In 2023, workers felt more detached from their jobs than in the prior year. According to a recent Gallup Poll, workers are less likely to connect with their company’s mission and purpose. In this episode of “Can You Hear Me?”, co-hosts Eileen Rochford and Rob Johnson welcome career Coach Don Oehlert of e-Career Coaching to discuss why engagement is so low, quiet firing, and AI’s impact on employment.
Guest Bio: As the Managing Partner of eCareerCoaching.com, LLC, Don Oehlert leads with extensive experience and a deep understanding of job search process and the related landscape. His experience in Job Search coaching spans the last ~ twenty years, during which time he has helped over 850 people land new positions. Don is the author of the eBook “Executive’s Guide to Job Search.” He has also created a “Companion Workbook” to that eBook and over 200 blog posts on job search process. Don also helps small businesses with 2-20 employees determine their culture and coaches their leaders on how to sculpt it. His approach in the fractional chief people officer (fCPO) practice is based on personality assessment tools and interpretations. Based on their HR needs, Don can also provide leadership around many categories for these SMB leaders.
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Eileen Rochford [00:00:17] Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Can You Hear Me I'm Eileen Rochford CEO of the Harbinger Group, a marketing and strategy firm.
Rob Johnson [00:00:25] And I'm Rob Johnson, president of Rob Johnson Communications. Periodically on Can You Hear Me? We will examine employee satisfaction statistics to gauge what's going on in the workplace, especially after most people underwent a major work change following the pandemic.
Eileen Rochford [00:00:41] And Rob recently we saw, the Gallup poll showed that 33% of employees were engaged, but that's down from 40%. And I believe that was in June of 2022. That same poll showed that disengaged employees accounted for $1.9 trillion in lost productivity, and the poll said employees still feel more detached from and less satisfied with their organizations, and are less likely to connect to the company's mission and purpose, or to feel someone cares about them as a person.
Rob Johnson [00:01:17] And that really, I think Eileen changed, you know, during the pandemic, when the rules of engagement changed, when employees actually had more power than they'd had in the past, and the expectations were different. So it's not like, oh gosh, where'd that come from? It's been out there for 2 or 3 years now, and again in 2023, it was like, hey, we're not engaged. And hey, we're going to let you know about it, right?
Eileen Rochford [00:01:41] Right. Yeah. There's so much going on in the world right now, and I know we're going to get into it because we have an awesome guest who will help us talk about this. But when do you think about all the factors happening that are stressors and impact people's just ability to focus, period, whether it's on work or their family or their dog or their cat, you know, whatever it may be, it's just harder to connect and engage with the world. Period. Right now, also, the remote work, the virtual, you know, office situation, a lot of people, whether it's it's got a ton of positives. Believe me, we are an all remote company. All about it have been forever. But for some people, and I think more people than we realize, that kind of an environment makes it even harder, you know, to connect with your team, your company, your leadership, you name it. So there's a lot that we can dig into today that's contributing to, you know, this decline that we're seeing.
Rob Johnson [00:02:39] Yeah. And you've always been a wonderful resource to talk about the remote working because as you as you pointed out, the Harbinger Group has been doing it for years, long before it was what other folks were doing. So with that as a backdrop, we would like to welcome in today's guests, Don Oehlert of E Career coaching.com don is a career coach and is unsurprised to hear these numbers. Don, thanks for joining us. Can you hear me?
Don O [00:03:04] Hey, thanks for having me. This is I'm looking forward to this. Looks like a lot of fun.
Rob Johnson [00:03:08] We are looking forward to it as well. Don. So why don't you give a little background on you and tell us how you became a career coach? So kind of the background and kind of the evolution to to going down that career path.
Don O [00:03:20] Yeah, yeah. Oh boy. Long story. I'll try to make it as short as I can. We have 4 or 5 hours, right.
Eileen Rochford [00:03:25] Yeah.
Rob Johnson [00:03:26] Part seven of can you hear me with Don. No.
