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Addressing Job Dissatisfaction in the Workplace - CRMArch 260 image

Addressing Job Dissatisfaction in the Workplace - CRMArch 260

E260 · The Archaeology Podcast Network Feed
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Is there a solution to the current state of dissatisfaction in the workplace? The concept of dissatisfaction in the workplace has increased popularity of industries like culture advisors, professional coaches and development platforms, scheduling programs, management trainings, etc. From a company’s perspective, they are looking for a formula to fix the solution; however, the challenge is there are some issues that can neither be “fixed” and do not respond to formulas. What are the roles of employees and employers in addressing dissatisfaction and how will this period in our culture shape the future workplace?

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For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/crmarchpodcast/260

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Transcript

Introduction to Workplace Dissatisfaction

00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. This is the Serum Archaeology Podcast. It's the show where we pull back the veil of cultural resources management archaeology and discuss the issues that everyone is concerned about. Welcome to the podcast.
00:00:23
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the CRM archaeology podcast episode 260 for March 22nd, 2023. I'm your host, Chris Webster. On today's show, we talk about dissatisfaction in the workplace and what we can do to make it better. So go grab one of those donuts from the break room because the CRM archaeology podcast starts right now.
00:00:49
Speaker
Welcome to the show everyone. Joining me today is Andrew in Southern California. Hello everyone. And also Heather in Southern California. Hi everyone. And Heather,

The Rising Trend of Dissatisfaction

00:01:01
Speaker
it's your topic today. So what are we talking about?
00:01:05
Speaker
Well, the wonderful uplifting topic of dissatisfaction in the workplace. Oh, I think the sun just came out. Well, it's rainy. I just thought I'd go with the typical mood.
00:01:20
Speaker
rainy, dreary. So we see these, these articles are popping up all the time. You know, there's one, like I had one right, right now, it just happened to pop up. I guess it was listening to or watching me type this, this or getting prepared for this. Cause it just popped
00:01:39
Speaker
job unhappiness is at a staggering all-time high according to Gallup. So like you're seeing these pop up all the time, which actually kind of I think sometimes is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You know, we're being told that we're dissatisfied, so we should be dissatisfied. They read the article and go, I am dissatisfied. You're right. I don't feel it, but maybe there's something I'm not in tune with.
00:02:04
Speaker
But I actually do. I do think there's a lot there. I mean, I do think there's a lot of people that are unhappy in the workplace. I think it's really complex. I don't think that there's one answer. And I don't think that there's one category of people that are dissatisfied.
00:02:21
Speaker
like everything else in the last two years, everything's very complex in why people are reacting the way they are. And you know, I think some

Complex Causes of Dissatisfaction

00:02:31
Speaker
of it is just this concept, I call it like the snow day effect.
00:02:37
Speaker
So you got a snow day, right? And it was awesome. You found out why, you don't have to work. And then the next day you have to go back to school. Or maybe you got three days of snow day and now you have to go back to school. And now school really stinks. School wasn't bad, but now it's really bad. It wasn't that bad, but now it's really not enjoyable because you had these three days of snow days where you didn't have to do anything.
00:03:02
Speaker
And I know that's really simplifying the situation, but I do think that's part of the issue in the dissatisfaction because people went a long time without really having to work, although I never had that, unfortunately. I never stopped working. In fact, our work for us, it just got much more intense. So I think that that might be part of it. But I think another aspect is that it's like,
00:03:30
Speaker
The issue and the solution are working against each other to actually make this mountain out of a molehill in some respects. Do I think there's issues in the workplace? Absolutely. Definitely do. But I think that a few things that I want to talk about is what is it that
00:03:48
Speaker
people are dissatisfied with in the workplace. We see it on the boards all the time. And then I think that this concept of dissatisfaction has increased this, I'm seeing the popularity of these little niche industries like culture advisors, professional coaches, development platforms, scheduling platforms, management,
00:04:12
Speaker
trainings. And actually, I think number one, it's creating a lot of stress. Number two, we've got some companies that are actually kind of getting manic with their response to how to create a better culture. And then they're trying to create it with a formula. And when you're dealing with people's feelings, formulas don't really work. And personally,

Culture Creation vs. Real Feelings

00:04:33
Speaker
these companies take, I mean, I'm talking about like these little niche industries,
00:04:39
Speaker
Companies are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on trying to create this perfect culture. And we've talked about this before, but they're trying to create this perfect culture. And some of the wages are going up, but you're spending all this money on this and you're not increasing just with inflation. You're spending money on all these extras where you could just be giving your workers more money.
00:05:08
Speaker
And some people say, well, you know, the numbers say, the statistics say that yes, obviously, you know, people making money, more money is important, but how satisfied they are in the workplace and how they feel, I don't know, you know, how much they appreciate the culture in the workplace.
00:05:30
Speaker
is as important as how much they make. And so companies are reacting to that by having all these other programs, which not all are created equal. A lot of them do not work. In fact, they make the situation worse. So that's what I wanted to... I first wanted to get your guys' idea on all of this and whether or not you're seeing it.
00:05:54
Speaker
I mean, yeah, I absolutely see this kind of stuff. And I have to say it all this stuff, just all of it, it all drives me crazy. I think it is just the most idiotic waste of time crap. I mean, it's it's.
00:06:09
Speaker
It's like the movie Office Space. You know, it's just it's that insane where it's just like, come on, it's just it's just a cliche wrapped in another cliche. You know, I mean, let me interrupt. Please send emails to Andrew at. Just kidding. Exactly. Exactly. No, it's just it's like.
00:06:32
Speaker
I think of like I think of my grandparents generation. You know, it's like it's like my grandfather was a very, very young man during the depression and he worked his entire life in the railroad. I don't know if he was interviewed about his job dissatisfaction level. You know what I mean? Like and I understand we don't want to be taken advantage of, you know, if you're not making enough money. I understand that certain things about your job get you down.
00:06:57
Speaker
Certain things about my grandfather's job working on the railroad for like 40 years,

