As we dive into 2022 , what are some of the biggest concerns in the C-Suite? For now it begins and ends with COVID. The latest COVID variant has proven to spread much more quickly, but the symptoms and overall impact on health (at least for vaccinated people) are not as severe as prior waves of COVID variants. With our world being impacted once again by the ongoing pandemic, how will CEOs manage the latest challenges successfully? What about requiring vaccines and boosters as a prerequisite to returning in person? Nearly two years in, this is not simply a phase in history, living with COVID is a constant for the foreseeable future, one that continues to create damaging repercussions as well as opportunities for innovation. In Episode 14 of Can You Hear Me, we discuss 2022 CEO Concerns - How to Manage Omicron.
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CEO survey taken before omicron emergence shows optimism about the economy over the next 6 months
CEOs across the market, economy agree on one 2022 prediction: More volatility, no end to Covid
CEOs are worried about losing their jobs in 2022
Rob Johnson [00:00:08] As we dive into 2022, what are some of the biggest concerns in the C-suite? For now, it begins and ends with COVID. The latest COVID variant has proven to spread much more quickly, but the symptoms and overall impact on health, at least for vaccinated people, are not as severe as prior waves of COVID variants. With our world being impacted once again by the ongoing pandemic, how will CEOs manage the latest challenges successfully? What about requiring vaccines and boosters as a prerequisite to returning in person? Nearly two years in, his is not simply a phase in history. Living with COVID is a constant for the foreseeable future, one that continues to create damaging repercussions as well as opportunities for innovation.
In episode 14 of Can You Hear Me? We discuss 2022 CEO concerns, how to manage Omicron. Hello, everyone, Happy 2022. I'm Rob Johnson of Rob Johnson Communications, we welcome you to Season 2 of our podcast. Can you hear me? This is Episode 14, 2022, CEO concerns, how to manage Omicron. It's going to kick off our season here, and we're thrilled to be back. Happy New Year to you all our frequent and new listeners. Our regular listeners know that on our show, we discuss the major communications and business issues of our time and share perspectives that help leaders of all businesses thrive.
Eileen Rochford [00:01:42] And I'm Eileen Rochford, CEO of the marketing and strategy firm The Harbinger Group. We're going to get into many new and some recurring topics this year in Season 2, but we know that right now the world just can't shake COVID and all of the challenges and ramifications that it poses to businesses everywhere.
Rob Johnson [00:02:01] That's right, Eileen. If you feel like this is some sort of cruel, broken record kind of situation. Well, it seems like it is. Nearly two years ago, nobody could have predicted what the impact of a pandemic like COVID would have been. It has significantly changed our world forever. Then a year ago, vaccines were just beginning and there was a sense of hope that we would be able to overcome this and move on as a society. Then summer came along with the number of vaccinations increasing, with a larger number of places opening up. Remember that Eileen? It was so July of 2021, wasn't it?
Eileen Rochford [00:02:34] Yes, and then the Delta variant quickly took hold in what seemed like the blink of an eye that was so fast as crazy cases rose and safeguards like masks were reinstated in places like here in Illinois. Vaccination boosters were approved to minimize risks to our health, thank goodness. And for a short while, it did seem like things were getting quite a bit better. But then wham! In early December, Omicron started spreading even more rapidly, and we now know that this new variant is more contagious, it's potentially less severe at least to most people who are fully vaccinated. A country that was opening up six months ago is hunkering down once again in a lot of ways. And our health care system is severely strained once more, which poses a danger to everybody, not just those infected with COVID.
Rob Johnson [00:03:26] That's true. But unlike nearly two years ago, in 2020, when the country literally shut down and large corporations and small businesses alike struggled to figure out a pandemic that had no playbook, there is no talk of shutting down here. Tightening restrictions? Yes. Requiring proof of vaccination for entry into events, venues, and restaurants in some cases work, yes! Canceling or postponing upcoming events that might attract large crowds, yes!
Eileen Rochford [00:03:57] We all recognize that life must go on, and the wheels of business and commerce must continue to turn. That's just a reality. So finding the safest ways to talk, to make all of that happen. That's what we're going to explore today and all of the issues involved with those considerations. So recently, we were interested to see a survey of CEOs done by CNBC, which explored CEO concerns moving forward. And almost all of these concerns were directly or indirectly related to COVID.
