Episode 84 · 26 March 2024 · 35:19
84: The country with the happiest Gen Z, Uber AU $272m fine & aggressive interviewers - This Week In Work, Episode 01
84: The country with the happiest Gen Z, Uber AU $272m fine & aggressive interviewers - This Week In Work, Episode 01
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Rebrand reveal: from Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture to Truth, Lies and Work
news roundup#podcast#rebrand#workplace-culture
News: Uber Australia fined $272m for unfair dismissal of non-Uber drivers
news roundup#uber#australia#unfair-dismissal#gig-economy
News: Finland's happiness secrets and the happiest Gen Z countries
news roundup#finland#happiness#gen-z#wellbeing
The great office return debate: Boots' mandate and expert insights
news roundup#office-return#boots#mandate#remote-work
Workplace Surgery: The aggressive interviewer
workplace surgery#interview#aggression#workplace-advice
Workplace Surgery: Quitting for mental health
workplace surgery#mental-health#quitting#career
Looking ahead and listener engagement
news roundup#podcast#listener-engagement#future-topics
Show notes
The Country With the Happiest Gen Z, Uber AU's $272m Fine & Aggressive Interviewers — This Week In Work, Episode 01
This Week in Work — Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott (Chartered Occupational Psychologist) kick off a brand-new episode format with a rebrand: Truth, Lies & Workplace Culture is now Truth, Lies & Work. In this first magazine-style roundup, they dig into Uber Australia's $272 million lawsuit, Finland's reign as the world's happiest country (and Lithuania's Gen Z happiness crown), and the never-ending remote vs. office debate. Plus, in Workplace Surgery: how to handle an aggressive interviewer, and whether quitting for your mental health will wreck your career.
🔥 Stories Covered
1. Uber Australia hit with a $272m lawsuit The ride-share giant is facing legal action over its treatment of drivers — a case that could have ripple effects far beyond Australia. Al and Leanne break down what's happening and why it matters for anyone watching the gig economy. Source →
2. Finland is the world's happiest country — but Lithuania has the happiest Gen Z The World Happiness Report is out, and Finland tops the overall rankings again. But the Gen Z data tells a different story, with Lithuania taking the crown for the youngest cohort. A Finnish psychologist shares a refreshingly practical take on happiness — including the power of lowering your expectations. Source →
3. The office return debate rages on Ross Simmons, CEO of fully remote company Foundations, makes the case for remote-first — and it's not just about convenience. Meanwhile, Dr. Craig Knight's research suggests happiness in any environment beats square-footage every time. Al and Leanne get into the weeds on what "intentional" remote work actually looks like.
🧠 Workplace Surgery
Three listener questions, tackled live:
- The aggressive interviewer: "I recently went to an interview and had a very strange experience — how should I have reacted?"
- The undercover candidate: A listener shares how a string of bad interviews turned into a data-driven investigation of hiring practices (inspired by Nora Burns, aka The Undercover Candidate).
- Quitting for mental health: "This job has been one of the first that I've genuinely hated — will quitting affect my long-term corporate career?"
(Got a question? Submit it via the connect link below.)
More From This Episode
- Dr. Craig Knight — Psychologist specialising in workplace productivity. Hear more in episode 43, Why The Office Is Dead.
- Ross Simmons — CEO of Foundations, a fully remote company.
- Rory Sutherland — Vice Chair of Ogilvy & Mather, featured in last week's episode.
- Nora Burns — The Undercover Candidate. Full interview in episode 74.
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
Expand full transcript
Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more. Nice.
Al ElliottCheck out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to the Truth, Lies and Work podcast, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a business psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al. I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd we are here to help you simplify the science of work.
Al ElliottNow, hold on a minute, Leanne. You said Truth, Lies and Work, not Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture.
Leanne ElliottI know, it felt a bit weird, that, actually. I had to really concentrate.
Al ElliottSo, what's going on?
Leanne ElliottWell, we do have a bit of news. If you missed our LinkedIn Live last week, then this might be a bit of a shock for you.
Al ElliottYou sounded quite Welsh then when you said that. I liked it.
Leanne ElliottI did it intentionally. Fun fact, I grew up in Wales. Bet you didn't know that, did you?
Al ElliottOut of interest, longest village name in Wales?
Leanne ElliottLlanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. There will be some Welsh speakers that might come for me for the odd bit of that, but I'll stand by it.
Al ElliottAnyway, back to what you were saying.