Job Security and Career Progression

00:07:01
Speaker
I think got him down, but you have to deal with it. You have to have a little mind like you make your own satisfaction. You know, you're not just some passive person, you know, it's like.
00:07:13
Speaker
My job could really suck if I made it really suck. If that makes sense. If I complained about like everything about my job that is a bummer. And dude, I could. I mean, there are certain things about my job. It's not it's not a sunny, happy day every day, but I don't. And it's not that I'm just some weird, like extra positive person or something. I just have perspective.
00:07:38
Speaker
And I'm like, OK, that part sucks, but I'm going to focus on this part that's better and I'm going to be a professional. I'm going to be a grown up. I don't need a life coach, although I'm thinking of starting my own life coaching industry. Hey. And, you know, this this false creation of some job culture thing, it's like, don't waste your money. Do it yourself. It's about being a human being.
00:08:03
Speaker
Okay. I got some thoughts on that, Andrew. First off, the world is a very different place than it was 80 years ago, 50 years ago, 30 years ago, right? Like things evolve and change in our, well, it is, it is. We're talking like almost like metaphysically here, you know, like at its base, like what makes, you know, what makes human beings, it's like,
00:08:26
Speaker
how we treat our workforce and how we see work in general, a lot of those ideas have just really, really evolved. And one of the things I've been taking some notes here on our little Trello card for things I want to say for this episode, just based on this topic and trying to think about reasons why some people could be dissatisfied. There's the common ones for archaeology and CRM in general, which are lack of security. I would say that's probably the biggest one.
00:08:51
Speaker
Even if you're working for a great company that seems to have a lot of work, you could be out of a job tomorrow with no notice whatsoever because something changed above your pay grade and you no longer have a job. That is hanging over the head of literally everybody working in this industry. Literally everybody. You could argue that it's hanging over the head of every employee in every industry.
00:09:14
Speaker
I feel like some just have a little more security than others, right? And maybe some have less security, but we're talking about this industry. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. And we've all, everyone here has experienced that. I've experienced the like guess what don't come in on Monday. Yeah. But, but that's.
00:09:29
Speaker
That's very different than many years ago when you're working in a factory, you're working on the railroad, you're working on something like that. That job seemed like it would never go away, right? And people were living off these pensions from Ford and other places thinking, we will never get laid off because this is the most secure industry in the world. And then guess what?
00:09:47
Speaker
Thousands of people get laid off several decades later, but you know, during the golden age, it was the career to have, you know, to, to do this guy. I grew up in Seattle where if you got a job at Boeing as a 20 year old, you were set for life. That

Work-Life Balance Post-COVID

00:10:01
Speaker
was the thought. And it's still, it's still kind of is that way that culture just permeates throughout the whole region. And yet still Boeing routinely just lays off 10,000 people when they don't get enough orders for a jet.
00:10:11
Speaker
You know what I mean? Like my, my example too was almost pre golden age. This is almost depression era where it was not, you know, like, Oh, I just have my job for life. It was like, you're the best one. If you are not a dumb comeback. Just because nobody was writing articles about work culture back then doesn't mean people were happy. You know what I mean? Like working, working on the railroad all day long in the depression. I mean, couldn't have been super awesome. You know what I mean? Like my point.
00:10:41
Speaker
my point is that of course it sucked. People looked at work differently. Yeah. Like now it's like people, the one thing that I like about my job is that I do have major entrepreneurial tendencies and I'm able to exercise that, but still have a regular job. So that's
00:11:00
Speaker
That's nice. Not every CRM company or environmental firm is like that. I enjoy that part of it, but I think that sometimes we put way too much focus on work to give us that satisfaction. Remember back in the day when Google and Apple were creating a
00:11:20
Speaker
And they still do this, but they were the first companies to do this where they created this, this society around the work. Right. So you would stay there. You could, you would be fed, you could work out there. You could, you could, you'd start early, early in the morning and leave late. Yeah. It was a community. Now companies, a lot of companies have done that, but they didn't do it in a really good way. They didn't think it out thoroughly. Right. So, so now a lot, most, I mean, I don't know,
00:11:50
Speaker
I think a lot of people are in this spot now where you're working early, early in the morning until late at night and that is your life. And so now this creates all these other issues. When you had back in the day, like what Andrew was talking about, although they had long work days too, but you would go walk in, you'd do your job and then you would be done and you'd go home. There was clear distinction between work
00:12:18
Speaker
and the rest of your life. And that's gone now because of COVID. And so now they have all these blurred lines. And if you had dissatisfaction in your life, in your just life outside of work, it's starting to blur into work. And if you have dissatisfaction in work, oh my goodness, does it ever.
00:12:38
Speaker
into your personal life. And it's very hard to separate these. And I think that's part of the issue with the dissatisfactions because, you know, they're saying the major things with dissatisfaction is unmanageable workloads.
00:12:54
Speaker
which I definitely am a victim of, right? So the problem is that as we have people quitting, it's just putting more emphasis or more work on those that are still working. So you have like crazy workloads. You never have this thing where, wow, I had these tasks today and I got them all done. And the satisfaction of that was a job well done today.
00:13:17
Speaker
You can't do that. No matter how much you accomplish, you accomplish way more than you would have two years ago in a single day. You still can't be satisfied that you finished everything. It's because it's unending. And then, you know, so you have the burnout, then you have managers, you have people in management positions that have no business. Now that's always been an issue. But now when they are managing, whether they are doing it intentionally or not, whether
00:13:43
Speaker
they're managing not only your work environment, but your home and personal environment because it's all bleeding together. That makes a bad manager even worse, especially when they're trying to cover their butt all the time.
00:14:01
Speaker
Right. And we, you know, we have to acknowledge too that we're talking about two, maybe three very different levels of employment. If we're talking about CRM, right? Like you, you are, you do a lot of office work, you do a lot of project management, you do a lot of report writing. And I totally understand the whole,
00:14:18
Speaker
you know, not being able to finish your task list thing because you can put one report to bed and you've got, okay, great, this one's done, I've sent it off, you know, comments are finished, we're just gonna, you know, archive that folder and it's, you know, put it on the share drive and it's done, right? But you've got six other concurrent reports or 10 or 20 other concurrent reports that you're still working on and the task list just never ends and that moment of satisfaction gets shorter and shorter and shorter.
00:14:45
Speaker
Yeah, because you've just got a mountain of stuff sitting right next to it that just has to be done. And with field techs, it's of course very different a lot of times, right? Because they don't have these current things. They're working on a project and they're out there, but they also have