The first takeaway, it's obvious their belief, which many of us seem to share, is that COVID is never going to just end. It will evolve and become part of our way of life. The virus, in its past current future forms, will always have to be managed and accounted for because we just know it's not going to go away. It's just kind of going to meld into the fabric of our way of life. The CNBC survey indicated CEOs believe all this doesn't necessarily mean any extremes, like all remote work and staying away from offices forever. Rather, adaptations like the hybrid options that we're seeing are seeming to be more and more prevalent, as well as they're becoming permanent in a lot of sectors and companies that we just wouldn't have expected that to be the case.
Rob Johnson [00:05:20] That's true, and you know, what's interesting to me, Eileen, is several clients that I have who spent the last two years saying, "OK, Fourth of July, we're coming back. Labor Day, we're coming back. In the New Year, we're coming back. Then they did another year of that and then it's January, we're coming back and Omicron hits. Now some of them some people are back in the office. Some of the workers are not on a full scale, but hybrid is part of what they do.
Instead of saying, "Alright, early January didn't work, we're doing, St. Patrick's Day or Easter or whatever it is," they're just kind of leaving it open-ended. Which I think is a really good way to do it because you keep kicking that can down the road and people are asking, "when are we returning to office?" Well, what they've learned also over the past couple of years is a lot of people like working from home. That's true. But having a hybrid option, I think, is vital. So to your point that you just made, it's unlikely that unless all remote work is your posture already, it's unlikely that will happen. But something of a hybrid schedule is likely.
Eileen Rochford [00:06:28] Definitely. There's, a lot wrapped into that, as we've discussed in past episodes. In my opinion, I think that's a fantastic outcome, almost an innovation that's come out of, this challenge some of the darker underbelly aspects of that whole stop-start now know back and forth is it's created a lot of fatigue among employees, frankly. Everybody knows we've been working around the clock way more than we had in the past. Over time, that's frayed at the edges of people's patience, mental health, and their overall health, we've seen it. So there's a lot for companies to consider, even once they do return in some capacity, whether it's two days a week in the office and three days back at homework or whatever form it might take in the organization, they're going to have to reckon with all of the consequences of the impacts of having had the last two years that we've had.
It's not going to just stop like you said before, COVID isn't going away. It's melding into the fabric of our lives. I think in the next year, one of the big considerations for leaders will be how to make sure they support their people adequately as they're just dealing with all of those consequences, and implications. So, yes, I think that leaders have to keep that top of mind as they're returned to the office and how they communicate with their folks, the frequency of it, the empathy that's baked into it, the authenticity of, their support. All of those things are very real and very important as we're starting this through. That's how I see it.
Rob Johnson [00:08:28] I think it's very important. It's a great point that you're making because while people initially were like, well, once we get back into the office and then I think after a while they realized, "OK, the way we knew that before isn't going to happen." But as it relates to what you just brought up the mental health issue because it's not going away because there's always another, Greek letter to alphabet name variant that is coming down the road and the next one might be gamma. Whatever the next one is going to be, we're going to have to deal with it. Which is tremendously stressful as many people try to figure out their personal lives and their professional lives.
COVID is not going away. So, if you're making an investment into that, and I know some CEOs and some companies are, that's a really smart thing to do. While you can change schedules or say, "Hey, we're going to do a hybrid schedule or this or that," some people actually like working from home. I know that I get a ton of work done in my home office and I'll still go downtown several days a week. But, if I'm in my home office, that's not a day off. That's when I know I can just work back to back to back and go all day. So that's one thing. But the mental health issue, the burden, the stress of this uncertainty. I think these companies are smart too, to address those issues.
Eileen Rochford [00:09:48] Yes, and what you just said, working from home does tend to produce a lot of areas, very high productivity. The problem is like we've been forced into this situation of living almost in two worlds. So holding the expectations of the old world, which is your present, you're accountable, you're on from at least nine to five and in most places beyond that for sure, and that we in the new world we realized, Oh, we don't have the commute. We have more time in our day. We can cram more things in. So people, just over time, became more tired, more frustrated, their patients, his is waning. They're dealing with all of these family issues, their own health issues, their child care issues.
It's been going on for so long now that the employees that you had two years ago are probably not the employees you have today. So you just kind of have to just let go of the old. I want it back the way it was or even, the expectations that we're of baked into maybe 20 years of working and thinking, likely a lot of the same things and now realize they may be the same person, but they're not in the same state of mind.
