A Slice of Life
The world is a complex place to be
By Dr. Reg Butterfield
14 — Minutes read
Image by: Ulrike Leone via Pixabay.com
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The last two weeks have been very hectic with work and hardly a minute to think or write. So, we are taking a break from writing about our investigations into organisations and ways of futureproofing them.
Instead, we are cruising the headlines around the world and bringing some of the news to those who are also busy and need some interesting or crazy things to entertain you.
The workforce is feeling down
According to “The State of the Global Workplace: 2022” report by Gallup, the level of engagement and wellbeing has levelled off after a decade of improvement pre-Covid and is now stagnant. A mere 21% of employees are engaged at work and just 33% are thriving in their overall wellbeing. In fact, most don’t think their lives are going well or don’t feel hopeful about their future. In 2020 the level of stress amongst workers reached a then new high and it has even surpassed that level in 2021. 44% experienced a lot of daily stress with working women in the U.S. and Canada amongst the most stressed globally. Overall, nothing for employers to be proud of we suggest.
Whilst there is no common agreement on how to measure employee engagement, surveys of various sources all point to similar data and cost to the global economy, Gallop estimates that the cost is $7.8 trillion. Given this data, it is no surprise that employee wellbeing is the new workplace imperative.
It will come as no surprise that the situation has bred a whole host of online support and diagnostic packages for individuals and companies alike. As one proudly states on its website: “Digital platform with a human touch”. I don’t think we need to comment further on this one.
According to an article by Ann Marie Kirby, CEO of CareHealth Technologies, on Corporate Wellness Magazine.com, there is quite a mix of what wellness means around the world. For example, in Europe it is efficiency-related, except for Ireland where unemployment is virtually nil, and wellbeing is increasingly considered part of the package in some businesses. In Mexico, the top health and wellness priority for employers is “prevention”, followed by “engagement” and then “cost savings”. Although there is still a lot of work to be done to convince most businesses that it is worthwhile and that they have a responsibility towards their workforce. It may come as no surprise to read that in the U.S. leaders understand the need to incorporate ‘wellness’ but often lack commitment. The workers cite ‘saving on healthcare costs’, and ‘productivity’ as their priority when it comes to wellness in the workplace. Australia seems to be a civilised country to work in if their commitment to a workplace that is mentally healthy and free of injury is as they profess it to be. Finally, it is said that in the United Arab Emirates, “take up is low, scepticism is high, and there is a fixation on costs rather than savings.” Even a slightly optimistic outlook is cost driven.
My colleague Dr Ross Wirth and I are left wondering what prevents organisations focusing on the welfare of their workforce without looking at it through a ‘cost-benefit’ spreadsheet. Just ensure that they provide a caring environment that values and treats people as people. It’s a whole lot easier and cheaper all round!
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Where there is work, there is hope
If you are looking for work in the U.S. Biden may be coming to your rescue. According to CNBC, the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ is expected to create 550,000 new jobs in industries producing renewable electricity, advocates say, more than doubling the size of the cleantech sector. Hiring has already picked up, according to companies in the climate change technology business. From EVs to carbon-neutral power generation, new plant announcements have come from Honda, Toyota and First Solar since the law was signed last month. According to Caton Fenz, the CEO of Houston-based ConnectGen, which builds wind and solar power plants that sell electricity to utilities, he originally planned to hire five or six new employees in 2022. Since the act has been passed, he is now looking for a dozen employees. The trade association American Clean Power expects 550,000 new jobs in the clean electricity sector stemming from the law, more than doubling the 442,000 that cleantech companies employ now.
The auto industry is quick to jump on this initiative with General Motors and Ford announcing new jobs in the world of batteries and e-vehicles. Analyst Rod Lache wrote, “We expect this credit to meaningfully change the economics of EVs,” saying it could shave $3,400 off the cost of an EV car battery by 2025, which can equate to 45% off the current battery cost. That should make EVs as cheap, on average, as gas-powered cars even before the consumer tax credit.
Ford is building its biggest factory ever. It is under construction in western Tennessee and will be unlike anything else in the company’s 119-year history. Dubbed BlueOval City, when it goes online in 2025 it will be the largest and most advanced Ford manufacturing complex of them all. It will play a vital role in the automaker’s electrified future, building batteries and an all-new electric truck that, according to Ford, will be “revolutionary.”
It is refreshing to know that thanks to Biden U.S. citizens can sit in the traffic jams knowing that the air around them is almost breathable.
The things that conglomerates do
Before we leave the auto industry, we can reflect a little on the might of the great conglomerates of the past. Conglomerates were all the rage until the 1980s. It was believed that a brilliant management team could turn their hand to anything, and the stock market would allow them to. For a period from around the late-1920s, when GM overtook Ford in the US market, to roughly the mid-1960s, GM could legitimately claim to be the most successful company in the world.