Personal Responsibility and Career Growth

00:15:01
Speaker
I think their dissatisfaction likely comes from again, the lack of security, but not only the lack of security momentarily in the job that they're in, but their entire career. Because what, what does it look like? Yeah. Everybody talks about, Oh, you need to save and prepare for retirement. How does a field tech retire? Right? They have to end up as a PI or owning a company or something like that. And even then retirement is on shaky ground, right? Like retirement is not a thing that people in their twenties right now are going to have in the traditional sense, unless they're,
00:15:30
Speaker
making investments and they're being told that, but they don't have the money to make investments, right? They're not being paid enough or they're not managing enough because they weren't taught how to do that. And it's just incredibly, incredibly stressful. So what does that lead to? Well, it leads to thinking about your side hustle. What are you going to do to bring in extra money? And then sometimes that's a passion. Sometimes it's Uber, who knows? But it's like, whatever that is, starts taking precedence over your work in your mind as I would rather be doing this thing
00:15:58
Speaker
than doing this means to an end over here, where we all started in archaeology as a passion. I mean, you don't get into this field without really wanting to do it. It's a passion field to start with, but then when you get into it... I do it just for the money. I'm into it for the cash. Well, exactly. I mean, you are, and the paintball wars. I know that. Yeah. Just so you know. Yeah.
00:16:17
Speaker
But Andrew, that's where you're a little different too, right? Because you said that sometimes you are dissatisfied. Sometimes things don't go right, but you don't dwell on it. But you are in one of those positions. And I know we've heard Bill talk about this. We have heard you talk about this. There's always the other side of the coin. I've always looked at being a professor as elbow patches and corduroy jackets and walking through ivy covered buildings.
00:16:42
Speaker
Yeah. And, and that, that whole, Oh, I'm just going to walk in, say a bunch of things and then walk out and then have, you know, students write, I love you on their eyelids. Right. That's, that's all that I, I've seen professors about. Right. Wait, wait, wait. That doesn't happen for everyone.
00:16:58
Speaker
That's your fate. I know. But then there's the reality behind being a professor. And there's all the extra work and the stuff that you don't see. But still, there's a romantic side of it that's like, oh, I'm a college professor. And that's your long-term vision. And field techs just don't have that.
00:17:17
Speaker
See, that's, you know, I think, I think I'm guessing when we come back, I have a couple of things I think I could, I could say about that. Like, like how to, how to deal to make it a little bit less to satisfying. All right. That sounds like a good break point. We'll be back in a minute. Welcome back to the CRM arc podcast episode two 60. Hope you're not dissatisfied with us yet. We're talking about actually workplace and what causes it and how we're rid of it. But Andrew, you had some comments, what I was saying on the end of segment one.
00:17:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's good. I'm here to bring everybody back up with my life coaching skills. So in terms, you know, this is just what I've seen over the years in in CRM in terms of kind of the job dissatisfaction thing, because we know it's a real thing. And we see so many people get kind of like bitter. But for younger people out there, I think
00:18:10
Speaker
There's a couple of ways to deal with this, just to know the score. I think so many of us, we want to invest in our job and define ourselves as our job. You know, we're talking about the college professor thing, you know, and how it has that kind of romance to it. And being a CRM archaeologist has its own romance too, actually. It sounds very cool. Like if you're talking to other people, what do you do? I'm an archaeologist. Wow. That's really awesome.
00:18:35
Speaker
But I think the hard part for a lot of people getting into CRM is they're in academia, and then they kind of go into the CRM world, and they don't have that business sense to treat it like just as a business, if that makes sense. And I know it's hard, especially when you're young. It's hard, but you got to be like, you got to get a lay of the land. Like, OK, what are the seven CRM firms that are working locally? Which ones are the good ones? Which ones are the bad ones? Which ones are a good fit for me?
00:19:04
Speaker
It's not going well, have enough knowledge about other local CRM firms to reach out to another one, quit the first one and then like move to the better one. And it's just when you quit, they'll try and give you grief. And you're just like, hey, man, just business. And they'll hire you back when they need you. You know what I mean? They always do. The other thing I notice is, especially with young people, they don't come in thinking about the structure of CRM, how
00:19:32
Speaker
You can start in the field versus in the office. What are the like levels of CRM? They just have a vague outlook of like, oh, I just want to be in archaeology. So even if you just something as simple as knowing those levels, know what it takes to move up in CRM. Is that something you want? Being honest with yourself, you know, that kind of stuff. I know it sounds like it's cliche ridden, but like
00:19:58
Speaker
I see so many people not knowing the structure of CRM as a business and dealing with it as a business because I think if you can, you will be less dissatisfied because you are dealing with it in reality and not with a dream where you're
00:20:16
Speaker
the dream that's not even based on how it really works. And then my last