Rob Johnson [00:11:17] Not even close.
Eileen Rochford [00:11:18] Yes, so approaching everything now has to be done so much more thoughtfully. And, we throw this word around a lot, but I do believe it's empathy. It's also compassion, right? And being willing to support those words with actions. So change, that's what that means. So when I think about that, I think, OK, because they're getting more done in their home environments. Do we really have to have the same long workdays, right? Or can we give flexibility? You know, in our break, two days in the middle of the week and your week earlier? I don't know. There are so many ways that you could allow people to reset and recharge. We said a lot here, but that's kind of how I look at it.
Rob Johnson [00:12:12] But the other thing is, you're walking the walk and talking the talk. I mean, so you say it, but then in your company, the Harbinger Group, you're actually doing it as the boss. You're making these things priorities. And that's a great point to talk about this. Is it just some person? The advice you're giving isn't just advice you're giving to people, it's this is what you do every day. And hey, Mr. or Mrs. Fellow CEO, you consider these things, and I think that that's very powerful.
Eileen Rochford [00:12:38] And I recognize, ours is an independent organization. And as one of the two principles and the primary owner controlling interest owner of the organization, these decisions can be made much more easily than they can in a larger entity. No doubt about it. But the framework from which decisions are made honestly could be no different in any size organization. It's the putting people first and recognizing that it's the world is just not the same. And our people, whether they're new to the organization. We're coming from another. They've been through two years that have had serious impacts on how they think, how productive they can be, really. How much are they at the top of their game and how much more can they take?
Rob Johnson [00:13:30] I wish we could record, Oh, we are recording this. This is terrific. So people can hear this. Well, listen, the insights that you have as a CEO are so important, Eileen. But I also like other quotes from some of the CEOs that we just referenced in the article we were talking about Mike Parr, the CEO of logistics company DHL, because industries like theirs. COVID has allowed business to boom there in logistics, even though the logistical challenges have never been greater, he says. And now we're about to enter this new phase of the unknown. Talk about Omicron, and then we're back into cycles in Europe of potential lockdowns. You have very strict positions in China where they want to eradicate COVID, so their rules are different than Europe's, which are different than the United States.
You've got restrictions from a flight perspective. You've got the impact on transportation. The fear of running out of inventory is now embedded in the supply chain companies going from just in time, which is what it used to do. It's now just in case. That's today's reality. I was just reading something this morning about the supermarket shortages that we saw in 2020 when people were making runs to supermarkets when this first happened. They're starting to happen again. The supply chain issues are starting to happen again. But imagine being the CEO of a logistics company whose business is taking off because their supply chains have never been more important. And yet because of the realities of the gaps in the supply chain right now. He has worries about it. So, hey, business is booming. Love it. The side of it is, oh my gosh. Just in case. Rather than just in time. I mean, that's pretty, pretty dramatic.
Eileen Rochford [00:15:19] And what I take from his comments while they're directly, about the logistics industry. The idea of having to now be in the frame of mind of creating just in case scenarios, no matter your industry is 100 percent here to stay for the foreseeable future. Now think about that. That means that now leaders have to be doing two very important jobs running the show. Per the current business strategy and goals and all along every second of every day, making sure that there's Scenario B, there's scenario C, there's scenario D just waiting in the wings in the event that something happens.
I feel for these leaders because that the stress that they must be under is tremendous. I mean, we're always talking about employees and how leaders need to be thinking about making their employees situations as good as possible so that their companies can thrive. These leaders themselves what they have endured in the last two years. I kind of equate it to when you look at pictures of someone who's entered office as the president of the United States. And then when they leave four years later, what do they look like? And how significantly they have aged visibly aged because of the trauma, the stress, the anxiety associated with the job that is literally 24-7 and has the weight of the world on that person's shoulders? Right. That's kind of what I see them going through.
Rob Johnson [00:17:07] And what you just pointed out was, you're not having to come up with a Plan A or maybe Plan B, but now Plan C and plan. I mean, it's a lot of work and is a lot of work to just sort of map that out with your team, your leadership team. And and so you end up may using one or two. Fortunately, you may be in a position where you only have to use plan. A might have to go to Plan B, but then you still had to work on the other ones. So to your point, that's that's a that's a real stressor too, because you have to come up with all these different scenarios and make sure that you're tending to all of them
Eileen Rochford [00:17:43] and you're communicating to all of your constituencies, whether it's your customers, your partners, and of course, your own people, that the situation is in hand, no matter what may develop, that's hard to do. That's an art in and of itself. Sure. So, you know, make that job number three becoming, you know, master communicator who's aware of the need for frequent communication about all of this in order to foster trust and comfort. Great. That's a lot. A lot on their shoulders. Great point. So another issue covered in that CNBC report was simplifying business models during a time of such dramatic volatility. And a terrific example that I think we can talk about is let's look at the restaurant industry.
