Let’s start by telling you a fairy tale. Because, today this work world has become a fantasy.
The Work World of Yesteryear
Once upon a time, about ten years ago, there was a widely accepted corporate work culture. Especially among larger firms.
While the hours could be long, people felt support and personal growth from their employer. Company’s leadership spoke and did things that didn’t seem like just simply yelling “Work! Work!” Fiercely cracking the whip to coax employee productivity. Yes, the company asked for results, but you also saw them implementing programs mindful of their employee’s well-being and work-life balance. Asking staff, “Are you happy?” and surveys on mental wellness became corporate metrics.
Work was no longer a place to go, but a place to be. Like a cool bar or hotel lobby where you can get your work done.
Some companies shifted from a stark factory or bland cubicle-farm feel to inviting places with pool tables and work pods. I heard stories from a friend working in tech boasting about simply pressing a button and a fresh new set of Bose headphones dropped out of the office vending machines. Something he could do anytime he wanted. With CNBC reporting on employees getting $2,000 for vacations, $4,000 baby cash for the birth of a child, office gyms and free gourmet in-house meals, work at least image wise, looked like it was spearheading a new way to think about working.
Was that driven out of concern for employees? Possibly. At the same time, it was a business strategy originally driven by the tech industry.
Tech companies like Facebook and Google had grown in the 2010s and needed skilled workers. Flush with cash, companies offered perks, privileges, and salaries to tempt and keep the talent pool. Seeing their talent acquisition advantage, other tech firms followed to be competitive. “Hey, don’t forget about us!” said the rest of non-tech corporate America, who followed suit in order to be competitive as well. Companies were now, at least giving lip level service, addressing employees needs and concerns.
The Workforce Adapts to the New Culture
For most Gen X and Boomers in the workforce at this time, this was a stark change from being the “organizational man.” An organizational man were individuals who were taught to prioritize the needs and goals of organizations over their personal needs and ambitions. A corporate culture and attitude they’d grown up with and internalized. A symbol of that is depicted as the big banner for employees posted in the movie Office Space, asking employees to look at their actions and think, “Is This Good For The Company?
Meanwhile, elder Millennials and early Gen Z, just arriving into their careers, came on board thinking that being supported by the company around their personal needs and aspirations was standard. Encouraged to work hard, they also saw that the company seemed to be taking an attitude that an employee’s work could be done while also allowing them to leverage the workplace to seek personal growth, and self-actualization. To the point where employees were encouraged to infuse their work life with their personal identity – expecting each would compliment and boost the other.
Encouraged to integrate, it then seemed only natural for employees to advocate for and support companies that matched more of their values, specifically – expectations of being socially responsible and ethical. Corporate America played along. Including companies like Google with the code of conduct statement “Don’t be evil” and companies like the dating app Bumble speaking out on women’s issues.
The Age of Employee Empowerment
A company offering a culture of work, more like an updated form of the Protestant Ethic (hard work rewards you at an almost spiritual level) looks awesome in the company’s recruitment literature. But, in time, this trend would eventually come back to haunt companies and disappoint many employees.
The notion of employee empowerment changed the relationship between company leadership and line employees. Not explicitly said, the corporate positioning gave the impression of a more collaborative arrangement, with employees almost being an unofficial director on the board—or at least the company’s social conscience.
With CEOs and management previously accustomed to a command-and-control structure, they found themselves increasingly needing to tread carefully around messages and actions that employees didn’t like. Or when it came to employees moved by issues like George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, and the MeToo Movement, executives found their employees’ eyes suddenly shifting to look upon them as if to say, “so, what are you going to do about this?” Leadership found their employees’ judging them; expecting non-profit related values or principles to also drive the company’s real-world actions.
I was at SXSW in 2020 when James VandeHei, CEO of Axios, talked about the new dynamic the CEO had with employees.
“Being a CEO is very different today. You used to be able to throw money to make people do things. Now, to be a leader, you have to have a high EQ, understand your employees’ passions, be transparent. If you’re not, you could be fired.”