Realistic Goals and Entrepreneurship

00:20:21
Speaker
bit in terms of retirement and stuff, you can do it even if you have very little money. Like we had a podcast on that fairly recently, right? How to invest, which you really can with very little money. Anyway, Heather, what's up? Yeah. Just along this line of thinking is that
00:20:36
Speaker
You have to have goals. You have to get, you can't just, and I see a lot of this where people are just, they're just jumping into the workplace and expecting the employer or somebody else to, to lay out this, you're going to do this and then you're going to do this. And then you're going to do this now in your day to day function and the tasks that you have to do. Yes. But when it comes to your career, that is up to you to do. And you can't just be a bystander in your own career. So true.
00:21:06
Speaker
part of the dissatisfaction is that people don't have this mark that they're working towards. I think that even goes into when it comes to money. Like if you don't know, really haven't done your homework and you don't know really what is a fair market value for you with your skillset at this time in your career, you're going to be dissatisfied with any
00:21:31
Speaker
money that you make. Really. So you have to have a good sense of what is reasonable for where you live. And like, you know, I see this a lot posted, well, you know, they're making 17 an hour in, I don't know, Missouri. I'm just picking a state and they're making, you know, 25, 30 an hour in California. Well, I
00:21:55
Speaker
I would actually venture to say that 17 an hour in Missouri probably goes further than 30 an hour in California. And, you know, there's so many aspects to what you make an hour in this industry. Now I'm not saying 17 hours. Okay. But what I'm saying is you have to look and really do your homework. What is it? What does it take this? What kind of life do I want? Number one,
00:22:19
Speaker
What do I want right now? And you have to be reasonable. You are 22 years old. You just finished your college experience. You have a degree and you have no skills. I have news for you. You have no skills. You have no practical skills. I didn't say none, but you do have a limited
00:22:37
Speaker
practical skills because you haven't exercised this knowledge that you have gained. That's what the workforce, that's what entry-level jobs are for, is for you to get a practical sense of what you just learned in school.
00:22:52
Speaker
Now look at that and say, okay, I want to have this life be reasonable. What is that going to take? What number is that going to take? And then you aim at that number. If people did this more methodically, I think they would be much more satisfied because it'd be like, okay, I made that mark. Great. Now what's my next goal? But a lot of people don't do that. They just want to sit back and let the company do it for them and then complain for the sake of complaining.
00:23:22
Speaker
Yeah, they just, I love that word methodically. That's what it is. You can't be passive. You have to have a method to your future. That is the perfect term, methodically.
00:23:36
Speaker
I think a part of this, though, is also something I didn't actually realize until I started working more full time in another field. It's not even archaeology related. To me, it's less about what number am I shooting for in this field, but it's more about what kind of lifestyle do I want to live. And you can't just say, I want to live in a $25 million mansion, right? Because that's not realistic.
00:23:59
Speaker
I know, but that's not to say that shouldn't be one of those far off goals, right? I mean, that could be a goal, but it can't be the first step in your goal, right? That has to be, that has to be step 100 because you could get there through various means. But realistically, what do I want right now for my lifestyle? And you know, for me,
00:24:20
Speaker
I mean, to be honest with you, archaeology simply wasn't cutting it. And there was a lot of opportunities that I had and a lot of different things I could do. I could have easily worked for somebody else and probably been a project manager and been doing these things. But I'm like, well, do I want to be working 60 hours a week and still kind of making this amount of money, maybe a little bit more? Like, is that worth it for my lifestyle? To me, that wasn't right. And I wanted something else that would allow me to work from home, full time, work from anywhere because my home is mobile.
00:24:50
Speaker
And just, you know, be able to do whatever I want to do. And whenever I want to do it, take time off. When I want to take time off, I don't like asking people for time off. I really don't. I never have. That's why I've been an entrepreneur and a business owner my whole life pretty much. And, and I just, I want to control those things, but that's what makes me happy. You know what I mean? So if security and going into a job and seeing your coworkers every day,
00:25:15
Speaker
makes you happy, then that's what you have to find as long as you can do it and pay your bills and maybe there's some upward mobility, but then some people don't even want that. They just want something that's nice and secure and consistent, and that's what makes them happy. So I think finding that out for your own self is the first thing you've got to do. Otherwise, you're always going to be dissatisfied with whatever you're doing because it doesn't make you happy.
00:25:41
Speaker
Along those lines,

Adapting to Job Expectations

00:25:42
Speaker
one of the notes I wrote was entrepreneurship. I feel like in the United States especially, we have this kind of feeling that in order to really be successful, you have to start your own job. You have to start your own business. You have to do your own thing. You have to be your own boss. We hear that all the time.
00:25:59
Speaker
First off, not true. I mean, it could be, but it's really hard. So you have to be willing to go through that journey to create your own things because there's a lot of stress and a lot of hardship on the way there unless you invent something that everybody wants, which is, you know, that's a one in a million. But it's really difficult to go off on your own and do that. And it might not be what you thought it was going to be, but it could be, you know, it very well could be. But I feel like a lot of people might be thinking about that, especially if a little bit of dissatisfaction creeps into their workplace, whatever they're doing.
00:26:28
Speaker
And they've got this great idea or this thing that they're kind of doing and maybe have done a little bit of in the past. And they keep thinking, well, if I could just devote a little more time to this, then I could make it really take off. You know, I don't know how many times I've had that thought. You know what I mean? If I could just focus a little more on this thing, like the archaeology podcast network, I could say no to everything else. And you know what? The fact is it's true, but it's really hard to get there. It's really hard to do that.
00:26:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's tough. And, you know, Chris, I mean, that was just a lot of philosophy for a Sunday morning. You know, that was that was tough on me. But I think you that's as religious as I get. Yeah, I think you nailed it with that, though, because just with your experiences and what you said, you talked about steps that just goes along with the methodically thing we said before, you know, it's like you sat there. You're like, you know what? In order to be happy, I thought deeply about this. I thought about what
00:27:24
Speaker
steps it would take. You know, I mean, I remember I've probably told this story here at some point. My big deal, like 20 years ago, 25 years ago, was to be a teaching assistant. Like that was my frickin dream.
00:27:39
Speaker
Right. I was like, if I could only be a teaching assistant, that is the coolest thing ever. And when I finally was like, it was such a feeling of accomplishment. And it's it's about those kinds of steps for yourself of noting those steps and then making the step and then getting to the next one. Right. And that's.
00:28:03
Speaker
It's funny. It's so simple but tough at the same time. But that's what matters. That deep dive. What do I truly want? Again, insert every cliche. But that's what matters. Make the list. Make the list today for yourself. What do you want out of life?
00:28:18
Speaker
And I think you can check off some of those boxes by working for a CRM company and being in this job, right? Because if you're looking at maybe even some small investments like we've talked about, like drop $10 into Stash every week or something like that, or whatever investment thing you want, it's low risk depending on what you're investing in.
00:28:37
Speaker
But if you're only dropping $10 a week and then you lose all that, yeah, you know, that's okay. That could happen, right? But, but it still gives you that sort of that, that little half step of accomplishment. Like I'm, I'm providing for my future and the younger you are, the less you can put in, right? Because you've got a lot more time to think about it. If you're starting kind of like I did in my forties, then you've got less time. It's just