Initially and still is, it's heavily and very negatively in most cases impacted by our the consumers changing pandemic habits, as well as the mandates that affected them so deeply as business owners. And at the start, you remember, almost all restaurants closed indoor dining, and they could only offer carryout or delivery. That was the big switch in and of itself that they had to quickly adapt. But once they reopened and to this day, that experience of dining inside of restaurants, it's so vastly different than what we recall from before. Again, that theme of yesterday is not today, and it never will be right. When you're in the restaurants and you're menu that's on your own phone and you're using your phone to pay them so contactless payments for health and safety, all these things, these are big things, huge innovations that actually, I think are great. But because of staff shortages right now, you might walk into a restaurant and encounter a line of people waiting to be seated. But tables are visibly open, and that's largely due to lack of staff.
Another big thing that just came out of the pandemic, the hardships endured by so many businesses, especially these small and these independent independent businesses. Well, they've caused too many to go under, and obviously, we all agree that's a terrible tragedy, no doubt about it. No doubt. But some of this, the simplification and innovation that sort of resulted from all of these hardships and changes. It's created a lot of progress in many, many new ways. And you know, in my opinion, I'm sure you see that too, rob, just within the restaurant business, for example, that's that's a. That's a good thing that came out of it and noted to my husband the other day is you're taking a walk.
I walked by a small, independent driving school. In the driving school. Reminds me of the difference between my son's experience, who's about three years older than our daughter when he they both attended private high schools and they couldn't take advantage of taking driver's ed within a public high school. When you go to a private high school pretty much anywhere, it's a lot harder to get your driver's license. It takes longer because you can't do a junior school day. And there were all these rules about the older son having to physically be at this driving school like three hours or something every Saturday for, I don't know, eight weeks. Something ridiculous, right?. He was and still is. He's a music artist, so he had other weekend obligations as many, many kids do, frankly. Sure. And his or his her music obligations and to fit all that and it was really hard. It took him an extra year, as a result, to get his actual driver's license after having the permit and doing all that business.
My daughter, on the other hand, because we were in lockdown, these tiny driving schools in the state made changes that allowed students to take that in the classroom, I think portion of getting your driver's license in. She had in like a month and it was all online. She had to go nowhere. It was all computer-based, of course. But you know, the quizzes, the recording, the generation of their certifications, everything it was. Bam, you're done. Go get that permit and start, you know, racking up your hours. That's just another one that came to mind to me is, you know, we were walking around. There are so many examples of that. But honestly, I love it. I think there's a lot of this that every day I'm seeing the rapid acceleration of changes that who knows when they would have come about if this hadn't happened.
Rob Johnson [00:22:38] And I can certainly speak to the drivers ed too, because my son Jaden and your daughter Jess are the same age, so they were going through this at the same time. And he did 30 hours of work online in 2020, right when nobody was going anywhere and was actually perfect because you couldn't go anywhere. And that's what he did. And then, of course, he had to go to in-person to do your actual driving, which you need to do. But all that coursework that that you may have had to do in person and, you know, show up and you know, that sort of thing. Three years ago, that was gone. And so that really is a good innovation.
As it relates to the restaurants, I was just thinking about this and I posted it on social media this week and it concerned me because I was in River North with a client working for a client this week, and I went to lunch at a nearby restaurant, which is terrific, great food. It's noon. I walk in and they asked for my proof of vaccination and I show them my vax card. Actually, what's a really good idea and some people have thought about doing this, but I've been sharing this. A lot of people take a picture of their vax card and then also have a picture of their driver's license in the same place and just have them overlap there. So you're like, "That's me, that's my vax card." And places will accept it. Nevertheless, it's noon, and I'm one of two tables at this restaurant. And instead of having staff shortages which are real, which we were talking about, there were like six, eight, 10 people. I didn't see the people, you know, in the kitchen behind the scenes. There's like 10 people that I see and they're serving me and a two-top. I was like, "Oh my gosh, please, people, I know it's January. It's a slow restaurant month in general, but go to restaurants during the lunch rush." Now the good news was by the time I walked out of that, there were like 10 or 12 tables, but still 10 or 12 tables during the lunch rush at a really good restaurant. It's not super expensive or anything, but a really good like, you know, mid-level restaurant.