Currently, there is a trend for individualism spreading into the world of work with more people finding their value as either individual skilled freelancers or being part of a small community of workers providing specialist skills on demand. Commentators indicate that this trend may be a major part of the future of work as automation and other technology replaces much of the work as we know it today, only time will tell if this is to be the case. However, it provides an opportunity to review just how much one conglomerate either controlled or was deeply involved in outside of what they are currently known for worldwide. After all, why wouldn’t a company that had seemingly mastered car-making — it had a 50% market share in the US in the early ’60s — turn its hand to other businesses?
Since its formation in 1908, General Motors has built untold millions of cars, trucks and SUVs. What you might not know is that GM has also produced an incredible variety of other products, many of them completely unconnected to the motor industry. What follows is a list of this activity, in alphabetical order of category. In fairness the arms manufacturing was part of their war effort, which other companies also contributed towards, and these are shown separately:
Air conditioners, Aircraft, Aircraft engines, Aircraft propellers, Buses, Centri-Filmer, Close-in weapons system, Computer systems, Electric starters, Face masks, Heart pump, Heavy highway trucks, Heavy trucks, Ignition systems, Ion thrusters, Locomotive engines, Locomotives, Lunar Roving Vehicle, Missiles, Radios, Refrigerators, Satellite television, Satellites, Sonobuoys, Spark plugs, Tractors, Two-stroke diesel engines for non-automotive applications, Ventilators, and Washing machines. WW2 manufacturing effort: Cannons, Machine guns, Pistols, Rifles & Sub-machine guns, Shells, Tanks,
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The words that divide organisations
OK, we apologise for bringing the working from home (WFH) debate into this newsletter as we are sure many of you, like us, are becoming tired of reading about this ongoing tennis match between employers and employees; come to work — no stay at home. Whatever the arguments for or against may be, one thing is certain, the memes are having fun even if the bosses aren’t. Thank goodness for humour in troubling times.
For more images and memes of WFH go to: https://thrivemyway.com/work-from-home-memes/
The Risks of Industrial-Age Thinking
What is good for the goose is also good for the gander in India according to the younger workforce. Young workers are saying that CEOs and Directors of companies should be confined to only one company that they head. Let them not become part-time directors or advisors or consultants to many corporate bodies and earn from all of them. Then they can object to us moonlighting.
This is all playing out against the backdrop of the company Wipro (a multinational corporation that provides IT, consulting, and business process services) sacking 300 employees for moonlighting, which Wipro chairman Rishad Premji called “a complete violation of integrity”, according to the Times Of India. Joining in the debate, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for IT, said that freelancing should not come at the cost of contractual obligations, but the corporate sector should also be ready for a new era of collaborative employment, where workers refuse to be captives and work as a part of “communities”. He added, “Any captive model will fade. Employers expect employees to be entrepreneurial while serving them. The same people can apply it personally to themselves. Time will come where there will be a community of product builders who will divide their time on multiple projects. Just like lawyers or consultants do.”
This is at a time when senior people in IT in India are said to be receiving 70% pay increases against 10% for the workforce. With a worldwide skills shortage it seems that Wipro may live to regret their industrial age employment practices.
A Customer-Service Dilemma
So, what is best for business — fast customer service or providing customers with the convenience, high quality, and reliable experience? That is the question for food and grocery delivery platforms according to Dale Vaz, CTO of Swiggy. Swiggy is an online food ordering and delivery platform based in Bangalore and operates in 500 Indian cities as of September 2021. Its competitors such as Zomato, Blinkit, Dunzo, and Zepto all highlight their ultra-fast delivery service model as their unique selling point. Vaz believes that the ‘sweet spot’ is a 20–25 minute service delivery time and that providing a convenient and reliable way of having things delivered is more than just speed.
He is convinced that their customer service approach will enable them to broaden their business in the convenience market as opposed to just food, which their competitors focus on predominantly. He is also piloting drone services and yet even this is different to most drone operating companies. He is concentrating on the middle-mile rather than the last mile deliveries. “If you have a warehouse outside of the city and you want to bring inventory to a pod in the city, drones can be leveraged,” Vaz said.
I have travelled and worked across many cities in India over the years and anybody who finds a way of avoiding the chaotic, congested, smelly traffic gets my vote anytime!
Spain looks to the past for financial success of the future
Is Spain seeing a resurgence of confidence with Quatar committing to invest 4.7 billion Euros (May 2022) just when the country launched an economic overhaul with its share of European Union pandemic recovery funding? Spain is rolling out a series of major public investment projects using its share of the EU’s pandemic recovery funds, which the prime minister has compared to a ‘Marshall Plan for Europe’. This is exactly the approach that I wrote about in 2020 and published an article “2021: a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” I wish them all success. (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/2021-once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity-reg-butterfield/)
First indications are that even though inflation in Spain is the highest in 37 years, many businesses are now expanding and increasing their workforce. Let’s hope that it continues.
