“We’re at a complete loss,” the CEO said when he called. No matter what we try, we can’t make our employees happy. “We pay obscenely high wages and have backed off from our requirement that employees work on-site five days a week. But if you walk around our offices, ninety percent of the employees look unhappy.”
“Instead, high salaries handcuff employees to jobs they’d rather leave because they can’t find better-paying work.” Me: “Working two days a week from home might have felt like a dream come true pre-pandemic, but may not seem enough to employees who enjoyed the freedom of working from home five days a week.”
These signs of employee unhappiness show up every day in resignations, low productivity, voiced concerns and attitude issues. Employee discontent and disengagement exist. These advances don’t counter the inflation that erases salary increases; the cooling job market that leaves some employees stuck in jobs they don’t want; the isolation experienced by remote and hybrid workers; and the micromanagement felt by some employees forced to return to in-office environments.