I was troubled to see it, so much so that I posted something. And I don't usually post things like that on social media, but I was like, "Come on, folks, let's don't forget about the restaurant industry because, you know, we can't afford not to have them and we don't want them, and they're not in a posture to do delivery and carryout only," which is what you mentioned. You know, at the beginning of COVID, now you can do it. There are restrictions, but we got to support these businesses.
Eileen Rochford [00:25:02] For context, for our listeners who are not in the city of Chicago on January 3rd, they're in certain business environments like gyms, restaurants, others, you know, sports venues like Robinson showing proof of vaccination along with if you're 16 and over, a photo ID is now required in order to eat inside that restaurant. So that's why Rob mentions that proof of vax. And it is having an impact, no doubt about it, at least for the short term. So, those of us who feel comfortable and safe for whatever reason, you know, hopefully are fully vaccinated and feel good about it, get out there and in a responsible way, start to support these physical restaurants again.
Rob Johnson [00:25:59] You want to know for sure. And that's a great point. I'm glad you gave the context to it because just this morning, my son Jaden, as you know, plays hockey in Michigan and his league is having games here. So he's coming home. He's going to get to sleep in his own bed and he's going to be here for, you know, three or four days. But in Michigan, when we were there last week, you walk in a restaurant, there's no masks, there's no vax, there's nothing. So, a lot of places out there don't have the restrictions that Illinois does.
I actually sent an email to the team this morning. You just said, Hey, here are the rules. We're playing games in Cook County and city of Chicago, which have their own rules. You're staying in DuPage, which have their own rules, and here are the rules. And I was just trying to get everybody up to speed on it because in Michigan, there really are none. And so there's a lot of places like that where you're thinking people are saying what you have to wear masks everywhere, what you have to show proof of facts. Well, yes. And Chicago and Cook county in particular, you have to do that.
Eileen Rochford [00:26:58] That actually raises a great point. Leadership sees sweet consideration for businesses all around. Being cognizant of where your people are going and making sure that they have access to the information that they need in order to comply and in order to be safe. That's yet another big responsibility and worry that is on their plates today and a super important one because it impacts productivity. If you show up and you don't have it and you can't attend the event or the trade show. Well, that's a that's a whole lot of waste of money. So remembering to think ahead about where they are going. What county lines are they crossing? What are the rules? All that stuff matters.
Rob Johnson [00:27:45] It's not just state by state either. You have to know, the different rules based on county because they do vary.
Eileen Rochford [00:27:50] Yes, and I know that that's the case in other states, too. Which makes it complex, and important.
Rob Johnson [00:27:57] It is important. Well, you know, staffing shortages, that's another big issue in the highly competitive labor market right now are certainly pressing issues for C-suite executives. The pandemic cause workers everywhere to reassess their work lives, which gave rise to the great resignation, which we all know about. For reference, a record four point five million Americans voluntarily left their jobs in November. Now, just think of the experience lost an investment in professional development and training that just evaporated due to this scale of resignation, which led Shane Grant, who's the CEO of Danone North America, to say the War on Talent 2022 is going to only intensify.
It's about game-changing people policies like gender-neutral parental leave for not only corporate workers, but for front line workers. It's about institutionalize flexibility. It's about true commitment to diversity actions. And I think those things are going to become true differentiators in this war for talent in 2022. So the point is, not only are you going have to say, Hey, I've got this great job and you know, you're going to be compensated well and you have room for advancement. And it's a great company, but a lot of people are asking, What else do you have? What are the benefits? What what are you paying attention to that have nothing to do with my compensation or say my benefits and benefits? We normally mean health care. OK, what am I? What's my salary and health care? All right, good. That's not the way it is anymore.
Eileen Rochford [00:29:25] No, I see lots and lots more job shopping being done and resignations taking place. Excuse me because people want to know I'm in an environment where all of me is seen, heard, respected, supported and there's a path for me to advance, right? And so much more. That's just a few of the things, but I'm seeing a lot more resignations, people who might not have ever considered quitting a job or changing industries. Or you're seeing it all over TikTok. It's dark. You know, all the videos of liberation. Essentially, I'm leaving this situation behind because I can. Today's environment allows for that. You know, who knows how long that's going to go on? We've seen waves similar to this anyway in the past couple of times in the past 20, 30 years. This one's pretty dramatic, and it feels as if it's some seismic shift has taken place in terms of like the power balance, you know, between the employee and the employer.