Argentina still struggles on so many fronts
As the VP of Argentina Christina Fernandez de Kirchner survives an assassination attempt and continues to fight against corruption charges laid before her, the country continues to struggle. The economic crisis has led to an inflation rate of 71% in July when compared to a year ago. The current challenge is to avoid a triple digit inflation by year end. Farmers are hoarding soybeans to protect themselves from economic crisis whilst pensioners struggle to pay for essentials like food and medicine. Activists are opposing a massive new $5bn green hydrogen project on the grounds of threatening the natural environment and Indigenous land rights. At the same time, they oppose offshore drilling plans based on marine life likely to be severely affected.
Whilst much of the world is moving rapidly to equality for all people, Argentina still suffers from femicide with one woman killed roughly every 30 hours. It is a statistic that has not shifted much since a new feminist movement exploded onto the streets in 2015 under the banner Ni Unas Menos — Not One Less. The legal system is seen as far from impartial as women denounce the patriarchal views of the judiciary.
Yet social media ‘influencers’ are more interested in selling snake oil remedies and illusions, you just couldn’t make it up.
A little bit of England in Italy
I first went to Italy in 1959. My parents took my brother and me on a holiday in a very small seaside town called Cattolica, which had just two hotels and was reached by means of a donkey cart from the local train station. We travelled from Rome by railway on hard wooden benches after having landed at the military airport on one of the hottest days I remember. It was on that train that I had my first experience of the wonderful hospitality of Italians. We were not prepared for the hours it took on the train and it was thanks to an Italian family sharing what they had with them that we were able to eat and drink during that arduous journey. I have been a lover of the country and its people ever since.
Naples is probably a place that takes years for strangers to understand. It is both chaotic and wonderful with many secrets hidden around the corners that tourists seldom see. Yet there is one place that is by the sea that is a little corner of England. It is a famed Italian tie shop that is pretty much the same as it was when it opened in 1914.You cannot miss it. You will notice its old wood-framed windows, and through them you will see the chandelier, or its counter where red, blue, polka dot or diamond patterned ties are displayed. It is a place where you can often see film stars and British royalty mixing with the Italian locals who all buy this artisanal finery.
It is a kind of miracle that such a shop survived in a city that has always struggled with poverty and unemployment. The current head of the business is the grandson of the original entrepreneur who wanted to create ‘a little corner of England in Naples’ by offering men’s shirts and accessories with fabrics shipped directly from across the Channel.
Little by little, however, the tie became Marinella’s signature piece and the silk is still hand-printed in Macclesfield, England, and the ties themselves are sewn by hand in a workshop close to the boutique, which employs 20 seamstresses.
One loyal customer epitomises the similarities between an English and an Italian gentleman that I remember as a young person. Rudy Girardi now boasts thousands of Marinella ties that cost between €130 to €215 each. He changes his ties several times a day, selecting a colourful one in the morning, something a little more institutional in the afternoon, and an elegant option for upmarket dinners. Sadly, those are the days of mere memories for many people today when dressing smartly for the occasion was an artform now lost in the plethora of buy it, wear it, and dump it society that consumerism has spawned.
Marinella’s business has more orders than it can deliver and refuses to increase production. Each tie is a unique work of art and they even had to create one that was 65 centimetres longer than normal for the giant of a man, the late German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
Whilst we have companies such as Marinella in this frenetic world of business my hopes and dreams of the future may be able to survive.
And Finally
Ross and I do not subscribe to or use TikTok, and it was surprising to read an article about Jordana Grace, a British expat now living in Australia sharing the contents of a 1958 magazine that revealed 129 ways for a woman to ‘bag a husband’!
At risk of upsetting certain members of today’s society, the following are extracts from the article that highlights the top tips recommended to women of the time — from ‘dropping a handkerchief’ through to ‘learning how to paint’. Here are some of the examples quoted in a TikTok video:
Number 17. Be nice to ugly men because handsome is as handsome does
Number 23. Go to all your high school reunions because there could be widowers there
Number 25 that suggested going back to your hometown ‘because a wild boy next door might now be an eligible bachelor’
Number 30. Learn to paint and set up an easel outside of an engineering school, and
Number 34. Wear a Band-Aid so he can ask what’s wrong
Other tips included ‘carrying a hat box’ and dropping a handkerchief ‘because it still works’.
(A woman used to drop her handkerchief in front of a man in attempt to get his attention, and traces back as far as the Roman period).
Jordana Grace said the ‘best’ tip of all is number 40 — which suggested ‘standing in the corner and cry softly because they’ll come over and ask what’s wrong’.
Let Ross and me know if you have found any of these work in these crazy days of social media likes, swipes, and friends.
Normal service will be resumed next week, enjoy the week folks, and don’t forget to click on the ‘like’ button below, it really helps to motivate us.
