Workplace Insights

Coming into the 2024 New Year., it’s human nature to start thinking about what needs to change this year. What are we dissatisfied with in our lives and how can we fix it? My wonderful LinkedIn network shared their biggest challenges and complaints in their current and existing companies. Let’s take a look and determine how you can suss these red flags out before signing your offer.

The list below is stack-ranked from most complaints to least:

1. Communication and Transparency

2. Internal Politics

3. Work-Life Balance

4. Resources to do your job

Let’s dive into how companies can stay on top of these areas to increase employee satisfaction and retention and how you can evaluate these areas BEFORE you sign an offer.

Communication and Transparency comes in as the biggest complaint and reason people leave their roles and companies. What does this mean, exactly? Communication from the top-down, transparency about current and future choices being made. We’ve seen company layoffs where people are blindsided with an email:

“Dear Employee - we regret to inform you that we’re going through an organizational restructure and your role has been eliminated. Please accept this two-week severance offer, good luck in your endeavors”.

On the other side of the coin, we see companies give 30-90 day notices to employees that will be impacted by future reorgs. The latter certainly sounds and feels better, doesn’t it?

Not so drastically, we may find ourselves working within a business unit with a leader that has a habit of sending out one-two sentence emails or slack updates for announcements that should really take place over an all-hands call. If someone is being let go, or someone has received a promotion, or an organizational shift is happening, think about how you would want to receive that news and deliver it that way. Better yet, conduct listening tours and understand what your employees expect from you regarding communication.

We know there are topics that cannot always be divulged to the greater team…the greater team is not the C-Suite and Executives. When this is the case, be thoughtful of who will be impacted, be mindful of how those people will feel, and just as important: be mindful of how those results will impact the employees that remain. Will engagement decrease? Will people worry about their own jobs?

Why fight fires when you can avoid igniting one in the first place?

This one may hit home for a lot of you…I know it does for me. Personally, when I think of Internal Politics I think about internal mobility, remote work philosophies, hiring and promoting leaders, and quite a bit of the topic we discussed above. Thirty-six percent of people identified Internal Politics as the thorn in their side at their current or last company. We’re in a world where diversity and inclusion is something all companies are striving for, and Internal Politics are a major stop-gap in attempting to improve D&I.

Let’s take a look at how you hire and promote first:

• When you promote someone do you conduct a formal interview process and invite all qualified employees to apply? Every time or just sometimes?

• What do your hiring numbers look like between external candidates, internal candidates, and referrals?

• What does your interview panel look like for each role hired? Does everyone have a say in feedback or does the hiring manager typically get to make the final decision (even when their vote is outweighed by the panelists)?

This topic can be messy and it’s also a massive driver for your employees to seek a better culture elsewhere. A great place to start is by evaluating how you hire by working through the above questions, and taking a look at what your current and previous employees are saying about your company and C-Suite.

Work-Life balance has to be one of the biggest challenges for organizations to figure out. In a way, it’s a relief to hear that only 14% of people ranked this as their biggest frustration. Companies have experienced turnover due to canceling remote-work philosophies and employees choosing to stay remote since the remote-work shift four years ago. Work-Life balance does not mean remote work ONLY. It truly is defined by each employee’s ability to spend quality time with themselves, their family, and hobbies outside of work. It means reasonable hours, reasonable pay for the time worked, and the ability to turn off work-mode.

I think the best approach is to identify the following:

1. What results do you expect of each employee/business unit?

2. With the staff on hand and no expected growth, what is the expected workload to hit the company’s goals?

3. How many hours per week do you expect that work to take for each role/business unit?

4. Is it necessary to have XYZ role in an office setting? Is working from home an option? How often?

5. Do all business units have the ability to spend reasonable time away from the office/home office? If not, are they compensated and do they hold titles that support the lack of work-life balance?

Not all roles are going to realistically be capable of working from home or have the ability to clock out and go to their child’s baseball game in the afternoon. The question for industries like construction, in-clinic/hospital healthcare, firefighters, military, etc, is do my employees have sufficient time outside of their long shifts to recharge? The same question goes for roles within technology that require 70%+ travel and 60+ hour weeks: do these employees have a generous PTO policy? AND do they have the resources to step in for them when they’re out of office so they can truly check out?

Only 7% of people ranked this as their top reason for leaving a company, or being dissatisfied at work. I find this quite surprising in today’s world, especially this last year with AI exploding, that anyone would have this challenge. For those companies in the 7%, it comes back to listening tours again. If your employees literally are unable to do their jobs well and efficiently, it’s on you to invest in technology, people, or both. I can recall a time several years ago where I had 40+ requisitions to manage as an individual contributor in recruiting. That meant 10+ hiring managers: 10+ one on one’s each week, and 20-100+ candidates to review PER requisition weekly. On top of that, I was scheduling interviews and putting out fires for no-shows or travel delays. It was unmanageable.

And I left the company.

The normal workload for any internal recruiter should be 10-12 requisitions at a time. In order to be efficient, strategic and proactive, those are the numbers. The sourcing team was not trained properly, and I wasn’t able to rely on them for help, unfortunately. Feeling like you’re bad at your job is reason enough to seek another one.

Since this 7% is not necessarily coming from recruiters, I urge organizations to listen to what’s not working and listen to what is needed.

Is there a tool that can fix the problem? Do more people need to be added to the team or cross-functional teams to allow your employee(s) to be more successful each day?

How much money are you losing every day because someone is unable to do their job?

Here are some questions you can ask companies during the interview process to avoid joining the wrong organization:

1. How often does your company hold All-Hands meetings?

2. What is the company’s process around employees asking questions and giving feedback to Executives?

3. How often are Listening Tours conducted? Who conducts them?

4. Please explain your culture around PTO for [business unit your interviewing for]

5. What tech stack will I be using to do my job?

6. What is the evaluation and approval process for adopting new technology and resources for your employees?

7. How many people have been promoted at the company?

8. Do you have a referral program? (This question will enable you to see how much referrals are encouraged - I lean on the side of caution when it comes to referral programs. It encourages employees to refer, but not necessarily the right talent and culture fit, and these policies potentially disrupt D&I focuses).

How to work with me:

Recruiting: contract or per-placement hiring. Reach me here.

Writing: Freelance writing for blogs and publications. Reach me  here.
Recruiting and Interviewing guides are available here. 

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