The Role of Management

00:29:02
Speaker
biology.
00:29:02
Speaker
And that's more stressful for me, right? So if I'd started doing this in my twenties, it would be, you know, I would feel a lot less stressed about it if I had done it right. But the point is you can use your current job and see your current job as a good thing and as a, as a step towards the goals that you want to have. And you know, I mean, everybody knows whatever job you're in right now, you're probably not going to retire from your whatever career you're in, in that job. That's just not the culture we live in anymore.
00:29:29
Speaker
And work is not 20 to 30 years in one spot and then I retire. It's just not. I mean, more than likely, like Heather, you work for a great company, but that company, I mean, statistically in the next 10 years is probably going to be purchased by another company. And will that company still have the same culture? Will everything you have right now that you like about your job still exist when that other company buys it? I mean, it's almost inevitable that it's going to get bought.
00:29:56
Speaker
You know, I mean, our company has changed. It's changed since, you know, we were, you know, it was a small company. It was, it had an ethos that was created by its founder and the people that he had hired early on, which made this company great. Things changed though. You know, we are now an ESOP and
00:30:17
Speaker
There's definitely a shift, and a lot of companies are going through this shift, and it's not always positive. I think we may be taking on the other for the next segment, but I think
00:30:30
Speaker
I really would like to focus on, I mean, we're talking about being intentional and we're talking about like really putting a goal in front of us, but I would also like to, you know, talk about these extras that companies are starting, you know, the culture and trying to create a culture that's positive.
00:30:51
Speaker
And really, is it positive? Is it effective? And is it necessary? Because now we're opening up a whole... When you start creating a culture like that, you're putting a lot on your personal satisfaction in the workplace. And yeah, I'd like to talk a little bit more about that.
00:31:13
Speaker
Yeah. In segment three, let's definitely talk about that, that work culture and that, that they try to fix from the top down and then also that sense of community. But in the last couple of minutes of this segment, I want to talk about real quick. One of those things, because Heather, before we started recording, you were mentioning some of the articles coming down, talking about, you know, how do we fix all these algorithmic solutions to try to fix culture in the workplace and dissatisfaction and stuff like that. And sometimes it's, Oh, we need more, you know, celebrations and company gatherings and things like that. But
00:31:42
Speaker
A lot of times companies have to really take a hard look within and look at the people that are managing the people that are dissatisfied. And maybe the people that are managing those people, right? It could just be, you've got one shitty person in a position that is just either not equipped with the tools to manage effectively or just sucks at managing to begin with. Maybe they just don't have the attitude for it.
00:32:06
Speaker
That's the problem is that these companies are trying to, because you know, a lot of times people become managers because they've been in the company for a long time. They have committed themselves. Yeah. They've committed themselves as, I don't know. I mean, like

