeping in the warehouse genuinely was i was sleeping in the warehouse put myself a little bedroom in the back um

And it was just such a miserable, miserable time. I was unhealthy. I was lonely. I was unhappy. And I was almost pleased that we went bankrupt because I was like, thank God for that. I don't have to do that anymore. So there's that. So the second and third part of what Leanne said, if one go and talk to other business owners, yes, but take what they say with a pinch of salt because entrepreneurs tend to be optimistic by nature. So they'll often go, yeah, well, these are the nine things we're going to do this week. And it's like, they'll actually only do three and probably feel the same as you. And the last part, go and get a coach.

don't confuse a coach with a mentor because a mentor is someone there to help you to get to the next level so they will be pushing you to move up which then just adds more and more stress and your temptation is oh I'll go and find someone who's mega successful and I'll learn from them

Yes, you can. But let's be honest, they're going to tell you 16 things that you need to be doing in your business that you don't even have time to do the stuff you've got at the moment, let alone these new things. So where it was a coach is someone will sit there and they will go, all right, well, what's important? And what happens if you didn't do those eight things that you've got on your to-do list? You just did the one thing really well. I think that's the final bit of advice I'd give to as a fellow entrepreneur, even though I think all of us hate that term, it's a bit crass.

cringy but as a fellow entrepreneur is that it's much better to do one thing really well than five things really shit there you go there's my thoughts good advice Al

Okay, question number two. Is my staff turnover high? I like questions like this because a lot of people have these questions. I don't know. So I am a business owner and I've been thinking about whether our staff turnover is something I should be worried about. For context, I run a medical supply distribution business in Canada. I'm wondering if the tariffs are affecting you right now. Right now, roughly 50% of our employees leave within a two-year period.

On the flip side, we do have a solid group who've been with us for five years or more, around 30% of the team. But honestly, I'm not sure how that compares.

is 50% turnover over two years considered high for a business like ours? Or is that pretty normal these days? Yes, it is a bit high. I'm sorry to tell you. 50% over two years, maybe, I don't know. Even if you said 25% over 12 months, right? I know it might not be the same, but it's kind of the same. Yeah, yeah. Anything over 20% is a bit of a red flag because it

yeah it kind of suggests there's a reason that people are are leaving particularly in that time frame of two years which is yes if you're employing younger people they tend to hold shorter shorter times in a role but equally the fact that you also then have this core group of people suggests that there is something culturally here that is happening to have not be able to bring the talent in and keep them but have this kind of hardcore loyal employee group um

So yes, anything over 20% is a little bit high. A nice point I see, I mean, different organizations will have different targets. I think 10%.

is usually about right and about reasonable in these times. Also, you know, be careful that you distinguish between kind of turnover and voluntary as voluntary turnover. So, for example, a lot of organisations won't necessarily include people in turnover figures who have gone back to university to retrain or have decided to give up work to travel the world or go and have a family. It's turnover in terms of actually move to a similar job in a similar industry with different industries, same job.

So that might adjust your stats a little bit as well. I think it's a real problem at this point if you're asking the question because clearly it's causing a little bit of tension, uncomfortableness in your business. Otherwise, you probably wouldn't have noticed and be asking if 50% was right or not.

The problem seems to be that you're not able to hold on to new hires for more than two years. And that's an expensive problem to have because it means that every two years maximum, you're going to be finding new people, recruiting them in, training them up. That costs four or five times the salary that you're recruiting in for. And it takes you 12 to 18 months to recoup that cost. So yeah, it's a commercially a problem. Culturally, it's a problem. Morale is a problem. And imagine performance is a problem as well.

This is really a time to start looking at employee engagement surveys, employee analytics to figure out how people are thinking and feeling about your business and how that is impacting performance outcomes, including turnover. My spidey sense as a psychologist thinks that you're perhaps from a company where it has grown quickly.

has recruited a lot of new people in and there's a cultural mismatch between the legacy employees, the kind of old school employees and the new people that you're bringing in. And over time, this tension and this dissonance is meaning that people leave because they don't think they can change and influence it.

My feeling is we might have some toxic superstars in here. We might just have a disconnect in terms of what the current culture is and how you want to articulate that in terms of your reason for the business, the mission of it and how that's achieved. They would be my guesses.

