Meaningful Work & Robot Servants
5 in 5 - Brave & Heart HeartBeat #126 ❤️
This week there’s a lot of juicy HR news going on, including the rising importance of meaningful work, Virgin Airlines allowing men to wear skirts and ladies to wear trousers, and Tim Cook keeping four women in his pocket (we assume.)
Tech news of course getting in on the action with the danger of voice activated robot servants and some more, depressing as ever, Metaverse news.
Let’s get into it.
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#1 - Tim Cook’s Hot Take
In a recent interview with a BBC journalist, Tim Cook was described as “affable, polite and thoughtful” – first of all let’s just spare a thought for Steve Jobs and how mad he would be that his legacy is not being kept on a personal level, but we digress.
The interesting points to come out of this interview were 1 – Tim Cook does not consider that he has a good work-life balance, or even much of a work-life balance at all. That’s not very Gen Z of you Tim, but as the CEO of apple we’re not really meant to be shocked and appalled. We wonder if this will lead to exposes about work-life balance at Apple and what a bad role model he is?
He also made some bold statements about gender parity – stating that the literal future of technology and it’s “effect on humanity” depends on women being present “at the table”. But are they present at Apple, is he going to do anything about it, or this just lip service because he read our newsletter from the other week (we see you Tim.)
Apple have 35% female staff globally, and while Tim Cook says there is “no excuse” for not having enough women in Tech, he kind of does make an excuse for their current levels of female staff by noting that in the future everybody at school should be required to take coding classes – but making no mention of what Apple could be doing right now.
He also brought along some women to the interview, which is kind of weird – the photo on the BBC website of four women sitting together on a sofa smiling makes it about 10x weirder. The weirdness of him having this troupe in his back pocket aside. The four app developers talked about their experiences and hope that in five years a female tech business founder could just be referred to as a tech business founder like any other. Let us dream.
#2 - How Important Is Meaningful Work?
Apparently while pay is still top of the list on what’s important in a job, meaningful work is coming up second.
A 2020 McKinsey & Co. survey (can we still rely on these pre-unprecedented times surveys? Food for thought…) showed that 82% of employees believe it to be important that their company has a purpose, ideally one that contributes to society and makes their work meaningful.
A 2022 survey (okay we’re getting there now) showed that 70% of employees say that their personal sense of purpose is defined by their work, and that they perform better, are more committed, and 50% less likely to be looking for another job if their work feels meaningful to them.
This is even more true for Gen Z, the future of your workplace might I add, as a Monster survey noted that 70% of them rank purpose as more important than pay when looking for a job.
A senior partner at McKinsey made some interesting points about work changing from a “transactional” action in the industrial revolution, to where we are now with a lot of automation in industries meaning that work as a whole is becoming less repetitive and society becoming wealthier as whole and therefore less preoccupied on working for survival, creating a tipping point for work to become a place where we find meaning as much as sustenance.
Another reason why we at B&H are huge proponents of an Employee Value Proposition. An EVP expresses the value employees bring to your business, and the value your business brings to them – serving as a showcase for the meaningful aspect of the work they do.
#3 - Virgin Staff Can Be Who They Want To Be
Virgin Atlantic are making huge changes to the way their staff can present themselves at work, which is pretty amazing considering the rigidity of the airline business, where stewards at certain airlines still have specific rules on how to wear their makeup and hair.
As of now, Virgin staff can choose which uniform to wear no matter what their gender. Their famous red skirt suits are now unisex, and women can choose not to wear heels and wear trousers instead.
Virgin’s chief CO says that the change reflects how important it is for employees to be able to be their true selves at work, ensuring that they are also referred to by their correct pronouns by introducing pronoun badges along with name badges.
This is a bold move from Virgin, and while we are often begrudging in our praise, we think this is pretty cool from a HR perspective, and sets a huge precedent in a normally rigid working environment.
#4 - Are Voice Assistants Why Kids Don’t Say Please?
In a bit of tech news, apparently voice assistants could hinder children’s social and cognitive development.
Who would have thought that barking orders at a lackey that can’t answer back from a young age could have an effect on a person’s behaviour? (We could make a cheap shot here about King Charles and “pen-gate” but we would NEVER.)
Research suggests that the use of Siri, Alexa and Google Home in the household could have a long-term impact on children’s social and cognitive development, specifically their empathy, compassion and critical thinking skills.
The myriad of potential problems include always asking questions in the form of a demand, copying the robot tone and therefore not learning to alter their tone, volume and intonation in different contexts, along with the lack of expectation to say please and thank you.
It sounds funny, but apparently it’s very serious, so think twice before letting your kids use your robot servants.
#5 - The Shopping-Verse
The Metaverse continues to be
1 – Not real.
2 – Only for selling things.
3 – Apparently now just being Roblox?
The latest example of this is the terribly dystopian “Walmart-Land” which popped up in Roblox, where Walmart set up a slightly terrifying shopping festival aimed at little children (the key demographic of Roblox) to sell them toys.
Should there be rules against this? It just feels wrong, doesn’t it?
Bonus
This woman sent her CV to Nike on a cake, and the internet are divided about it.
To note, they were not hiring for the position she applied for, AND she posted it on LinkedIn. So we’ve gathered that she’s annoying, but is this a good idea?
Want to know how to express the meaning behind your business? Or what your business could ACTUALLY do in tech, which is not the, quote unquote, MetaVerse.