The Peak of Employee Power: The Pandemic
As workplaces were abandoned under lockdown and the initial massive staff cuts reversed to become a white-hot job market desperate for workers, the pandemic put employees squarely in the driver’s seat. With more flexibility, stimulus checks that didn’t make workers feel desperate to accept work, and a remote work life that made interviewing and changing jobs a matter of changing Zoom screens, pressure for higher salaries soared.
This power shift was a sudden and unknown territory for workers. Like a baby just learning they can walk, employees curiously tested and explored their new ability in ways that the press seemed to have a field day giving names to:
Being comfortable enough to just quit: The Great Resignation.
Not feeling pressured to over perform: Quiet Quitting.
Disengaging from their jobs: The Great Detachment.
Meanwhile, business leaders, especially those less concerned with their brand or public perception, expressed their frustration with the new imbalance of power and greater employee choice. Cries from some employers showed up in business articles and YouTube proclaiming “People don’t want to work.” “People aren’t loyal!”
They sounded like they lamented the fundamental change. But in hindsight, they were signaling a reversal.
The Pendulum Swings Back to Employers
There is a saying that within every revolution are the seeds of its destruction. This one, planted in the ground as “employee empowerment,” was no different.
Things started going backward as businesses quickly started swinging from “employee empowerment” to a Jay-Z like, “Nah, son. This is a business.” The reversal was led on a couple of fronts:
One: A Corporate Cultural Backlash
With a growing movement against cultural issues and corporate involvement in social initiatives, employees began to discover corporate commitment to proclaimed values were not really core values.
With companies like Bud Light quickly cutting executives loose after conservative backlash to content from a sponsored Trans influencer to companies downplaying diversity efforts and promotions, it was clear that cultural stances would be abandoned or pulled back if they were getting in the way of what the business was there for: to earn profits.
As companies showed signs of retreating, it created cultural “blood in the water.” Attracting opportunistic moral panic by legislatures, social and political influencers and becoming culture war topics in the 2024 election. A momentum causing the corporate-cultural snowball to roll faster to avoid heat.
Employees sold on proclamations about values stood, mouths agape, as they watched their employers run away from or switch positions on issues.
Two: The Move to a Smaller Workforce
Tech led the rise of employee empowerment culture. It also led the retreat.
The retreat commenced in the form of Mr. Elon Musk and his acquisition of Twitter in 2022. Once purchased, he ruthlessly cut staff to a bare-bone 80% fewer, encouraging remaining employees to work long hours, with stories of staff sleeping in the office to be “hardcore.” Workers and people in and out of the company showed a mix of shock, anger and an expected schadenfreude (shameless joy) expecting to eventually watch Musk suffer for his careless gutting of the company.
Despite the ruthless slashing, Twitter (now X) remained a platform up and running (granted with a lot of bugs).
Companies often have a herd mentality. Especially when they see the bold action they once feared taking is found safe. Now emboldened, many companies saw what Musk did and followed. Facebook. Microsoft. Each repeatedly cutting thousands of full and contract workers. They also found shareholders rewarded them for it—a gathering business momentum that Scott Galloway, NYC professor and entrepreneur, called out as a trend:
“Companies have discovered Ozempic. It’s firing people.”
Besides happier shareholders, companies found it also had other benefits…
It shifted the power back to the employer as, for employees:
- Jobs became more scarce
- Leaving your job now had more risk
- It became clear. At the end of the day, the company focus is about maximizing profits.
Three: Labor Starts to Surrender To Capital. Artificial Intelligence Accelerates It.
As the balance shifted back from labor to capital, a technology we are now familiar with also arose: AI. Within two years of being commercially introduced with the public-facing launch of ChatGPT, employees like developers, software engineers, designers and customer service reps went from “Cute, but it can’t do my job” to “Cool. It can do some of my job” to “Hey!? Could it do most of my job?” to “OMG! What’s going to happen to my job!?”
Those questions morphed into anxiety and feeling of betrayal as many watched CEOs gleefully talking about replacing employees with unproven AI solutions—often the same CEOs that once had called people “the heart of their organizations.”
A recent CBS report focused an interview in Gizmodo where a CEO proudly admits to laying off workers and replacing them with AI — calling it “exciting.” And that firing workers create efficiencies because “AI doesn’t go on strike,” and “It doesn’t ask for a raise.”
All these factors restored companies the power that had been missing for more than a decade: Fear.
