Great Resignation

• This year's survey sought to identify global workforce readiness for digitalization and worker sentiments around job security and expectations for the future, offering recommendations to future-proof the workforce and spur the passive talent pool into action.
• Gaëlle de la Fosse, President of LHH, said: "With the profound shifts reshaping the global workforce, the importance of leadership, skills training, and opportunities for internal mobility cannot be overstated.
• Our latest Global Workforce of the Future Report shows that employee satisfaction and retention is closely related to how a company builds a culture that fosters career growth and invests in skills development."
• Key Global Workforce of the Future Report findings:
  Global uncertainty is causing workers to stay put in their current roles for longer, but this should not be mistaken for complete satisfaction.

• It reveals that despite progress for women in corporate America, a lack of transparency is behind varying perspectives impeding advancement.
• A majority (80%) of men feel that men and women are promoted equally, whereas only 61% of women agree.
• Around a third of women (35%) feel men are promoted more often or quicker than women.
• 36% of men see company's attitude towards women "through culture," while 80% of women don't see values there.

• This disconnect is at the core of the findings in a new report from Walker Sands , a full-service B2B marketing agency.
• Surveying more than 150 marketing leaders and 50 non-marketing C-suite executives, the Outcome-based Marketing: The Case for a Perspective-Shift in B2B Marketing report unveiled the top challenges B2B marketers are facing to achieve results that contribute to business outcomes, especially as the B2B marketing landscape continues to evolve.
• 86% of C-suite executives feel their marketing teams struggle to demonstrate the impact marketing activities have on business success.
• The majority (73%) first focus on activating specific marketing channels and achieving KPIs, and then connect metrics back to the outcomes.

• As a sociologist who studies how people think and feel about work, I’ve been struck by the unflattering cultural narrative that has intensified around work in recent years.
• A Wall Street Journal headline from November 2023 summarized the sentiment aptly: “Why is Everyone So Unhappy at Work Right Now?”

• Some interpreted the tumult in the labour market as evidence that workers were simultaneously fed up and empowered to seek better working conditions.
• But not all commentators have bought into this narrative.
• If the portrayal of the Great Resignation — especially its purported personal causes — tainted work attitudes, then widespread discontent should be apparent.

Americans’ perception of work

• The distance between the two represents the perception glitch.
• That’s a 30-point perception glitch.
• Thirty-two per cent of workers describe their own work as highly stressful, but 69 per cent believe that most Americans are in highly stressful jobs.
• Underpaid: When you think about the pay you get for your work, do you feel you are underpaid, paid about right, or overpaid?
• That’s a 39-point perception glitch.

‘Everything is terrible but I’m fine’

• They could also reflect a cognitive bias in which we pay attention to negative information about others, revealing our tendency toward individual optimism but social pessimism.
• My research with Paul Glavin, a sociologist at McMaster University, has started to measure the consequences of the “unhappy worker” narrative.
• And yet, after years of negative rhetoric, a mindset shift towards believing work isn’t a necessary evil couldn’t hurt.

Scott Schieman receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.