Rob Johnson [00:30:37] There's no doubt in that.
Eileen Rochford [00:30:39] It's a big deal. I want to mention an article that I saw, I think it was right around January 9th. It was in the New York Times, and is titled "No More Working for Jerks". This was all over LinkedIn with so much commentary kicked around about it, and rightly so. It's super interesting information here, but the critique phenomenon is it's real. Right? Again, it's that power balance shift that we've seen at the heart of so much of that.
Also the frustration we talked about a little earlier, folks have just decided that a lot of the stuff they put up with in the classic or former corporate environments, let alone commutes and other things associated with it. But how they were treated and the, you know, hierarchy and bureaucracy and other bs, they're just done with it. So when I talked about earlier, you got you got to recognize that the employees you have today are largely not the employees they were two years ago. This is a great, I don't know, reflection of that, that their tolerance level is low. And like I said, rightly so. People are they're not only quitting left and right, but they're looking for places or creating their own. Another phenomenon I mentioned is the number of people who filed their own limited liability companies or as independent contractors in Q4 is the highest seen on record. People are exercising their own agency as well to basically set their own environments.
Rob Johnson [00:32:25] Which has been terrific. I can certainly speak to this from the standpoint of having been a W-2 guy working in the television business for as many years as I did. And it can be television or any industry. When you go work somewhere, you're working with people. Sometimes you work for good people and sometimes you don't work for good people. In fact sometimes they're bad people and you may feel a little like, "Oh gosh, I don't really like that."
One of the great bits of satisfaction that I've had being able to start my own company is that I have employees and I still collaborate with a lot of people, but I don't have to work with anyone who I don't like to work with. Something that I really thought about as I started my own business and as I started to grow my business and scale-up, is that I want to work with good people. I want to work with people who I like working with. I don't want to work with jerks, right? And I think that that's for me, that's been very satisfying. And on occasion, and you know, this as well as anybody having serviced as many clients as you have many of them, most of them are good and on occasion you run into somebody that's not so good. And my experience has been like, Let me get the project done. And then when it's done, I don't want to work with them anymore because I just don't want to deal with that. And could I deal with it? I mean, is the money good and all that? Sure, it is. But I don't want to work with people that I don't like working with. And so the point that you're making from this article, this recent article is spot on.
Eileen Rochford [00:34:02] And I'm going to cite something from this article, by the way, Emma Goldberg is the reporter who who created the piece for The New York Times, want to give her total credit for this. It was great. In about halfway through, she notes that jerkiness takes a toll on productivity, and that is a good thing for us all to remember, particularly internally. You cited external jerkiness forces to some degree, Rob. We all encounter those, but internally, that's largely why this article is no more working for jerks. It prompts you to keep an eye on if you have people who behave like jerks inside your organization or are you kind of on the edge of acting like a jerk at times?
One of the folks interviewed talked about being a work bully, talking about people behind their backs, undermining your colleagues and blaming others. Those are all sometimes subtler behaviors or horribly overt behaviors. Leaders need to keep an eye on that for themselves just as much as they do for the folks around them. No doubt about it. I think also when you're in positions of power, you tend to be a little more guilty of that at times. So it's good for everybody to keep a check on yourself. I am constantly reminding myself of this as well, to just keep a check on it.
One thing she said in here, which I didn't know is about Baird, the financial services firm. Emma Goldberg of the New York Times said they took the principle a step further by codifying this in their policy, employees are informed during the orientation of the companies. No asshole rule. It's written into training materials in their head of each are fired people for violating. It's so of course, that's hard legally. Like, that's not terribly enforceable, but there are at least there's issues surrounding it. But I so appreciate seeing a company having written that into their policy about internal behaviors among coworkers. That's refreshing. I've personally lived by and experienced, you know, the kind of no assholes rule externally when it comes to selecting folks to work with as a professional services firm. It's a policy and we certainly hire for fit and culture here and want people who are kind, decent, and highly skilled. I loved seeing it written about coworkers in large financial services firm like Baird. That's pretty interesting .
