A (6:29)

Yeah, I couldn't agree more about the short term mindset. I've studied economics, finance, and accounting. And at the end of the day, even with the best intentions, a competent, capable and purpose driven CEO, a chief HR officer or any senior leader still has to balance doing good with making money. They look at the numbers, the bottom line and all the financial metrics. They ask how was our accounting income this quarter was our cash position. And eventually they make decisions, sometimes tough ones like cutting jobs. To them, it's ultimately just a number. It feels cold, but that's the reality of how these decisions are made. And yet in financial reports you always see the same message. People are our greatest asset. But let's be real. On the financial statements, people are not listed as assets. They are categorized as an expense item on the income statement, not something quantified on the balance sheet that drives revenue and income. So while the message says people first, the decision making still comes down to numbers. In the end, employees adjust. HR records sitting in the cloud Now I'm not saying this to discredit well intentioned HR leaders or CEOs is just the reality of how businesses operate before we get into work 3 institute and the solutions you're building for these big challenges, I want to take a step back and talk about your own career journey. You've observed these issues firsthand. And what about your personal experience? When you were fresh off college, studying psychology, working under different leaders and managers, what did that look like for you? Then you went to Harvard for your MBA and learned to be more innovative in your approach. Let's start with your early career. How did your experiences shape the way you see these challenges today and influence the solutions you're working on?

B (9:22)

Yeah, you highlight a really good point. Right? The reason why HR tends to get a bad rap from employees. Oh no, I'm getting called into the HR office which means I'm getting fired is because there is no positive signal coming from that department outside of I'm getting a paycheck, I'm getting paid. And most people recognize at this point that hr, their job is to protect the company from getting sued from any lawsuits that might come out of their employment. And so I think you're absolutely right that we need to evolve from. Well, we have been evolving from personnel to human resources and a lot of human centric human resource officers are now looking at it as people operations. Or how do we step away from terms like oh our people are an asset or human capital where it is just a number on a balance sheet to the actual human we're moving away from a contractual based employment to a partnership based employment. How do we Build that relationship in a way that honors their humanity. And I guess that's where I get started. I am very passionate about, again, that employee experience. How are we designing experiences that let employees bring their full selves to work, that are aware of their work life balance, that understand the nuances of the things that they are dealing with? And that became very apparent as I was graduating school. It was right in the middle of the pandemic. 2020 is a terrible year to graduate. I remember being so excited to walk at graduation, April of 2020 and the pandemic hit and we are. And here we are throwing our caps and gowns in our base like on a zoom call. But I entered the workforce fairly quickly. I started working with a consulting firm that eventually was merged with Mercer. And we were working with HR departments of large organizations who were dealing with next level real world pandemic issues with their employees. How do we keep our employees safe who still have to work? How do we bring a remote policy to the workplace that allows people to continue to work from home? They were forced to work from home, if you will. How do we design for a work life balance? And that's where I really started to cut my teeth in this industry of understanding. Here's what people are experiencing at work, here's why leadership is failing to meet those needs. And the book really serves as a red flag to to organizations who aren't focused on designing an experience for employees. If you still feel like they are just an asset and that you can tell them exactly what to do and they should be grateful to have a job because most don't and you promote them without pay or you fire them and lay them off in droves as we're seeing right now, or you force them back to the office against what their preferences are. We're seeing so many practices on display that are just going to destroy the cultures of organizations that are going to destroy the trust that employees have and it's going to lead to a great resignation 2.0 that is going to be so much worse than we've ever seen.

A (12:43)

You started with psychology, then went to business school and now you are in Web three. That's quite the journey. I'm curious about that transition, not just in the sense of switching jobs, but more about what shifted in your mindset. A lot of people see psychology as a soft skill field and tech as a hard skill domain. So what was it for you? Was there something about web3 that really fascinated you? Something that made you think this is the technology that can truly change the world for good. What was the trigger that pulled you into this uncharted territory? Coming from a psychology background, that transition.

