Quiet Quitting, Quiet Firing

Fiona Passantino, Mid-January 2023

“Quiet quitting” describes an employee who “switches off” psychologically; logging in, doing the bare minimum to avoid being fired or becoming burned out, and at the end of the day, logs off. No more weekend or evening work. “Quiet firing” is the other side of that coin, when a manager gives up on a team member, withdraws support, communication and guidance. Both are a result of our current environment and both can lead to toxicity in the long run. How to spot it and seven ways to turn the tide.

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Engagement is About the Details

Fiona Passantino, Late December 2022

Engagement Managers are often measured by how they move the needle on employee net promoter scores or attrition rates. But in fact, it’s all about the details. Conveying the feeling of being heard, seen, valued and respected in the workplace, and allowing for empowerment, inspiration and joy.

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The Dangers of “Burn-In”

Fiona Passantino, Early December 2022

An invisible, little-known phenomenon that affects high-functioning teams and is just as dangerous as burnout. How do you know if your team is in danger? Is your power team operating in an unsustainable state of perpetual over-delivery? Ways to dial it down.

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Speakers’ Pools

Fiona Passantino, Early November 2022

Speakers’ Pools are a great way to jump-start the process of fattening the leadership pipeline; taking very fresh voices and training them for very high-profile public speaking roles from a very early age. It’s a triple win: engagement goes up across the board, employer marketing gets a boost and it feels like a cool place to work for everyone. The CEOs are happy; one less thing to do. And the MCs? Engaged for life.

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Co-CreaPaloozas

Fiona Passantino, Late September 2022

In the Post-Covid world, we define our values as an organization, collectively. We can brainstorm together, in real-time, from step zero, with every person having a say. Enormous, collaborative co-creation sessions which weave together all voices of the community are the new Town Hall: the ‘Co-CreaPalooza’. 

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Personas

Fiona Passantino, Early September 2022

While the pandemic made us adjust to work from home, life after Covid forces us to be flexible about how we define the physical workspace and how this adds to the overall employee experience. Understanding the Four Basic working Personas and what motivates them to come into or avoid the physical office helps us capitalise on the benefits.

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Gamification

Fiona Passantino, Late August 2022

Gamification works for training, testing, awareness, problem solving and engagement and has the capacity to make mundane, repetitive tasks more enjoyable. And we still don’t use serious play in our ways of working. How to tap into the benefits of gaming in the workplace.

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Purpose

Fiona Passantino, Mid August 2022

“Purpose” is a co-production of everyone in the organisation; fluid, organic and constantly needs adjustment. How do you know your purpose fits all? The answer is invisible diversity, celebrating the different thinkers among us, and making the creation of purpose an annual town hall-style co-creation event for all. Seven ways to build a truly reflective purpose for all.

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Workload Reduction

Fiona Passantino, Early July 2022

During Covid, we all grew used to the erosion of work-life boundaries and the 5% productivity increase. We do more, take on more, work more hours, deliver more. We “engage” by suggesting mindfulness courses or yoga, which we join to be a team player. But the key to post-Covid engagement is conscious workload reduction: creating space for quality results, more creativity and joy that only time can allow. Five ways to lessen the load.

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Finding the Funny

Fiona Passantino, Early June 2022

Laughter. We know it reduces stress, eases tension and connects people. Doctors know that laughter helps with pain relief, muscle tension and overall immunity. But joy and laughter in the workplace increases productivity and lowers attrition. Teams that that laugh though stress and strain are more engaged and creative. Five ways to find the funny while still doing serious business.

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Navigating the Post-Covid Power flip

Fiona Passantino, Early May 2022

The post-Covid workplace may well be determined the workforce rather than the employer. Culture, engaged leadership, growth opportunities, constant listening and flexible work will become the new rules of the game; four ways to navigate the flip.

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The Day the Easter Bunny Came to Work

Fiona Passantino, Late April 2022

The post-Covid office is our playground. We have the chance to rebuild it in a way to meet our needs. Make it fun, perhaps a little silly at times so we don’t want to miss out on what crazy thing might happen next. The Office can offer something the home, with all its comforts and conveniences cannot. We can build a post-Covid workplace that pulls instead of pushes and delights rather than demands. 