Rob Johnson [00:36:56] because you think about something like that, they're all about making money. It's like, Hey, we had to make money, we got to make money, we got to make money. A lot of times in industries like that, they're willing to turn the cheek if they see something they don't like. If somebody is a great producer or if they're making it rain, you know, whatever the case may be. Now, for a company to put this in writing, that's real. You put it in writing in your training that we're not going to tolerate this. That isn't just somebody talking and saying, here's what we're going to do. That's letting everybody know. This is the way this company is going to do business, and I think it's powerful. Who knows if other companies might adopt something like that in a more formal way?
Eileen Rochford [00:37:33] Yeah. And a company as large as bear to do it, that's pretty cool. I don't know how long it's been around. That wasn't noted in the article, but very interesting to see that.
Rob Johnson [00:37:41] Very interesting.
Eileen Rochford [00:37:42] So we have issues that largely are born out of COVID that we've talked about, which is changing for the workforce. But here's another interesting result. According to a recent Bloomberg report, 72 percent of CEOs are worried about losing their jobs in 2022, which, according to labor analysts, is extremely high. In fact, Simon Fregoli, whose management consulting firm Alix Partners, which queried 3000 CEOs, called it eye-popping Lehigh, saying disruptive forces like the supply chain and labor market are all playing out simultaneously. And that's just wreaking havoc on shareholder value. All kinds of things. Perception of ability to lead through times of chaos. So that's pretty crazy that CEOs are now saying that they're deeply concerned about their own jobs
Rob Johnson [00:38:38] and imagine having to manage through as well as certainly as you have to do during COVID. Imagine being a CEO having to manage through this where everybody says, Yeah, the rules have changed and they're changing on the fly, and here are the new rules and having to be nimble enough to to to sort of react to those. But then also to say, OK, here's what COVID has started all these other things like supply chain and labor market, as you just pointed out. But we still have expectations. We still, if you don't, if you don't succeed in this unknown environment and it's becoming more known the longer we go here. But again, as I said, you know, 30 minutes ago, there's no playbook for this, right? So imagine having to play by a totally different set of rules now if you're leading a business because of what's happened, but still, you're like, Gosh, if I don't tend to all the things that that are related to this pandemic and I fail on any one of those fronts, I may be out of a job.
Eileen Rochford [00:39:38] Now, I want to see some flip side research done, which is how many CEOs are considering leaving their jobs. Right? I mean, it's not as common that you see resignations of the CEO level. In fact, it's very uncommon, but they're they've been under the same amount of pressure and much, much more so in a lot of ways that we've all been enduring for for these two years. So yeah, I imagine that there's some secret parts happening. Do I really have any of those anymore because this is pretty awful? I know you did. I imagine.
Rob Johnson [00:40:11] I know you didn't mean to do this, but you just teased ahead to the next episode we're going to talk about and we're going to talk about the Simon Fregoli comment. The eye-popping Lee high. Resignation, you know, CEOs that are worried about losing their jobs. Yeah, because we're going to talk about non-COVID-related issues, so we're talking about COVID-related issues here, but then we're going to talk about non-COVID-related issues and some of the material. Some of the numbers that we have, I think, will address what you were just talking about. So that was I was just teased that perfectly. Oh, for our next episode. But I do think that it's I do think it's a very interesting time to be a leader, to be, you know, on an on an executive leadership team, to be in the C-suite, to be a CEO because you have to come up with different solutions to problems that I mean some problems you've faced before in your career, but a lot of them, you haven't.
Eileen Rochford [00:41:11] Underneath it all, this is my plug, my friendly reminder, keep in mind the need for consistent, frequent, authentic communications to keep your folks and your teams on board engaged and focused on what's ahead of them and instill confidence that the leadership team has things in hand to the degree that they can.
Rob Johnson [00:41:40] You got that right. Well, we could talk about this all day, but we can't. I guess we could, but we're not going to on our next episode, as I just mentioned of Can you hear me? We're going to take this discussion of CEO concerns that start with the COVID branch out. Talk about all the issues keeping CEOs awake at night, having nothing to do with the pandemic until then. I'm Rob Johnson, president of Rob Johnson Communications,
Eileen Rochford [00:42:02] I'm Eileen Rochford, CEO of The Harbinger Group. We thank you for listening, and we hope you join us again next time. Remember, you can listen to Can you hear me wherever you get your podcasts? Apple, Google, Spotify, and more.