Organic Culture Growth

00:32:21
Speaker
they've said, we fought into this company and we're going to, we're going to tow the company line. And so the company from another perspective looks and says, okay, this is a good manager.
00:32:33
Speaker
or good material for management and they hold on. I mean, you see it a lot where you have a toxic manager who is chasing people away and a company keeps them in their spot. Why is that? It is really mind boggling to me and to others, which then just perpetuates
00:32:54
Speaker
additional departures, good people that you're losing because of one person. And not that you need to get rid of that one person, maybe that person needs to be shifted to another role. They're just not good in this role. And I think part of it is that it used to be managers were delegators.
00:33:12
Speaker
Not that that's the right way to go. I don't think it was ever the right way to go. To me, managers are coaches. Managers are people that help people grow as a professional. And then because of that, the work product is better in kind of a simplified way. But then when you have somebody who's just not aimed toward that, either they're just a selfish person and they just want to be a manager because they want that title.
00:33:39
Speaker
That happens a lot, right? Then what a company does is they say, okay, well, we're going to make this person a good manager. If their personality and if their intentions as a manager aren't pure, I don't care what kind of programs you put them through. It's not going to happen. I've seen it where you have a manager who has been taught to care.
00:34:02
Speaker
You should care about the people that you're managing. And so it's so disingenuous because you're sitting here as the employee and this person is trying, is telling you that they really care about you. Yet when you're talking, they're taking all these notes down about sitting there going, okay, what I'm like, you're asking me to open up to you because you say you care about me, but what are you going to use against me later on down the road? And it's like,
00:34:30
Speaker
You cannot create a good manager. You can take a raw skill set and teach them how to become a better manager. But if somebody's not a good manager or their motivations are not pure or correct, you'll never change that.
00:34:46
Speaker
Yeah, that is the longest road. You know, I think, Heather, I think you put like the nail in the coffin in terms of this stuff. I was just thinking about it. And I think a terrible manager is the number one reason I left every job I ever had in CRM. It was that.
00:35:05
Speaker
It like even in academia on archaeology projects and stuff that it's almost I think it might be the only reason and I left plenty of things. It was that every time it was horrible managers. Yeah, that's it.
00:35:19
Speaker
All right. Well, on that cheerful note, let's take our final break and come back on the other side and see if we can fix this back in a minute. Welcome back to the Serum Archaeology Podcast, Episode 260, talking about dissatisfaction in the workplace. And as we said in the last segment, in this one, we're going to talk about
00:35:38
Speaker
that culture that the workplace tries to create, I guess, is for lack of a better way to say it usually comes from the top down or from HR or from somebody depending on how big your company is. It comes from somebody who probably read a study or paper or if it's HR, they have their own certifications and like HR conferences and how to make the workplace better and stuff like that. And I got to say,
00:36:02
Speaker
That doesn't work on me, right? I work for a company that does those kinds of things, not because there's people that are dissatisfied. I'm sure there are. There aren't any company of any size. There's several thousand employees in the company that I work for. And some people are going to be unhappy. And the HR is always trying to figure out, well, why and how do we fix it? How do we make it so you want to stay here and you want to do things? And in the era of post-COVIDness,
00:36:27
Speaker
That's even more difficult because most of this company now works for remote full time. They committed to that. They got rid of office buildings. They got rid of places where people were going, acknowledging that people wanted to work from home and trying to create a culture and a community of people that work remotely is incredibly difficult.
00:36:44
Speaker
So they're always doing these things and like the company that I really kind of work for, the one that was purchased by the parent company, they're in Australia. And a lot of them also work remotely, right? Most of them actually work remotely. And not only are they spread out across Australia and New Zealand, but they work remotely to begin with. They do have offices in the big cities, Auckland, Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, but those offices are like, we work offices and they have a certain number of spaces and you sign up to say, I want to go into the office today. Or maybe certain teams will meet like once a week or once every other week.
00:37:14
Speaker
and they'll just come together physically in the same space just because they can get more done in that period of time. But it's periodic and not very often. But the thing is, you know, they're always doing these like, they used to have pub nights where they would go to trivia as teams, you know, at a bar or something like that. You didn't have to go, but if you wanted to go, you went with your coworkers who quickly became friends. And they're still doing that, but they're doing it virtually now. You know, you grab a few drinks, you can have your family around if you want and help you out.
00:37:42
Speaker
You know, you join these teams and they do trivia over, you know, over teams or zoom, something like that, basically. And they're still trying to do those sorts of things and they do other little things that they try to keep people happy for. Like it's required that you take a day off on your birthday. If your birthday falls on a weekend, you take a Monday or a Friday. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. It's one of your, it's one of your vacation days that you just get.
00:38:05
Speaker
And they just, they try to do all these things and some of it works and some of it doesn't. And then the parent company that's here in North America, they do some of the more traditional corporate things. I much prefer the way the Australians handle the company, but the North American side, they're doing, you know, you always see these little emails come out about, you know, here's how to make yourself
00:38:24
Speaker
happier and literally happier and more satisfied. I've seen in emails with that title, not just with work, but like in life in general. And it's like, where are you getting this? Like the HR playbook? Like where, where is this actually just in genuine genuine?
00:38:39
Speaker
Oh my gosh. One of the things I've always wanted from a workplace is friends. I don't even want employees and coworkers. I want people that I'm willing to call up outside of work and say, hey, I'm going to go on a hike this weekend. You want to go with me and do things like that.
00:38:56
Speaker
I tried to create that while maintaining that managerial separation when I've had big crews of my own on work sites where my company was running the project. We always did crew dinner. That's one of the things I always did. We did crew dinner once during the 10-day, usually the day before the end of the 10-day session. I took everybody out to dinner and we just had a good time. We just had a good time. There was no talk about work. There was no anything else.
00:39:20
Speaker
It was just, let's all go out to dinner. Company's covering it and get whatever you want. It doesn't even matter. That's just one of the little things. I never tried to do anything that was disingenuous, but I love playing Monopoly. I don't know why people hate that game or love that game. I love that game. I love that game too. I know. We had Monopoly nights all the time.
00:39:42
Speaker
Yeah, I've got pictures on my photo roll that come up every once in a while on my phone of me and people that were working for me, playing Monopoly at the end of a work day, you know, in the evening, you know, having some drinks, having some beers, some wine, whatever, and playing Monopoly and having a great time doing it. And it was just really fun. And that's the kind of thing that I want to have in my workplace with my coworkers. I want them to be friends. And man, setting that up and getting people to that point,
00:40:10
Speaker
is so hard when there's so much work to do and you don't have time to do that. Because sometimes it can be seen as, well, we're going to do this thing as a work group in the evening. We're going to all go out and, I don't know, go to a bar, go bowling, do something as a group as like a team building thing.
00:40:25
Speaker
But all people see that as is, well, shit. Now, if I don't go, I'm the asshole. But if I do go, that's just more time away from my personal time or my family and what I really want to do. And it's seen as disingenuous. So I don't know. Heather, you're more in that corporate atmosphere. How do you guys deal with that?