But now for sure, you need to run an employee engagement survey to really understand what's going on. Yeah, and I think what Leanne's saying there, obviously amazing advice, Leanne. What I think Leanne's saying there is that the data, I mean, Leanne's all about the data. So it would also be interesting to plot

particular dates of when these things happened and then also start discounting or marking off. I'm sure there's a clever person who can do it. ChatGPD will be able to do a nice graph on this, nice visual on this. But essentially what you'd want to find out is why are they leaving? What dates were they leaving? And if possible, some kind of like metrics around about what sort of

age range they were. Now, obviously, keep this data very, very private. But what that might do is show you a trend and you go, do you know what's funny is that when we got this, we took on this new client who now is 40% of our business, suddenly, we got a spike in people leaving. Why was that?

and just get your data science hat on and go, I'm intrigued. Let's find out why that is. Now, that's something which entrepreneurs traditionally aren't particularly good at because we're very, very good at being optimistic and thinking about, you know, how everything's going to be cool and coming up with new ideas. When it comes to that, we might think a bit

boring in which case you need someone like Leanne and I'm not saying go ring Leanne you know email Leanne and get Leanne but maybe you should I mean you could I do work internationally but that's not the point but the point was not here was to get another gig for Leanne it was more like I think you need someone external to come in and look at this without your sort of without in the back of your head all the emotion which

I think will be, you'll have a motive reasons. You'll be, you'll be emotive about these people leaving, particularly with someone who you really liked and you thought you put a lot of effort into. So I think a third party to come in and have a look at the data. Um, I think you'll find there's probably, you know, 80% of the, of the, of the people who leave are down to just 20% of the issues which you could potentially. Yeah.

Yeah, and a really good point there, actually, looking at these potential temporal landmarks in time of when sentiment might have shifted. Temporal landmarks? Raising my hat to that, nice. Another way to do that is to conduct exit interviews with the people that are leaving. Again, I always recommend that you get a third party to lead that interview and then share the information and feedback with you in a way that feels comfortable.

Bearing in mind, though, this is collecting data after the event, which is useful, but doesn't help in real time. An employee engagement survey is going to collect real-time data and it's going to predict, not only show you where your turnover is now and why, but it's going to predict if that turnover is going to go up or down depending on what your culture is currently saying. So in terms of kind of real-time predictive data, employee engagement is chef's kiss in terms of

of usable insights um yeah looking at these landmarks exit interviews useful might give you some quick answers um but ultimately you will need to look at more real-time data love it love it great answer on to question number three my employer isn't helping me grow help what do i do

I'm feeling really stuck at work right now. The company I work for is desperate for people. They're constantly hiring, but when it comes to actually supporting or developing or career growth, it feels like it only happens if you're one of the favorites. If you're not part of that inner circle, there's no real investment in you. No training, no mentoring, no clear opportunities to move forward.

The thing is, I actually really enjoy my work. I like my colleagues, I like my customers, but the longer this goes on, the more I'm starting to feel like I have no future here. And it's making me think about leaving, even though I don't want to. So what am I supposed to do when my employer clearly isn't helping me grow, but I don't want to throw everything away and everything I like about the job? This sounds a bit sad. It does. And there may be people listening that are

I mean, you've made no reference at all to your age or what you do, but there may be some sceptics listening that are like entitled, need to develop yourself, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The point is what you're going through is a completely normal psychological response.

response to the situation you find yourself in it's what I think Simon Sinek calls it languishing was that Simon Sinek? it's also called rust out in the literature instead of burnout it's kind of this stagnation type thing that has an equal impact and detrimental impact on our well-being and our performance and

So what you're feeling is really normal. So for any business leader listening, if you're not developing your people, these are the normal thoughts and feelings they're going to have. And when somebody starts to feel like that, as you rightly said, you start to think about leaving quite quick maybe. So my point really is development isn't an area we talk about very often in terms of culture necessarily. We have learning cultures, but that's more in the moment than kind of long term.

It's a key part of recognition we've talked about on this episode a lot, actually, because developing somebody recognises your dreams, your aspirations, who you are, what you want to achieve, why that's important to you. That's a key part of being feeling recognised as an employee. And that recognition is a key drive for employee engagement.

So at this point, you're not overreacting. It isn't cool that they're showing favouritism towards certain people. My only, before I kind of really lay into this organisation, have you communicated what it is that you want? Have you communicated how you want to be developed? Have you been somewhat proactive in terms of finding some courses that you might want to do or a mentor within the organisation or some job shadowing opportunities? So I guess, is it, are you vocalising what you want?

Are you leveraging the development opportunities that are already in place? Or can you be proactive to go to your supervisor, your manager and say, I would like to spend a week shadowing this person or I would like to be mentored by you, Joe, in accounts and have kind of more informal and official mentor program in there for you. If you're doing all that and it's still not clicking, it is sad because you do like your job and you like the people you work with.

ultimately it doesn't sound like this organization is going to change and the longer you're in a job that you find unfulfilling and undeveloped that's going to impact your confidence it's going to impact your well-being it's going to impact your performance your engagement it has the potential to be fairly detrimental actually if you stay in this job for longer than you should so my thought would be