Leanne ElliottYes. If you missed our LinkedIn Live last week, then you might not have noticed that we've rebranded slightly. We, I mean, it's not the biggest rebrand in the world. It's not, it's not crazy. You know, we've gone from Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture to Truth, Lies and Work. But still, you deserve to ask why, and we owe you the respect to answer that question. We kind of reflected on the fact that over the last 80 episodes, we've covered a lot about workplace culture and the core topics. We, we, we actually did pretty well to get 80 episodes out of what is a very niche topic. And the thing is, we started this podcast as a bit of a side gig. And we didn't really expect it to get as big as it, as big as it has. Um, you know, it's, it blows our mind that there's at least 50,000 people a month listening, that we've peaked almost 100,000 a month other times. We're attracting new listeners from across the world who want to learn more about work in the workplace. So we really want to expand the conversation slightly just to keep you guys interested, engaged, and hopefully give us a bit more longevity.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne Elliottin this job that we absolutely love. Don't worry, we will still be covering everything workplace culture and leadership. It's so intertwined, we can't not. But we will also be expanding the conversation to maybe some of the employee perspective. We traditionally come from a leader and business, business leader perspective. But don't worry, leaders, we're still helping you create amazing workplace cultures. We're just bringing in, in some maybe the employee perspective into that conversation, and maybe just some, some things that we can chat about that You might have kind of tilted your head to the left if we said it was about workplace culture, but in terms of work and organisational life, it'll all make sense.
Al ElliottAnd as part of this, we have of course launched this brand new episode format. If this is your first time hearing this, then this is the brand new episode. This is the one we just talked about, and we're bringing you 2 shows every single week. Don't worry, we're still bringing the amazing guests on a Thursday. Tuesdays are going to be a little bit different.
Leanne ElliottTuesdays are gonna be We kind of saw it as like, I mean, it's a work in progress. We should say that working title is This Week in Work. We like the idea of kind of creating a podcast that has different segments, like the news roundup that you guys used to love, but we just can't fit into the Thursday episode. We also get lots of requests from guests that we just don't have the space to fit in on Thursday or are a little bit more left field, so we can bring them into the conversation now. We also get lots and lots of questions around work. about the workplace, about career progression, about layoffs, and we didn't really have a place to answer those questions. Um, but Tuesday's another place. Um, and finally, because we can, you know, we love podcasting and we love playing with the format. We've actually had been podcasting, podcasting since 2018. This is our second. Um, and this is, this is just kind of what we do. So we're gonna have a play, aren't we?
Al ElliottWe are. We hope it resonates. So, I mean, think of this like a radio show with multiple segments or like This Morning if you're from the UK, although I'm not quite as grey as— oh, I'm not sure I can mention the previous guest's name, previous host's name. Let's move on.
Leanne ElliottThat's an episode actually. It's a very interesting ethical discussion.
Al ElliottSo a bit like This Morning in the UK or Good Morning America, Good Morning Australia, Good Morning Canada, Quebec. I don't know. I'm sure there's lots of, lots of different ones. Um, so going forward, if you have a question, you can either send us a voice note or maybe a video would be cool because then we can put you on the pod, on the video pod, or if you just an email, if you want to be anonymous and you just want to ask us a question and get our answer on it. If you have an idea for a segment, then please email us. We would love your feedback. If you want to come on as an expert guest, then email us. Perhaps you are, I don't know, you have grown the largest marrow and you somehow can get that back into workplace culture.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottYeah, maybe, maybe not the marrow thing. But if you hate it, also tell us, tell us what we can do better. Okay, so now we have a bit more airtime, we're going to bring back a listener favourite. It's time for the news roundup.
Leanne ElliottYes. Before then, we just, before we dive into that, because that's when I get excited and lose my train of thought, do you want to tell the good listeners what other segments are coming up in today's First Tuesday episode?
Al ElliottYes, I do. This is, this is as polished as ever, as you can imagine. Yes, so we've got, first of all, we've got a little news roundup which is going to tell you what's going on in the world of work. Secondly, we have a debate around flexible working, remote working. Uh, Leanne's got all the answers. Well, I think she's got all the answers, but you can be the judge of that. And then finally, we have got the Surgery with Leanne where we will be answering the questions from the interwebs. So, Lee, shall we get started?
Leanne ElliottCue the jingle.
Al ElliottOkay, Leah, what What have you got?