B (13:39)

From soft skill to hard skill, from working with people to working on a very deep technological advance. So I can definitely see the interest there. And I don't think my raison debt ever changed. It is again, that employee experience. And when you really unpack, what do employees want and need out of work? It is evolving and a way that we sometimes are blind to. We have this entire younger generation who is interested in connecting with people digitally in a way that was, that didn't exist before. For example, my son, who's 8 years old, loves to play Roblox. He loves to play Fortnite, he loves to play Minecraft. And he created a friend group and a community with people all over the world that he's never actually met in person. But getting into this game has created an environment where they bond. They get to not just hang out at the mall, they get to go on adventures and discover new things. And so for me, web3 presents this blue ocean of opportunity where we can continue to like, live those psychological principles. And I guess the reason why we, my co founder and I, Deborah Perry Piccione, we are co authors of the book as well as co founders of the Work3 institute. Our main goal is to help marry workforce strategies with emerging technologies. There are so many technologies emerging right now, whether it's AI or Web3 or decentralization, blockchains, smart contracts, all of that is going to change the way that we work forever and for good. And we're helping those digital first companies take those first steps and pioneer the path forward. And that's when you start to see at the tail end of the pandemic, we saw all of these virtual office spaces working virtually. Wasn't that great? Because we often felt siloed. We were just on zoom calls. We couldn't be together. That's the reason why we're pushing for this RTO mandate right now. Return to the office because it's better in person. There are a lot of companies who are like, we can have the best of both worlds where we don't have to commute, we don't have to, we can save on gas, we can save on money, we can save time, we can work more and also be together. Because my digital avatar is sitting right next to your digital avatar in the coworking space. It feels like we've largely set that aside for now. That's not going to serve us that much. Let's all Just return to the office. And I would say that if you feel like the Metaverse is dead, you are greatly mistaken and you should continue to pay attention because of the expectations of employees.

A (16:26)

So would it be fair to say that the metaverse, web3 and all these emerging technologies are essentially bridges, tools that help us redefine the employee experience not just in one way, but in ways that that actually makes sense for our lives, our productivity, our outcome and our well being. Would you put it that way?

B (16:55)

Yeah. So we actually write in the book, we call it the 10 operating principles of work 3. These are the non negotiables of the modern day workforce. I work with people, leaders all over the world and I show them these principles. I say, can you offer any of your employees any of these today? And if the answer is no, why should they work for you? And they're really on a spectrum. There are some that are deeply technical, like interoperability. They want to jump from job to job, they want to mix and match several streams of income. They don't want to be a full time employee at your organization. They want to work on several different projects against across several different DAOs or decentralized autonomous organizations. And then there are stuff that is readily apparent today, like flexibility. There's flexibility, autonomy, ownership. How do we allow employees to work flexibly so that they can work on their circadian rhythm? Right. A lot of them are logging on at 9pm at night so that they can get some deep work done. Or they work really well in the morning before the kids are awake. Or they like being able to run out and pick up their kids from school at 3pm without skipping a beat. So it just is tragic to me to see that we are returning to the office so forcefully in this 9 to 5 structure instead of moving forward in a way that makes sense for the employee and their work life balance. Again, that's on this end of the spectrum of flexibility. There's this end of the spectrum that's interoperability. And all throughout. There are all the elements that you need to to design a better employee experience.

A (18:33)

You mentioned that you and Deborah, the co founder of workstreet Institute, worked on this book together with you. I know there's quite a story behind how this book came to be. Can you share that with us here?

B (18:50)

Yeah, it's quite an interesting story. I feel if you are writing a book with Harvard Business Review Press especially, it feels like a lot of times it would be. I've been a professor for many decades. My colleagues and I have written several books together. And so we're finally ready to write with hbr. That is the opposite of what happened with Deborah. And I was actually.

A (19:18)

That's the Web for today. We've broken down why traditional employment is crumbling and why companies need to wake up before they lose the best talent. But how do we actually rebuild work for the future? In the next episode, George takes us behind the scenes of his book Employment Instead. From a cold call to a major publishing deal. Don't miss it. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, don't forget, subscribe to our show, leave us top rated reviews. Check out our website and follow me on social media. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.