Figure out what you want. Have those conversations if you've not already had them. And if nothing else changes, it might be time to move on. I think what Leanne says is very good. You need to... Great thing. Have you communicated this? Because I think a lot of people just expect that this is what work's going to do. And work just don't even think about you at all sometimes. The other thing I just counsel you on very carefully is that you have like 90% of your job right here. If this 10%...

is what's really bugging you. Just think, if you change jobs, you might get, you know, it might not be any better. The grass is always greener and all that. So maybe before you take a massive jump, like if you hated everything else about it, they're like, yeah, yeah, go. Before you take a massive jump, then perhaps, as you say, the answer is communicate what you're looking for. Ask someone, maybe find an informal mentor, like Leanne said, the John in Accounts, whoever you mentioned there. I mean, this obviously, I don't think we're going to fix it on this, in this like,

four minutes we're talking. But I think just listen again to a couple of times what Leanne's just said. It's just such solid advice. And good luck with it, Leanne. Anything else to add? No, I think as you said, it's not one that we can solve in a short answer, but hopefully we've given you some action points, some things to do practically as well as to reflect on. But yeah, and for any business leader, I will say this again,

It's such an underutilized opportunity in terms of investing in people and developing people. And if you want an incredible example of that, go back. And again, I think I've mentioned this episode in today's, is the episode of MAP. 172, 174, 127. Yeah, it'll be in the show notes. MAP, MAP. Yeah, their learning and development trajectory...

unrivaled and I know they will happily sit and talk to you about how they're doing. They actually have an apprentice academy now, yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Paul set it up. It's really cool. It's doing really well helping other accountants to bring in apprentices and develop them and not just thinking, oh, they're cheap.

Yeah, exactly. So it can be done. It can be really powerful for the individual and the organization. Fabulous. So I think that's all for now. Join us next Tuesday for another edition of This Week in Work. And have a little look at our YouTube channel. I keep saying this, but Leanne's chopping up little videos and seeing how they all work. And if you have your own question for the workplace surgery, then check out the show notes. Everything you're going to need is in there. I bet you've not read them. Go and have a look.

Go and read them very carefully, very carefully written and curated. They take you hours each week, don't they? They used to. Not anymore. Thanks, GPT. If you enjoyed our guest on this week's Hot Take, and why wouldn't you? Sophie Wade is incredible. But if you like that, you'll also love this Thursday. We are joined finally by Nick Huber.

I said, if you've not listened, that two weeks ago, I was like, Nick's on the show. He's amazing. And then it's like, I was like, oh, no, we've recorded it, published it. Nick's not on the show. He's this week. But he is now. Nick will be joining us to talk about what it really takes to build unsexy businesses that scale. It's very practical. It's very honest. It's full of little nuggets that every business owner who's interested in profit more than hype is going to enjoy.

Oh, and his book is out today. It's the one which, yeah, it's really good. It's called The Sweaty Startup. Just go on Amazon. I think it literally went on sale. I checked it this morning about nine o'clock and it was on sale then, whereas it wasn't at eight. So, yeah, I think it's going to be a number one. I mean, pretty much on Amazon, it said already number one in new releases or something. So it's going to be a big one. Definitely go and get that. Congratulations, Nick. Yes, congratulations.

So, you know what we're going to say. Subscribe, click like, send us cash, send us messages. If you fancy leaving a review, that's always nice. We had a lovely one recently. Did we? Yeah. Oh, you read it to me. Yeah, no, you did. Did we? Yeah, we did. Also, just a slight disclaimer about the episodes we're going to bring you next week. They are full of love and care, but you might be thinking,

is this a bit... Thing is, we're on holiday next week, so we're pre-recording some episodes a bit earlier than we'd normally pre-record them. So it means that some of our news might not be quite as news, but it's still really interesting. You might not have heard about it yet. And then on Thursday, we're doing something a bit different. Yeah, on Thursday, we're bringing you one of our favourite interviews from the archive. It's with Dr. Sarah Hughes for the CEO of Mind. She is an incredible woman. Really, really great interview. Just down-to-earth, honest,

Just a really, you know, one of those things you come away with going, huh, I like that. And I enjoyed listening to it. So we're bringing you, we've done a partial of that previously, maybe about a year ago. This is the full interview. So I think you're going to love it. While you're listening, Anna and I will be sipping chackley and nubbling on Pinterest in San Sebastian, having a fabulous time because why? Everybody needs to rest and recover. I won't be responding to emails. I won't be on LinkedIn. I won't be doing that post from Facebook.

from the middle of Bilbao saying what have I learned from my five days in Spain no I won't be doing that what fishy pinchos tell me about teach taught me about workplace culture about business and life oh no I won't be doing that at all I'll be I'll be mildly buzzed enjoying the sunshine I won't be thinking about you all no she won't but we will be thinking about you the following week when we're back as normal so we'll see you soon love you loads bye love you bye bye bye