Don O [00:03:31] I was, I was laid off at age 46 from a job that I absolutely loved with a company I really loved. And it was a surprise. So I had to figure out how to look for a job in this new millennium. From the time before I had to look for a job, it was a. Well, I was at that company for 16 years. And so things had changed. This little thing called the internet, you may have heard of that, it was, became more popularized. And that changes fundamentally how people look for a job in this millennium. I had to learn how to do that. So attending networking meetings specifically focused on people in job hunt and job search. And one of them really captured my imagination, if you will. And I ended up after about five months of attending their meetings, joining their core team just to help. Over that 15 year period is how long I, volunteered with them. I probably saw, gosh, I don't know, 500 different presentations from hiring managers, recruiters, HR people, you know, fill in the blank from all different types of industries and all different age groups, if you will. So, then I also helped about 700 people rewrite their resumes. But the way the, the, the job club worked, we only had 15 minutes with each person, and that hit me over the head. It's just not enough time to do a really good job. You could help, but you could really help more if you were involved much more deeply with the with the client. So after that, I figured I would help people 45 years old and older, director level and above. Because they also were with their companies ten, 15, 20 years, didn't know how to look for a job in that, didn't learn how to look for a job in that time period because they were just promoted internally. Given that the resumes didn't stack up, stack up to today's standards, their approach to job search was wrong. Not because they were. Oh, I don't want to say dumb, but they're just uninformed. And I just went through all that. So I figured out a way to help people out after those 500 presentations and so on. The reason I work with people of director level and above, again, they're usually in their 40s. Ageism is a real thing. And the further up the ladder you go in corporate America, the fewer seats there are. So your messaging has to be really tight, compelling, cogent and concise.
Eileen Rochford [00:05:47] Amen to that. Absolutely. And what an excellent point, that the higher up you go, the fewer sort there are and the competition becomes that much more fierce.
Don O [00:05:55] Exactly. Yeah.
Rob Johnson [00:05:56] And you're and you're dealing with people that are truly vulnerable because they are they have distinguished themselves in a positive way in their career and through perhaps no fault of their own, perhaps because of ageism or other things, they are no longer seen as useful to their company. So they've never had this happen to them before. Right. So I think it's, it's it's important to also talk about how you're there as a sounding board, a resource for people that are very vulnerable who have never been that way before professionally.
Don O [00:06:26] Yes. Early on in the engagements with me, we go through a personality profiling exercise to really figure out who is Rob Johnson, who is Eileen Rochford, and then where you fit on those different scales will help us drive you towards jobs that really appeal to you, because outgoing people, as a rule, are not really well suited or extroverts are not really well suited to things like programing and things like, numbers. So accountants and CFOs, things like that. But a lot of people just are not that introspective. They've just never had to think about it. They're very good at what they did and therefore they got promoted correctly or incorrect.
Eileen Rochford [00:07:01] Right. So self selling was definitely part of, you know, their work life on the regular Right. Yeah.
Don O [00:07:08] Good point. A very huge part of being able to communicate your value, your unique value propositions are what we call in the marketing world. I mean, UVP's or USPS, unique sales propositions or unique value propositions, they must be very tight and meaningful and hopefully quantified because numbers just don't lie.
Eileen Rochford [00:07:28] Yeah
Don O [00:07:29] It gives You the confidence to relate these different facts again, confidently, without wading into the arrogance waters, which is a big fear for most people. I mean, all these years they've had their work speak for them, and now they've been to your point Rob, laid off and oh my goodness, what do I do now? Oh yeah, that's painful. So for the time upfront getting to know them. And then I kind of am a hard driver of getting your sour stories or situation action and results stories put in place. Then we build everything else around that and that again, confidence is attractive. Arrogance not so much.
Eileen Rochford [00:08:05] Yes. Very good distinction. Absolutely. I have a million questions for you, but I'm going to do my darndest to stay on topic here because, you know, they don't call me Tangent girl for nothing. So I think little hat tip to my husband there. That's the nickname for me. So let's ask you the first question that we had planned and related back to you know, our whole intro and what what we're here to talk about the disengagement issue. So you're seeing so many people, on a daily basis, who probably are no longer connected to organizations that they had been with. Maybe they left of their own volition. Maybe they were let go. Maybe they're embarking on new paths. Tell us about why you think engagement has dropped so low amongst American workers.