Fear is Back, Baby! Now Get to Work!
Fear is empowering more company leaders and managers to go from hip collaborative co-workers to using their parent voice with employees. TLDR: “Why are we doing this policy? Because I said so!” Like a parent, they’d probably use your full name if they could. “Jane Bennett Foster, you get into the office five days a week, right this minute!!!” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was blunt about workers returning to work in the office. In a memo pushing back against employees upset about the policy, he basically said, if you don’t like it, quit. J.P. Morgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Diamond was captured on tape yelling profanities about workers not coming into the office.
Not personally promoting this, but the new culture of fear is great for companies. It gives them:
The Power to Cut Costs
A culture of fear creates discounts for salaries as less money needs to be spent on employee acquisition and retention. Who needs to pay for loyalty if people are afraid to move?
It is also an opportunity to hire new, cheaper, more fearful workers as many companies are using new hires and lower salary offers to claw back many of the perks and compensation they gave out during the pandemic.
Fear also quells some companies’ struggles with identity politics or employee vs. company values. Employees now have to ask themselves: “Is standing up for this issue worth my job?”
The Corporate Culture of Fear is back. Five Things You Can Do
Remember: Fear is the source of the power. But it’s only as effective as you let your imagination run wild with worse case scenarios. Yes, you must be aware of the company shift and navigate the new culture. But overdo it, and it can paralyze you from taking action or you become overly compliant – exhausting yourself by working too hard, discounting your worth just to try to buy tenuous work security. Now at a job you may not like.
It’s natural to feel the anxiety. But as the saying goes, “the antidote to anxiety is action.” Here are 5 steps to manage the new fear-driven workplace:
1. Know Your Value
Fear can make you doubt yourself. If you doubt yourself, you can be discouraged from standing up for the value you offer or taking action to improve your situation.
Employees are often already afraid to advocate for their careers. Too often, they rely on others to validate just how good they are or how much they are worth. BTW, your company’s employee review programs are often good ways at exploiting your doubt. You know you killed it last year, stood out from the crowd, but your review manager says “That’s nice. So here’s the standard cost-of-living increase” or “we don’t give out perfect scores. Lets see what happens next year.”
Knowing your value says, “I’m worth more.” And I know there is someone out there who will see it. If you believe it (and they try to make you believe you don’t) be prepared to act to get what you deserve—at your current job or somewhere else that appreciates your value beyond “we value our employees” platitudes.
2. ALWAYS Make Your Job About Getting the Next One
Even if you don’t plan to leave, ALWAYS work on improving your skills. Not just to do better with pleasing your current employer, but to be one of the best in your industry where you know they are G’damn lucky to have you. This empowers you in case things change or you just fall out of love with your current role. When you become a better person at what you do, better employers will find you. Knowing that you have skills others besides what your employer wants, will make you less fearful.
3. Network. More Than LinkedIn
Social media has turned LinkedIn networking into “me too!” likes and virtue signaling. Yes, it’s nice we know your views on a topic on LinkedIn. How does that answer if you are the right person to turn my business around? How do I know you aren’t a preening a-hole? Also when applying on LinkedIn in today’s market, you’ll likely be one of over 100 applicants judged by an AI resume reviewer than didn’t see your awesome LinkedIn feed post.
Yes, it’s more of a pain in today’s world, but personal contacts and interactions turn networking into real feelings and vibes about you that make your worth even clearer to another person. Make personal contact.
4. Transition to a Wartime Budget
When your finances are shaky or you have considerable debt or financial obligations, putting up with a bad boss, or just taking it from a job you don’t like feels like the safest, affordable option. It keeps you fearful.Take control. Cut costs or build a savings fund. What some call F.U. money. This way, you have mental breathing room if something happens or you just want the personal dignity to peace out.
5. Companies Embrace the Idea of Change. Do the Same.
Work is the one relationship where YOU WILL grow apart and eventually get divorced. It’s not “until death do us part.” It’s “until the third quarter is bad,” “We changed our priorities,” the spreadsheet says you cost too much,” or “We merged with XYZ Corp and need to look at redundancies.” If you don’t change, at some point, the company will still change around you. Accept it as the constant and manage your job to be adaptable.