Companies forced to change old structures

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Below you find the link to a text that discusses changes in companies’ or employers’ attitudes towards the working conditions they offer their employees. How voluntary or not these changes are is a question worth discussing.

During the last two years, a phenomenon called the Great Resignation has been spreading. I believe it started in the US, but also seems to be affecting companies in other countries. It assumedly started during the pandemic and seems to have been triggered by the radically enforced changes in peoples’ lives. Their is a wikipedia entry devoted to the phenomenon Great Resignation that could be read in connection with the text below.

Some of the questions worth discussing in connection with the Great Resignation:

  1. Why are people willing to quit their jobs now more than they have been in the past?
  2. Who are they? Do they belong to certain generations e.g. younger people, so-called millenials or generation X,Y,Z – in comparison to more securities oriented older generations?
  3. Or is there generally a greater willingness among people to rethink what makes a life worth living? (Check my post on Dan Büttner, Blue Zones and the Japanese concept of Ikigai)

Pre-reading vocabulary

I. Find words or phrases in the text that mean the following:

  1. different word for empty
  2. to recognize something positively
  3. phrase meaning: being dangerous in some way
  4. different word for keep, or keep from leaving or going away
  5. developing
  6. (short) reports
  7. evaluating
  8. to show great reluctance (past form in text); the hair or fur of a dog does this when the dog is afraid or angry
  9. new colleagues
  10. very tempting or enticing, desirable
  11. formerly secret information finally given or released

II. Read the text and discuss the following questions.

1. What are the fears the companies express in their statements? What are the reasons for these concerns?

2. Check if companies’ attitudes towards alternative forms of work changed during the last two years.

3. Are reasons given for why alternative work forms seem possible now whereas company leaders seemed more reluctant to certain changes in the past.

During the last two years, we often discussed the pros and cons of remote work. I also provided several links, one was to a little 8 minute video in which two CEOs discuss their attitudes and opinions towards not working from an office. Another article discussed the reasons some bosses had for wanting people come back into their offices.

The text below discusses the topic from a slightly different angle. It touches upon the phenomenon of the ‘Great Resignation’, and how the demands employees’ have developed towards more attractive working conditions is being met or at least considered within more and more companies.

TEXT:

Amazon, Intel and other tech companies acknowledge rejecting remote work could cost them talent

WATCH: Hybrid work is here to stay. Activating your hologram may be the next way to enter a meeting

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