Don O [00:08:56] Wow. Yeah, that's another long story. But it it goes back a long way to, when it, when, when people got laid off during the Great Recession of 2007 to 9, I, we may remember some of those days, companies were in a shambles. They didn't know what to do. I mean, business was at a at a very low point. So people became more interested in more bang for their buck in the organization. So I want to get, everybody to be as productive as humanly or inhumanly possible. That creates stress. Stress creates burnout. Burnout reduces engagement. And while engagement is only at 33% inside the US, worldwide it's only 23%. So we're better than the rest of the world. I did the the air quotes thing there. But still, it's a lot. It's a lot. By the way, 16 to 20% of people are actively disengaged with their work, which is even worse.
Eileen Rochford [00:09:51] Right.
Rob Johnson [00:09:52] Explain that. Actively disengaged. We're talking about distinct disengagement. Is this, engagement, exclamation mark?
Eileen Rochford [00:10:00] Haha
Don O [00:10:01] Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's literally at that point where you do the absolute least amount of work possible to get by, and you're casting aspersions on management. You're casting aspersions on your coworkers, on you could actively be submarines, someone else's project trying to make it fail because you're really angry. You're really stressed out. You're really burned out, and you want the company to feel the pain that you do. And so active disengagement is very destructive to a company.
Eileen Rochford [00:10:32] Yeah, yeah. Oh, for sure, of course. So 2009, supposedly, you know, the Great Recession comes to an end. What happened over the next 14 years?
Don O [00:10:43] Oh, yeah, a lot. There was another small one, as you may recall, 13, 14 timeframe. Then, of course, you may have heard of Covid. You know, you know kind of this international thing, that really people are just confused, you know, the old way of working that command and control, if you will. The CEO is in charge and things just roll downhill to the bottom, not the bottom, but to the, to the line worker. The first line worker. That's no longer really taken for granted. It's kind of an outdated concept, even though it's still in effect and in force in a lot of places, because we have five generations in the workforce right now. 5. From boomers down to 20 year olds, 18, 19, 20 year olds. And the way people need to be interacted with has changed fundamentally. Younger generations do not go for command and control. Older generation still in charge are still trying to enforce it. Disengagement. Stress. Burnout. Results.
Eileen Rochford [00:11:37] That's a lot of tension.
Don O [00:11:38] Yes, yes.
Rob Johnson [00:11:39] And you have been you have different generations, as you pointed out, that are maybe not aware of or they should be aware of what's going on, but maybe they're not aware of it. And so they're losing all sorts of workers in the younger generations and may not even be aware of it. And by the time you're aware of it, it's probably too late to do anything about it because they've already checked out.
Don O [00:11:57] Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I mean, churn will tell you it's anywhere up to 5%, I'm sorry, five times salary to replace someone, particularly an executive. So if you hire a guy for I don't know 200 grand a year, let's say a VP of something or a director of something, and you have to fire him or her within 6 to 12 months. That's five. That's $1 million. A lot of smaller companies simply can't afford to lose that kind of money because they hired the wrong person there.
Eileen Rochford [00:12:24] So you mentioned the five generations kind of all in the workplace at once. And in a lot of places, you know, they're probably interacting with each other and having to contend with all these tensions that result from the different styles of communicating and leading. It's fascinating to me that someone who's same, you know, just post graduation perhaps, or first job, whatever their path has been, college or not, that they would enter so young, having had, you know, kind of we'll call it minimal work experience, but could feel that disengaged out of the gate. Do you have any sense of why that might be? Yeah. Mean is it. Look back.
Don O [00:13:04] I'm sorry. Go ahead. And I think. I'm sorry.
Eileen Rochford [00:13:06] I don't know, I'm just kind of grasping at straws here, but I'll let you answer the question because you're the expert. Go go go.
Don O [00:13:13] The one of the things that we folks that are a little bit older, when we went through college, we didn't know that much money when we got out. When my kids went through college, it was so pretty good amount of change that we, my wife and I decided to pay, you know, to come up with, to help put them through college. We still wanted them to have a little bit of a loan. So when you've got skin in the game, you're a little bit more interested in being successful. But nonetheless, some of these kids these days are coming out with 100,000, 200,300, depending on how far they go and what school they attend. 300,000 in debt. So it's not disengagement as much as it is just fear. How in the world am I ever going to pay this money back? And I can't find a job outside of McDonald's or something like that. So it's, when you do get a job, you're still. You don't want to. If you're so nervous, you don't want to make a mistake, because if you get a mistake, you might get fired. And that'll make it harder to find your next job. And, you know, all these things are going on in their minds that really, I'm not sure it's active disengagement as much as it is just abject fear.