Leanne ElliottWell, the first news story that, uh, that caught my attention this week is Uber Australia. Um, I've been a bit naughty and I've been hit with a huge, huge bill. $272 million Australian dollars to be exact. I think it's about, about half that in the US, maybe a little bit more, but basically it's a lot of, it's a lot of millions. So it follows a court case where non-Uber drivers sued Uber when Uber launched in Australia. They launched aggressively, they used aggressive pricing strategies, and they swallowed up business. I mean, I think it's fair enough. Airbnb is having a bit of pushback too. Perhaps it should be a reminder to anyone looking to, um, diversify worldwide that, that locals may not always be welcoming, or if the market is, your competitors may not. Um, but also what was an interesting development is that local drivers formed A class suit. Um, obviously self-employed, unionisation is difficult. Class suit is the way they went. Maybe this is the future of us self-employed people defending our rights.
Al ElliottMaybe it is. We don't have our unions being self-employed, so yeah, that could be quite interesting.
Leanne ElliottWhat have you got, Al?
Al ElliottOkay, so Finland is the world's happiest country according to a World Happiness Report. A Finnish psychologist thinks this is down to the 4 phrases that people of Finland use. So the first one is, and I'll only do 3 because you need to go to the article and read it, but the first one is who has happiness should hide it. Now, I'm not saying that you should be ashamed of being happy, and neither are they, but instead of, instead of saying, like, showing off to your neighbors about how wealthy you are or how successful you are, then some of the wealthiest Finns still drive boring Volvos instead of Ferraris. So in other words, there is no need to compare yourself to others to be happy. And something we've said on the pod before is comparison is the enemy of joy. The next one is that the pessimist will never be disappointed. I've always said it's never as good as it seems, but it's never as bad as it seems.
Leanne ElliottUntil it is.
Al ElliottUntil it is. Now, you should kind of not— you shouldn't expect everything is going to go wrong. But imagine at work you kind of expected people to ignore your emails. You'd be delighted when they don't. So I'm not 100% sure about this one, but if it works for the Finns, fair enough. Okay. And the number 3 is, some have happiness, everyone has summer. Lee, this makes you smile, doesn't it? This is saying, this saying is over 100 years old, and Finnish people take the view that sometimes you have happiness, sometimes you don't, but everyone has summer. I expect that's even more important in Finland where summers, no, winters can be -45 degrees centigrade. That's -50, I think, in Fahrenheit. Pretty cold. So the lesson here is that this too shall pass. If you're having a tough time, just remember summer is coming unless it's November. There'll be a link to the article in the show notes.
Leanne ElliottAn interesting approach from that Finnish psychologist. I'm sure there'll be some psychologists that will question pessimism over optimism and the use of positive psychology to create thriving lives. And also, I'm not entirely sure that your Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion was right there, Al, but we will move on. In fact, we won't quite move on. I did actually look at this Happiest Countries report. And what I found really interesting that wasn't really picked up by many articles, but the Wall Street Journal did, there is some serious differences in opinion between our generations. So yes, Finland was number 1 overall, but if we only take into account the feelings of the under-30s, they would've slipped to number 7. So worst outlook for Sweden. They were ranked number 4 overall, and by the people aged over 60, But if you only took into consideration the opinions of the under-30s, they would've dropped to number 18. That's a whole 14 places difference. Al, can you guess which country has the happiest under-30s? I will give you a clue. It's beautiful. We lived there unintentionally for 4 months, and they have some of the best smoked fish you will ever find.
Al ElliottOh, this is gonna be Lithuania. We were in Vilnius, weren't we, in Lithuania?
Leanne ElliottYep, that's where we spent our first lockdown. Good times. Um, but yeah, Lithuania. In fact, if you look at the top 5, they are very different if we only take into account the under-30s. So number 1 is Lithuania, and the full list, they're number 19. Israel came out in second overall, though number 5. Serbia, our neighbor, they came out number 3 overall for under-30s. Um, but once you consider the whole population, That went all the way up to 37th. Um, Iceland were number 4 for the under-30s, number 3, so actually quite a bit of synergy. And similar with Denmark, although slightly less happy under-30s, they placed 5th, whereas overall they were number 2. So it does make you wonder what is happening in Lithuania? What are they doing to engage their kids? We will be hunting for future guests to help us answer that. If you are from Lithuania, Israel, Serbia, Iceland or Denmark and you're under the age of 30, get in touch. We would love to have you on the show and hear your views. Talking now about differences in opinion, Al, I saw an article about the British company Boots the other day.
Al ElliottOh, okay.
Leanne ElliottUh, they don't sell shoes if you're not from the UK. They are actually a pharmacy and they sell snacks and shampoo, like a drugstore makeup type thing that you might get in USA, Canada, Australia. But anyway, they have announced that all 3,900 head office staff have to return to the office, supposedly to foster team spirit, but I never quite buy it when bosses say that. Boots say that they've updated offices and IT systems because a new mouse is exactly what compensates for trekking into the office 5 days a week. Um, so yeah, there you go. It does raise the question once again, why are so many employers intent on bringing people back to the office? Wow.
