If you have spent any time in a workplace you probably have experienced various levels of feedback from your employer.
Those sit-downs, both formally in scheduled performance reviews and informally when the boss asks you to step into their office, come in all varieties.
Sometimes the feedback can come off as superfluous with an uncaring supervisor quickly checking generic boxes that provide no real insight or help to sharpen your role with the company.
Has there ever been a harder time for business owners to make decisions than right now?
That can certainly be the perception from Wall Street to Main Street with a confluence of factors leading to decision paralysis including:
“2022 is shaping up to be one of the hardest years ever to run a company – even harder than 2020, when the pandemic first hit, corporate leaders and analysts tell us,” wrote Emily Peck and Erica Pandey, this month, in Axios.
Nearly two years of a global pandemic has wrought economic and emotional turmoil on the average employee, but businesses that focus on improving their workplace culture can counter “The Great Resignation” while boosting overall productivity.
“Corporate culture may be the most important aspect of employee satisfaction. A strong corporate culture can be the differentiator in helping a company barely survive to actively thrive, especially in challenging times.” Matthew Rolnick, vice president of sales at Yaymaker, wrote in Forbes.
And these have been some of the most challenging times for managers in memory with an average of four million Americans resigning each month last year in what has been called “The Great Resignation”.
It is incredibly hard to envision just how historic “The Great Resignation” has been with a record number of American workers voluntarily quitting their jobs month after month.
Consider this: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has been tracking the number of U.S. workers who quit their jobs each month, and prior to last year, the record for quits in a single month was 3.6 million in July 2019.
Last year, nearly 4 million U.S. workers quit their jobs in April and the number of quits stayed above that 3.6 million high-water mark for each of the next eight months.
Employers are increasingly prioritizing employee burnout and their mental health as the COVID-19 pandemic trudges toward the 2-year mark.
“This is a historic time; we’ve never been through anything like this. Our mental health and our physical health are really being taxed,” Darcy Gruttadaro, director of the American Psychiatric Association Foundation’s Center for Workplace Mental Health, told ABC News this summer. “If there was ever a time to raise these issues, it’s now. If you’re experiencing burnout and you’re trying to ignore it, that will eventually catch up with you.”
CNBC reported in September that “how to deal with burnout – and prevent future burnout – is a challenge all businesses are now tasked with as many workers hit 19 months of working from home.”
The 87th Texas Legislature met from January to May and then again in three more special sessions from July to October, giving lawmakers many opportunities to pass new bills in the Lonestar State.
There were a whopping 9,999 bills introduced in the regular session alone with 3,803 passed.
While many of the bills passed are ceremonial there are several new laws that affect Texas employers.
For most businesses the past two years have been quite the rollercoaster ride with the pandemic, inflation, tight labor market, and supply chain issues all making day-to-day operations challenging.
For 2022 it is important for businesses to have a plan in place to succeed in an environment where the unexpected is expected.
Compliance is a bit like flossing … you may not see immediate consequences from letting it slide, but the long-term repercussions ultimately reveal themselves.
Lax compliance protocols increase the risk that your small-to-medium size business runs afoul of local, state, and/or federal regulations.
For most business owners, compliance violations are more painful than the sound of any dentist’s drill.
Employee engagement, which surged in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, is being put to the test as employers look to stem the tide of the “Great Resignation” while battling a tight labor market and worldwide supply chain bottlenecks.
“As the world stumbles toward a COVID-19 recovery, experts warn of a surge of voluntary employee departures, dubbed the “Great Resignation.” For instance, one study estimates that 55 percent of people in the workforce in August 2021 intend to look for a new job in the next 12 months,” reports the Harvard Business Review. “To counteract the incoming wave of employee turnover, organizations — more than ever — need to focus on cultivating employee engagement.”
In a world turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic, Texas small businesses are finding their way towards a workplace “new normal” as the coronavirus crisis nears two years.
And whether it is a return to office, work from home (WFH), or hybrid model that combines in-person and remote work, one thing for certain is that there is no going “back to normal”.
“Too many are asking whether we will go back to normal. To me, the problematic word is “back.” There is no going back to pre-COVID times. There is only forward—to a new and uncertain future that is currently presenting us with an opportunity for thoughtful design,” said Amy C Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School.
