Employee Survival Guide® - The Workplace of Tomorrow: A New Path

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to another edition of the Employee Survival Guide, where you can learn everything your employer does not want you to know about, and more. Now, here's attorney Mark Carey. Hey there, this is Mark Carey, and I'm talking about the workplace of tomorrow, and the new path that we think that we're on. About a million years ago, I remember hearing the Star Wars epic was meant to track the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. It starts as a republic, becomes an empire as its boundaries grow, and power is consolidated, becomes corrupt because power corrupts, and finally it fails. After the chaos, a new government starts, the cycle again as a republic. I have no idea if this is true. In any event, once Leia survived the vacuum of space with her flying power, it no longer mattered. But the new path for the

Starting point is 00:00:51 workplace of tomorrow is very different, and we are going to show you how. So let me tell you about the old path first, so you can get your bearings. Once upon a time ago, in a far distant space, a person could expect to work for one or two companies at most for their entire adult working lives, earn a decent wage, and retire with a pension. Manual laborers were unionized and enjoyed income and job protection from the strength of their ability to bargain collectively. Office workers were not typically union members, but their identities as employees of particular companies were practically encoded at the DNA level. Men, and they were nearly all men, at IBM. They wore dark suits, white dress shirts, rep ties, and wingtip shoes. Men at Procter

Starting point is 00:01:40 and Gamble wrote P&G memos. In those days, a man could start off working in the mailroom with a high school diploma. And if he were hardworking, smart, and white, he could make it to the executive suite. Technically, most of the non-union organized men were employees at will. They could leave at any time for any reason, and their employers would terminate their employment at any time, and for no reason. It just didn't happen very much. The sense of community and the shared purpose that eludes modern businesses was alive and well on the old path. Those team building activities we enjoy at company retreats were unnecessary because companies fielded baseball teams and bowling teams and engaged in a variety of other activities.

Starting point is 00:02:22 Things began to change as union membership decreased in the 50s and 60s. The turbulent economic times of the early 70s through the early 80s, oil embargo, inflation, recession, rinse and repeat, followed by the corporate raiders throughout the 80s, effectively severed the symbiotic relationship between workers and management in America. Raiders would take on a huge debt to take over control of a public company and then strip assets from the company to pay their debt or otherwise profit. These takeovers invariably involved massive layoffs and reorganizations of the companies. Flat organizational structures became then the norm. Middle management all but disappeared. Employees became unemployed and worked as

Starting point is 00:03:05 consultants. In the 30 years since Black Monday, October 19, 1987, the data stock market crashed and lost 22.5% of its value. The connection between employer and employee has become more tenuous and opportunistic. Black Monday triggered an economic downturn in both parasitic layoffs, Black Monday triggered an economic downturn in both parasitic layoffs. Same thing in the dot-com bust, the Great Recession of 2008, and now the COVID-19 era of 2020. The flip side of knowing your employer doesn't have your back and your employment is at will and it can be terminated at any moment is a lack of loyalty to your employer. In other words, employees do not trust their employers who will protect them, even though the employer needs these employees now more than ever just to survive.

Starting point is 00:03:54 Ironic, isn't it? I haven't checked recent statistics, but Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Zs are expected to change jobs 10 to 20 times in their adult working lives. What's the new path? And what are we prescribing is 10 to 20 times in their adult working lives. What's the new path? And what are we prescribing is going to be the future? It's not going to be the at-will or employment at-will, meaning that you can get fired at any point in time without any notice. The new path is going to be employment termination for cause, meaning that if you screw up your employment or don't do your job correctly

Starting point is 00:04:23 or violate company policies or violate state and federal statutes, you should expect to be fired. At our office, we don't employ people at the at-will basis. We employ them for termination for cause. And the reason there is because I wanted to create the trust among our employees to know that I got their back. And employers should seriously consider the current relationship they have with their employees. Employees are the backbone of each company and their employers could not exist without them. Trust. That's what employees want right now and presumably have always wanted it. Now that the blinders are coming off due to COVID-19,

Starting point is 00:05:06 employers must realize they cannot abuse employees and treat them like a number. There are currently 40 million plus job terminations during the pandemic and growing. This is not exactly what I would call building trust with your employees. These recently terminated employees, your ex-employees, are real people of all races, backgrounds, have their own individualized emotions, goals, financial issues, just like you. They are you. If you give employees a real sense of security in their jobs, they will reward their employers tenfold with hashtag employee trust and increased EBITDA, aka profitability. Employers need to show employees they can trust you at all times, even in the worst of times, that you got their backs and you'll carry them through whatever

Starting point is 00:06:01 the moment they're going through, whatever the nation's going through. I have a couple of suggestions. First and foremost, provide a termination for cause employment agreement and ignore your management attorney's advice not to do that. It's going to create the trust, and it's going to remove that sickening feeling that you could be fired at any point in time or that feeling when you're being set up by your supervisor and you know it's coming, and then eventually it does come. It's not necessary. It's better to

Starting point is 00:06:30 create a longer, more vibrant, trusting relationship, more transparency about what everybody wants in terms of what the management wants, what the employees want. The second thing would be make sure your employees feel confident. They will not get sick when they come back to work from the pandemic. Give them everything they need right now and write it off in your PPP and SBA money you just received. Show them that you care about their health, their well-being. Try to create spaces of work that allows for separation until this thing blows over. Third, if employees want to work from home and at the office, just let them, but remind them you do pay rent in an office they should use. And everybody has to be a little bit more patient

Starting point is 00:07:19 and realistic these days. Don't mandate that they have to return to the office. Don't mandate that they have to return to an environment that may be, well, may get them sick. Fourth, buy them the necessary computer gadgets to work remotely anywhere. Recent stories in the papers, college kids returning back to college are sitting in Maui with a laptop in a rental apartment with all their friends? Why can't we do that for our employees at work? Of course, most employees are working from home these days. The train station parking lots are empty. Fifth, build a sense of strong community experience amongst employees. Go beyond the usual pictures on the walls about commitment and goals. Just act like real people. Treat your employees like real people. Don't mislead them. Don't try to set them up. If you have problems with your

Starting point is 00:08:12 employees or you have problems with your business, tell your employees that. Don't cover it up. Don't make me, the employment lawyer, try to figure out what you did and why you lied, because I'll find out. And if you did it because of any illegal means, such as age, sexual orientation, race, we're going to find out. You can't cover it up, because no defense counsel can watch your employer all the time, every single day. The supervisors are going to make mistakes based upon risk-taking that business people do all the time and where they are to catch it. Six, immediately fire any employee, manager or not, who exhibits any discriminatory bias against anyone regarding the COVID experience or any discriminatory basis or bias. This will deter bad actors because we're all in this together.

Starting point is 00:09:07 The list of perks employers can provide to develop and ensure employee trust is endless and specific to your company. But you get the main idea. Yes, employees need perks too. Not just executives. Employees need perks too because they are the ones who make this economy run. Thank you and good luck in your endeavors.

Employee Survival Guide® - The Workplace of Tomorrow: A New Path

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