Eileen Rochford [00:14:13] That is an excellent observation point.
Rob Johnson [00:14:15] So, we were talking about actively disengaged a little earlier, and it made me think about learning about the idea and the concept of quiet quitting during the pandemic, that is, employees who still work somewhere, but we're essentially putting in zero effort. Sounds like the actively disengaged discussion that we were having a little bit earlier. Yes, but now we have something, as you were telling me, called quiet firing. And this is, to me, equally as interesting. Tell people what that means and how it's sort of gotten a foothold.
Don O [00:14:46] Well, the bad PR that everybody gets when they layoff several hundred people, is painful to organizations, and organizations are amoral. We need to understand that initially we're all people, but the places we work, our companies, they're not people, although they are made up of people. It's kind of a strange concept, but their whole goal is to make money for the shareholder at the end of the quarter, at the end of the year, at the end of the half, whatever. And so if you're in the wrong cell of a spreadsheet, your salary is up here. And the problem you solve is down here. This is in terms, of course, this is in term of terms. Of course you're out of balance. And therefore I can go hire a 26 year old person with a little bit of data analytic skills that can come in and do your job, for instance, for a third of the cost in their minds. Many times that doesn't hold because those are the same folks that don't necessarily know how to have a conversation with someone face to face a customer, a vendor, another colleague of a different age group, for instance. So a lot of times that backfires. Quite firing, on the other hand, is kind of a way underhanded, if I might put a judgment on that, that thought underhanded way of getting people to work, to quit work. The manager will stop giving you feedback on projects. The manager will start giving your projects to someone else. They'll maybe just stop talking to you entirely or just in passing. No longer that deep conversation that you used to have, no longer are you appreciated or sometimes you're ignored. And that makes you want to quit. Because if you quit, I don't have to pay unemployment, and I don't get a bad rap for firing another guy. He quit. What can I do?
Eileen Rochford [00:16:22] Wow, and you think this is happening quite a bit more than we realize?
Don O [00:16:25] Oh, yes. Oh, yes, there's a study. I can't remember who did it now, but there's, 25% of the time a return to office, mandate is generated and instituted to get people to quit.
Eileen Rochford [00:16:36] I did read that. Yes.
Rob Johnson [00:16:38] Entirely believable.
Eileen Rochford [00:16:40] And wasn't there something. Yeah. From Stanford, I think. I think it was Stanford. Yeah. The Stanford researcher for broke. So maybe. What's the lesson? I'll look it up. I'll put in the show notes. Yes. That I distinctly recall reading that just within the last week. Very upsetting to hear that. But then again, you know, when you're if your backdrop of explanation of organizations are amoral, well, that's shouldn't be upsetting to be on a par for the course. So then why should humans, human beings, be loyal or engage, you know, to any institution if the potential for being treated in that manner is so high? All of this is making a lot of sense.
Rob Johnson [00:17:18] Yeah. Therein lies the problem, right?
Don O [00:17:21] Yeah. Yep.
Eileen Rochford [00:17:22] Yes it does. Yes. Gosh. Okay, let's try to not make this the doomsday show, guys. Okay. Because there are good organizations, like smaller companies that don't do this. Okay? I just want to make sure you understand that. Absolutely. Yes. Okay. So let's let's also talk now about and I hope this isn't another doomsday topic, but maybe it is. We're realists. We are fascinated by artificial intelligence and its impacts. You know, in our industries with marketing communicators in particular, and we've talked a lot about it on the show. So of course, there are implications for worker engagement, their disengagement due to AI tell us, you know, your thoughts about that.