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Handing back 5%

Fiona Passantino, Early April 2022

During the pandemic we saved time commuting, found our focus and got stuff done. Productivity levels increased 5%. When we return to the office, we’re back in traffic again, chatting with colleagues, subject to unplanned interruptions and new impromptu mini-projects. Our office days stretch well into the evening as we catch up on missed mails. Is the next step a conscious workload reduction as we return to work?

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The Workation

Fiona Passantino, Late March 2022

A true Workation is a working vacation; leaving one’s city or country for a week or longer, and working fully remotely using the video conferencing and visual collaboration tools that the pandemic brought us. With lockdown measures relaxing, the Workation may be here to stay well after the pandemic fades away.

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Understanding Flow

Fiona Passantino, Early March 2022

“Flow” contributes to increased job satisfaction and improvise our mental, physical and emotional well-being which naturally translates to higher levels of engagement and lower churn rates. The average workday, chock with meetings, incoming fire of communication, expectations and deliverables, needs to be carefully choreographed to create that all-important, critical ingredient for achieving “flow”: silence. 

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Radical Listening

Fiona Passantino, Late February 2022

“Radical Listening” means taking every opportunity to ask your community what they want across a variety of channels and delivering results within 48 hours, in some cases, with the small, “Listen and Deliver” tight loops, and within 6 months for the slow-burning Deep Listen. These listening channels have very different goals, deliver different data but together form a more accurate picture of the current state of engagement and helps build trust in the process of data collection.

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Employee FutureMapping

Fiona Passantino, February 2022

FutureMapping goes a step further than #succession planning. It means literally laying out the current org chart against the future state of the organization, asking the question: “This person’s vision, work ethic and ideas align with the future; what tools, training and experience will she need to get us there?”

Six ways to start FutureMapping today.

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Exploring New Work Models.
Fiona Passantino, Late January 2022

How do we go back to work “when all this is over”? A full physical return? Fully remote? Leave it up to the team, the individual? Covid has been a long, uncontrolled mass experiment in next-level flex working.

Exploring the many-headed “hybrid” hydra.

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NonBoarding.
Fiona Passantino, Early January 2022

Hiring managers have likely worked for a company for longer than three years. If so, they were onboarded in the light, which meant being there physically, going to an office, having predecessors to shadow, a digital services department to visit on the fifth floor and the IT department to ask for help setting up on the second. Onboarding in a fully remote context means mapping hundreds of stakeholders, interests, departments in your head, in two dimensions. Seven ways to get it right in the time of Covid, when new talent has choices.

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Here we are, now.
Fiona Passantino, December 2021

As we celebrate our entry into the year 2022, we understand that Covid will be with us for a while. Sharp divides have emerged in our communities along vax/novax lines.

But we have the creativity and resourcefulness to re-imagine a future that keeps the best part of what the pandemic gave us.

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Why EX is the new CX
Fiona Passantino, December 2021

In this talent-driven market, companies have to evaluate the value they offer their employees. Not just attracting fresh talent but keeping the current workers happy.

Welcome “EX”: the Employee Experience. And it is quickly outpacing CX (Customer Experience), as a corporate focus point in the Post-Covid age.

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Flipping the Org Chart
Fiona Passantino, November 2021

The people doing most of the talking and ideation should be the ones out doing the work, interacting with the customer. The people doing the most listening and implementing should be the leaders.

This means that the traditional, top-down org chart needs to be flipped on its head. Seven easy ways to build a high-functioning team.

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Another employee survey? Fine. But this time, do something.
Fiona Passantino, October 2021

Post-covid, the Great Resignation. Keeping employees happy and not quitting is now a matter of business survival.

Five tips on making employee engagement surveys work.

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Communicating Psychological Safety in the Workplace
Fiona Passantino, September 2021

Constructive conflict is good for a company.

A functional creative process weaves in friction, tension, a clash of ideas and converging solutions. It’s OK to disagree, even in a heated way, as long as we turn it into a constructive process.

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The Return
Fiona Passantino, August 2021

At this moment in our history, we have been given a unique, defining opportunity to re-think our definition of the physical office and fashion it into something truly human-centered.

Now is the time to embrace the “New Normal” and design our workplaces with empathy and intention.

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