00:40:41
Speaker
Well, I would say how I deal with it is different than, I'm not, I don't agree with everything the company I work for is doing right now. But I know that they're trying, but I think the thing is you cannot force culture. And I don't think they realize, like I've said this a lot, I've said it even on this podcast, we say it a lot at work.
00:41:02
Speaker
I'm like, I don't think people realize that this culture thing is a real gas, is a potential for gaslighting. When you are pushing a culture and you're saying, we have this culture, we're amazing, yay, yay, rah, rah, whatever your company is, and you are constantly saying, you know, isn't this an amazing company where this, where that, where this, where that, and then you have people that are like, wait a minute, I'm not experiencing that.
00:41:28
Speaker
I don't experience that at all. In fact, I feel completely the opposite because that's not what the company's trying to communicate. Then you feel like just like you feel like the asshole because you're the one who doesn't want to go to dinner or you're the one who's not feeling the culture right now. The more that a company tries to create a culture, the less genuine it is.
00:41:50
Speaker
You have to let it happen organically. You really do. And you can set up opportunities for the culture to happen, but you cannot say, okay, this is our culture and we are going to be this, this, and this. You can say that is our goal, but you can't come out and say, it's just like,
00:42:09
Speaker
I don't know. I want to be the best singer in the world, right? You see this with whatever, you see these crazy people that go try out for America's Got Talent or whatever. And they come in and they're like, I am the best singer. And this concept that if I believe it, it will be
00:42:28
Speaker
That's not the way it works. You can have a goal in front of you and say, I want this, but you're still off tune. You're still a terrible singer. I'm getting a little off track, but I think that it is a dangerous thing when a company says that this is our culture without saying we are working towards this culture.
00:42:48
Speaker
These types of things have always been this way. Think about it, bowling leagues. Companies back in the 40s, there's always been opportunities for people to do things with each other that they work with outside of work.
00:43:06
Speaker
You know, the one thing I was just talking to somebody at work on Friday about it is that, you know, you have all these opportunities, they put wellness Wednesday, they have all these, you know, you can meditate for 15 minutes, you can do this, you can do that, you can have a barbecue, you can...
00:43:22
Speaker
they have these different programs where they have an hour here, an hour there. And what they don't realize is that from an employee's perspective, they're believing, oh, I should do this. This is what the company is pushing. And when your company is focusing solely on culture,
00:43:41
Speaker
Like, there's got to be balance. If you're not putting, you're not balancing that out with just hardcore, what do we do to do well at our product, to put out a product that's good, that we're training our employees to
00:43:58
Speaker
produce well what we are being paid to do. And you put so much focus on culture, there's an imbalance there. And now you have like, sometimes I've seen it where people are like, okay, I accept that invitation and that invitation. And before you know it, they're doing 20 hours a week of culture stuff on 20 hours a week on their workload. You know, it's just,
00:44:25
Speaker
when they start bombarding employees, employees don't know how to react to it. And then there's no guidance, right? Because if you say, well, wait a minute, you're only allowed this many hours per week. Oh, well, we don't want to do that. We don't want to put a limit. We want people to do what they feel they need to do. Yeah, but that's not what, you know, it's like two different messages that people don't, the company does not realize how the employees are taking their message. And
00:44:51
Speaker
now you have a company that's focused on their culture instead of their product. And when it comes to a company, that's number one, your product. Your product should be number one. And honestly, I think every worker
00:45:04
Speaker
who's a good worker, which I think most people are, just want to go to work and produce the product, whatever it is they're getting paid for. That's what they want to do. Now, if there's little extras, great, but the company should not be focused on those extras primarily. It should be focused on the product with these others as supplemental.
00:45:24
Speaker
Right. And I would just say that the whole like we're so great. We have a great culture. It's just a false framework to begin with, you know, and it's like every every company now has to have their false framework and they're all scrambling to put their false framework on. And you can see it on like their website. You know, we're the happy fun company.
00:45:44
Speaker
and as you're saying it's total gaslighting because as you experience it you're like wait this isn't happy or fun you're not a happy fun company but it's just the entire framework is false to begin with and so you're just sort of stuck with another
00:46:00
Speaker
waste of time where I think it's right, Heather, underneath it all. It's like you want to do a good product. You want to be proud of the product you make. And then like Chris was saying, and then you can have outlets to make friends naturally in good time using good managers. That would be great.
00:46:18
Speaker
OK, so what are we leading down to here? What are we coming to through this whole conclusion? Is there anything that companies can do to really do this in a genuine way? Or I think from my standpoint, there's little a company can do from a top-down perspective to generate this community. I think there's some things you can do to foster that, but you can't force it. You have to hire people that get along. I think you have to recognize that some people
00:46:47
Speaker
that don't get along with anybody, even if they're the best archaeologist or the best employee or the best GIS person ever. The point is not that. The point is to have people who want to be there and to get the work done because the work is important. It's not just a corporate bottom line. The work we do is really important.
00:47:04
Speaker
And to make that part of it and to understand it, I mean, you just got to have people that work well together. And if that person that is not, if there's somebody that's not causing that, then they need to go. I mean, flat out, they just need to go and or be restructured into a position where they're not interacting with those people if you want to keep them around for whatever reason.
00:47:23
Speaker
Yeah, so I totally think it's the managerial level. It's not the company website, you know, it's the it's the manager. It's like the crew chief out, you know, in the field and how they buy sort of the seat of the pants are able to kind of bring people together in in that sort of more organic way. They can think about it consciously, you know, and really have plans to do that. But that's it's very tough. Oh, it's tough.
00:47:47
Speaker
Mm hmm. Right. So wrapping this up, it seems like we need a top down approach for some things, but we also need a friendly atmosphere for people to work in rights and for people to actually become friends. And that's a difficult, difficult thing to craft.
00:48:02
Speaker
you need the right people and you need to be paying attention to that. And that's one thing I don't think some companies do, is they don't really pay attention to the levels below them, whatever that is, and whether or not they're actually getting along and doing things and becoming friends and doing those sorts of things. I just don't know that they're doing that. But I think a couple of things that companies can do to be
00:48:25
Speaker
more thoughtful of your time and your efforts is to do things like Heather, you mentioned way back in I think segment one maybe about like Apple and Google creating like a gym and a workout facility and encouraging people to do that while they're in the office and go take a break and do an hour long workout or something. You might have to work a little longer, but you can get this in on work time. And then the cereal bar is famous at Google, I think, where they just got this wall of cereal types.
00:48:50
Speaker
where you can just go and have stuff and have the company not nickel and dime people on that. Keep a refrigerator stocked with drinks and things like that. It's little things like that. Ooh, that's huge. It's huge, right? It's very huge. I would take over 20 meetings about how we need to have a better culture. I'd take a stocked snack bar.
00:49:13
Speaker
Yeah. Or a beer fridge for the end of the day. You know what I'm talking about? I can't tell you how many people when they work for us for the first time, and I'll say it's something that I do. I know a lot. There are other people in our company that don't do this, but I'll bring snacks.