Don O [00:18:06] Well, the way I see AI is it's just a tool. And if it's used correctly, it can be used powerfully. It's like any other tool. A table saw can cut a piece of wood nice and straight and sharp and sharp lines and all of that. But it can also cut off fingers. It can cut off an arm if it's not used correctly. So using AI appropriately will get you the results you want. But but it's only the average of all of the things in the large language model that you've asked about. It does not take Rob's inherent, built-in talent and turn that into something that another human can relate to. Well, same thing with you, Eileen. You're in marketing. You know as well as I do that if you don't appeal to me on an emotional level, I'm probably not going to buy your product. I mean, not least the chances are very poor that I would. So if you take whatever results that you get back from an AI query, put your own spin on it. Please never, ever publish something that the AI models return a whole cloth, you know, always edit it put your voice to it.
Eileen Rochford [00:19:08] That's good career coaching because I have to tell you lately it's a little disturbing how much I'm seeing similarities amongst posts from people on LinkedIn that are so obviously AI-generated. Yes. So, that is an excellent shout out or call out rather word to the wise, particularly when you're in your position as the career coach, that that could be one of the seven deadly sins. And you're brand.
Rob Johnson [00:19:33] And you and you drove home the point that Eileen and I do on this show, when we do talk about AI, which is it's a great tool, it's first thing you said. Yes, but it has to have the human element to it. You can't just let it. No matter how much data you put in, you can't just let it run amok. You still have to put fences up around it. So you talked about that and the headline was, I've never heard anybody say AI compared it to a table saw. But that's.
Eileen Rochford [00:19:59] So good.
Rob Johnson [00:20:00] A great point.
Eileen Rochford [00:20:00] Why it's so good. How is AI impacting employment? Are you seeing any impacts? Are you seeing people coming to you because they've lost their job, because it's been introduced on such a large scale in their organization. Tell us a little bit about that.
Don O [00:20:14] Organizationally, people are using. It more on the administration side, where the lower level tasks can be helped be, done more quickly through the use of AI. I know when I'm going to write a blog post or a LinkedIn post, I will never again. Like I mentioned a moment ago, I'll take what they give me whole whole cloth. But I if I have a writer's block, I can't think of a I can't think of a post topic today, doggone it. So I wrote down a couple of thoughts and put it through the AI models and let it come back with me with ideas. Then I said, oh, I never thought of that. And then I'll kind of put my spin on it and my table saw to it, Rob, if you will, and see what, see what comes up.
Eileen Rochford [00:20:55] Yeah. So is there any merit to the fears that massive job losses are going to result from the implementation of AI, in your opinion.
Don O [00:21:05] At this level of AI? It's really kind of not AI. It's more generative text than anything. Artificial intelligence. Well, intelligence at its core is pretty much a sentient being. You can take a fact and put little things around it that relate to that emotionally, if you will. And right now, AI can't really do that well, it does it. It pretends to, but it's also been known to make things up. A friend of mine posed something to an AI model. I came back, said, paste, would be a great pizza topic. It's like the paste is a great pizza topping?
Eileen Rochford [00:21:37] It just makes sense that.
Don O [00:21:38] It just makes stuff up sometimes you just don't know.
Eileen Rochford [00:21:39] - paste. I mean, I can see that. Sure.
Rob Johnson [00:21:43] The thing that the thing that I was thinking about to down as it relates to what you're talking about with my bosses Eileen asked the question about, you know, how will AI impact, you know, jobs and that sort of thing. Is the person in charge needs to understand the limitations, because if they don't, then they're going to say, Brave New World. We can do so much more with so, you know, so much less manpower and woman power. But if they do understand it, then they need to be having the concerns that you're that all of us, I think, are raising on this, episode here.
Don O [00:22:13] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think training is imperative for how to use AI correctly so that it doesn't cut off that finger, cut off that arm. Training isn't incredibly.
Eileen Rochford [00:22:25] And not rushing in at the leadership level to implement anything about scale. Because to your point, if you eliminate positions, even if they cost you, you know, 200,000 a pop, that's 200,005 x to replace them because he rushed in exact though. Interesting. Yeah I good.
Rob Johnson [00:22:44] So it has been a little heavier than normal. The AI thing I think is fascinating. But we are always, always mindful here on can you Hear me to not only point out the problems as we've done today, we also like to offer solutions. So I'm thinking about it from a career coach standpoint. Don, if you're giving advice to people that are in between jobs right now or who may be coming to you or others for good advice, what's the one big thing people should bring to the job interview? What's what do they need to make sure that they focus on when they're in that moment?
