A Message from Our CEO – November 2022

Dear Friends,

I hate election day. I hate it so much. I’ve made a concerted effort to stay clear of election “news” over the past two weeks. And I’m happy to say that this strategy has lowered my stress level and improved my mental health. I’d highly recommend it. Stress and mental health in the workplace have been surprisingly big topics since the pandemic, and a new study by the American Psychological Center says that an astounding 81% of employees are looking for employers that will support their mental health. When I was rubbing my temples in my cubicle in the early 90’s, the idea that my employer would pay attention to my mental health was creepy. I didn’t want my employer near my brain. Eww. Times have changed, and mental health services have implications for employers in maintaining engagement, productivity and recruitment.

So what is causing all this stress? Aside from the world ending, there is one area that is getting attention: Workers’ frustration with the number of apps they must deal with. The average company has 89 different apps, up from 58 in 2015. Think about it—you are collaborating on a Word doc on Google drive using the barnacle app  PollEverywhere that eventually gets stored on DropBox. But your co-worker/collaborator uses Windows 365. So, you have to use that too. You keep getting annoying Slack chat dings while you need to fill out your expense report on Salesforce and plan your next month on Monday.com. No wonder employees are burned out. But don’t stop there — another driver of employee burnout is the vast number of meeting, where workers are spending one-third of their day. Meetings are kicking their butts. Read about it all below. Fascinating.

Doing consulting on workplace issues does not get boring.

Get. Well. Soon.

Warren