00:49:33
Speaker
and fruit and drinks and that sort of thing. And it goes a long way because you know what that shows? I care. It took me time to go to the grocery store and to get something. While I was walking through the grocery store, I was thinking about the people that I'm going to be working with and I was caring for them. And whether they think about it that in depth or not,
00:49:59
Speaker
that indirectly comes across as, I care. I struggle with it a little bit, but what I think the answer to all this is with no disrespect to really just say, okay, HR, you're a non-entity to me now. I say it should be the managers down.
00:50:23
Speaker
The manager, focus on that. I'm not going to look to HR or to the upper management to be creating something because the further away you get from the workers, the people that really make it happen, the further away you get from them, the less people understand each other.
00:50:43
Speaker
So it should be, the focus has got to be on, I mean, if I were to tell anybody on a higher, like the executive level in any company, I would say, pick your managers carefully. Like really pick them carefully. That is your key. Your managers are your key. Not upper management, not the executives, they're not the key. The key is the people, the workers that are creating your product, whatever that product is,
00:51:12
Speaker
who they deal with on a day-to-day basis, that will be the key to how somebody is satisfied working for you. And then the managers need to focus on being genuine, really looking at what is it that the people that are working that I'm coaching or I'm leading, that's the thing is there's a lot of people that don't have leadership skills. But the people that I'm leading, what do they need from me?
00:51:39
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, I feel like if you want to buy some satisfaction at the manager level, like bring donuts to the site at the beginning of the day, you will buy their love. And, you know, if if a company wants to support that, they could give all the managers a little tiny like happiness fund and be like, hey, man, here's like 200 bucks. So the manager doesn't always have to buy the donuts, you know, like like a little a little sprinkling of
00:52:05
Speaker
couch change, you know, for that kind of thing that will go miles further than like the next meeting on how we need to be friends with each other. Yeah. I mean, just a couple of things here. First off, if a company can't afford those little niceties, that little, that little $200 happiness fund, I like calling it that the, the stock fridge. If you can't afford those things as a company, then I don't really want to work for you because you've got bigger financial problems. You know what I mean? If like the line is going to suffer because of that.
00:52:35
Speaker
Oh my God, that's true. In my experience, that stuff can be so inexpensive. You're right. If they can't cover that, that's on them. It all can be written off. I mean, that's really stupid. It's not even about affording it anymore. That's stuff that can be written off. It's just people that are not savvy in the business world. That's all.
00:52:54
Speaker
Exactly. And you're not buying sodas and beers and donuts. You're buying culture. You're buying something way more valuable, right? And that leads me to, well, commenting on you Heather, manager is a term that encompasses a lot of people in positions in CRM. And I want to make sure that we're also talking about crew chiefs because I've worked, especially before I started my own company, I worked for a lot of companies where I never met the project manager.
00:53:24
Speaker
I never even, we never even had like a field director sometimes. It was just crew chiefs. Like you get on site as a shovel bow and you're working for a crew chief and that crew chief is a dick. And you think I'm never going to work for this company again because the crew chief is a dick.
00:53:38
Speaker
Right. Well, that's why I'm saying the people that have the daily interaction. So whoever that manager is, the people that have the daily interaction with those that are creating the product, that's who that should be focused on. And a good manager, let's say a project manager, not a project manager, project managers, like you said, they're totally different. They manage the project. They don't manage people. There's very different, what I'm talking about is
00:54:03
Speaker
people managers, and I should have been more specific. People managers are where the company needs to focus on that they are selecting the proper people managers. It's not about delegating. That's a project manager who delegates. People managers are so important to the satisfaction of an employee.
00:54:24
Speaker
Well, I'll end with just a couple of things that I didn't make up on my own. I learned from good crew chiefs and good project managers or field directors that were out in the field. And I perpetuated this in my own company. One of them is similar to what Andrew said with bringing donuts. At the end of a really long, hot day, you know what you should have in your hotel room? You should always have a box of like popsicles or ice cream bars or stop at the gas station on the way home and pick them up if you don't have them, right? You should always have those.
00:54:51
Speaker
We used to do that in Belize. Oh, yeah. And that was huge. It's such a game changer to just sit there and have that cold popsicle. You know what? And depending on your culture, maybe you've got a cooler full of beer too, but you got to be careful with that because not everybody drinks beer and has those drinks. So it's nicer. It's more inclusive. Yeah, you can have both, but it's more inclusive to have like, you know, something like that. And then the other one
00:55:14
Speaker
Again, it comes down to these little things, these little things that make people appreciate you. Do you know how many people I've worked for that will take the company-supplied water jugs and just fill it up in the bathtub in their hotel room? I call it tub water, and it's gross. You have this water from all these places. At the end of every workday, I always went to
00:55:36
Speaker
the grocery store or wherever you could go to one of those water machines and I filled up the water and I would buy ice from the grocery store and I'd fill up the water with good water. And I made sure people know that I wasn't filling it up with the hose sitting outside, haphazardly coiled up the kind of black hose that you're not wanting. It used to be green and you're not sure why it's black, but it's got this look to it. Yeah. Why is that?
00:56:00
Speaker
And you're filling up the water from that, you know, who knows what crawled up that hose overnight or how long it's been since it was used. But I've seen people fill up the water container with those things. And I'm just like, I'm bringing my own water. Screw you. That's gross. And you know, but they're obligated to bring water because that's a safety thing. And and and they just they just phone it in and do it the easy, cheap way. And people notice that kind of stuff. So anyway, we are way over on this podcast. So we're going to end it here. There's lots of stuff we could say. Maybe email in or comment wherever you see this show.
00:56:30
Speaker
With the good things you like that your company does, whether it's a crew chief, a project manager, the company as a whole, that you think really helps build that community and makes you want to stay there. I'm not saying email in with the stuff you don't like because that'll be a whole career for me just reading those emails. But go ahead if you want. We want to hear the good stuff people are doing, so maybe we can bring that up on another show.
00:56:53
Speaker
I totally want to hear that. I hope they do write in. Yeah, for sure. For sure. All right. Well, with that, we'll see you guys next week.
00:57:05
Speaker
That's it for another episode of the CRM Archaeology Podcast. Links to some of the items mentioned on the show are in the show notes for this podcast, which can be found at www.arcpodnet.com slash CRMARC Podcast. Please comment and share anywhere you see the show. If you'd like us to answer a question on a future episode, email us. Use the contact form on the website or just email chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com. Support the show and the network at arcpodnet.com slash members. Get some swag and extra content while you're there. Send us show suggestions and interview suggestions.
00:57:35
Speaker
We want this to be a resource for field technicians everywhere, and we want to know what you want to know about. Thanks to everyone for joining me this week. Thanks also to the listeners for tuning in, and we'll see you in the field. Goodbye. Bye, everybody. See you guys next time.
00:57:54
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.
00:58:21
Speaker
I never got to talk about my job dissatisfaction with the archaeological podcast network. Oh, well, that's why I ended the show strategically. Exactly.