Don O [00:23:17] The biggest thing people usually don't do as well as they could coach it that way is create questions that really matter, that really gives them, give the interviewee a good view into what the company is expecting of this role in this role, and what the company culture is, so that I can see whether or not my personality will will fit in here. People today need to know not only what you know how to do, but how you do what you do. Because if I have my work input coming from the guy on my right and I'm giving it to the guy in my left, and I use guy in a non-gender specific fashion, I should be able to get along with those people, at least on a professional, courteous level. I don't have to be best friends with them, but I shouldn't be out there being actively disengaged and trying to ruin their careers and ruin the work that they're doing. So be aware of the questions you ask. Make them really dig down into the business proposition outside the silo in which you be employed. Show adaptability. Show the sense that you can learn. Show that you're curious. Show that you're coachable. Again, go back to the self-confidence versus the arrogance back. And then just a sense of cultural fit that you've done some informational interviewing to find out whether or not you would fit inside that company.
Eileen Rochford [00:24:27] Good advice. Do you mind if I ask one follow up? Rob is that okay?
Rob Johnson [00:24:31] We're free-flowing here. Whatever you want.
Eileen Rochford [00:24:33] Thank you. Okay, so I heard from quite a few people, their difficulty getting past the AI filter for submitting their resumes, submitting, you know, applications to job postings, whether it's on LinkedIn or elsewhere or any of the, you know, career jobs sites, do you have any advice there to get past the filter and stand out? What should people do?
Don O [00:24:59] Yes. There's a there's a platform out there called Job Scan ATS. I don't remember how much they charge to do that, but they'll run the job description through their engine and your resume and give you an idea of how well fit your resume is for that role. A lot of that is just based on. Doing keyword comparison. Keywords are incredibly important, by the way, to include in your resume, but make sure you're not just putting keywords throughout the resume without them fitting inside of a sentence so that a human, when it reads that will say, oh, this is a human that wrote that, not a yeah, not a bot, not an AI bought, for instance, you get some guidance as to how good of a fit you are in that with using that tool. There's another one called resume worded, loop CV. Darn it, there's one other, word tune TUNE word tune. One word, that can help. You know, how we get this? A thesaurus will help you come up with a synonym for a word. Word tune does that with sentences. So that's pretty cool.
Eileen Rochford [00:25:56] That's great. Those are that's four excellent resources that I can put those in the show notes.
Rob Johnson [00:26:00] I asked for one and then he came out with like the four there and like three others. So thank you. And you overcompensate. And we appreciate that.
Eileen Rochford [00:26:08] More is always better.
Rob Johnson [00:26:12] Especially when we're Talking about the positives what we can do to help everybody. Right. So well done.
Eileen Rochford [00:26:16] Thats is right okay. Well that is a super positive note. I'm really glad we're closing on that one. And I'm happy that you were able to answer that question that I am hearing quite a bit. And it's just distressing to see that, you know, good people are kind of being hurt, by machines in ways that, you know, we didn't really experience the past. So thanks. Really good advice. So Don Oehlert thank you for joining us today. You've been an excellent guest and we appreciate everything that you've shared with us.
Don O [00:26:45] Thank you very much for having me. This has been fun. Like I thought it was going to be back at the beginning. And, I'm honored that you would ask me to join you today. Thank you.
Eileen Rochford [00:26:52] Absolutely. Okay. And we'll link to your bio and your website and all the good things, in our show notes as well. So I think that's going to do it for another edition of Can You Hear Me? I'm Eileen Rochford. If you guys would like to weigh in on our podcast, or you can give us an idea for a new topic, please reach out to us on our page on linkedIn. It's the Can you hear Me podcast page. So just look for that also in the show notes. That's FYI.
Rob Johnson [00:27:20] And I'm Rob Johnson. We do thank you for listening. And if you like this show, please consider giving us a review on any of the platforms where you can find Can You Hear Me, Apple, Spotify and more. Your reviews help other potential listeners find our show. Thanks again for listening.