Al ElliottThere's so much talk about this, and in fact, if you caught our episode last week with the amazing Rory Sutherland, it was part 1 of our Future of the Workplace series, part 1 of 2, and Rory had some quite interesting ideas about why people are pushing people back to the office and actually what the actual— what the thought behind it is, because it's not necessarily just that the managers want to be back to the office. Well, I'm not going to spoil it. Go back to the episode last week and you will hear more. What, what's your thoughts, Leigh?
Leanne ElliottI'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. Because do you know what I'm bored of? It's not the, it's not the question of how and where we work, because that is an interesting question, but that's the context of it all. Let's not dress it up as we need people back in the office for team building, for collaboration, for innovation, when people go into the office, put on their headphones, and sit on Teams calls all day, or go into the office, have a coffee with their mates, and then go back home again. I just think intention is being lost as to why we're needing to bring people back together. Bruce Daisley talked about this. Yes, there are benefits of building connection in person, but actually about 2 days a week seems about right. Anything more than that, we're not seeing a bigger impact. And also, we're, we're negating the fact that connections can be built digitally. So I think I'm just frustrated by the context, but because of that, I thought I would call on some previous guests. friends of the show to weigh in and, and tell you what they think, because maybe you think I'm biased, and I probably am, having worked remotely for over a decade and managed remote teams in remote companies and seeing how fabulous the culture was. But anyway, first let's hear from Dr. Craig Knight. Productivity can thrive in many different environments.
Al ElliottWhat it needs though is Happiness. If you're happy in a space, you will work well within it. And what tends to happen is people quite like, for example, working from home some of the time and going into the office at other times, or maybe going to the coffee shop another day. So when you give people again that choice of where they want to work from, rather than, let's say, in Jacob Rees-Mogg style hauling people back into the space, right, that choice makes a really big difference about how creative and productive people are. Let me give you a quick example. When we studied people working from home and when we compared that to people working in the office, we found that requirements are similar, but the way in which they're catered for are different. So that, for example, when people work from home, what's important is the people that are important to them, friends, neighbors, associates, whatever it is, via Facebook or TikTok, wherever they have their contacts or knocking on the door, and also the people with whom they work. Now, when you work from home, it's really quite important to make sure that you stay in contact with the people with whom you work. And that can be something that's neglected. You know, somebody's off in, I don't know, John O'Groats, and they tend to be forgotten about by head office. So it's really important to make sure that we retain work contacts with people that are working from home. But just as important, those things matter in the office too. So when they're in the office, where business contacts are easy, Remember that people's personal important contacts are important to them as well. So if you block things, which lots of companies do, like Facebook and TikTok and access to all these social media sites, you are damaging the access to those important people and you are damaging the organization as a result because productivity will fall. I love Dr. Craig Knight. I want him to read me a bedtime story. If you listen to this, Dr. Knight, that's a bit weird, so maybe just ignore that bit. Anyway, Dr.
Leanne ElliottKnight, get it?
Al ElliottDr. Knight?
Leanne ElliottBedtime story.
Al ElliottOh, that could be— oh, there you go, there's your YouTube channel, uh, Dr. Knight Craig. There you go, that's, that's it for you. Anyway, sorry, what were you gonna say, Lee?
Leanne ElliottUh, yeah, if you— did you say if you like that, go back to episode 43?
Al ElliottNo, I didn't. I think you should say that.
Leanne ElliottYeah, no, if you like that, if you want to hear more from Dr. Craig, do go and check out episode 43, Why The Office Is Making a Comeback. So it does raise the question, the actual question, does remote working actually work? Well, the only way to find that out is to ask the CEO of a 100% remote company. And we did. Here is Ross Simmons, the CEO of Foundations.
Al ElliottI got to a point where I realized, um, that remote was, in my opinion, the key to actually having, um, the ability to kind of maintain my own level of sanity. I got shortly after running my own company brought into a larger agency and I worked in this agency in-house and I actually had to show up every single day and the commute was quite long for me where I had to drive for about 60 minutes each day to get to this office.
Leanne ElliottAnd for me, as somebody who cares deeply about their time, I did the math on how many hours I was spending every year to actually just commute my physical body from home to And when I did that math, I started to realize this is a lot of wasted time.
Al ElliottAnd I could have bought a place that was a little bit closer. I could have done those things. But for me, even once in the office, I struggled with many elements of in-person work that didn't allow me to actually create my best work, to allow me to reach the pinnacle of excellence in my work. So shortly thereafter, I left that company and I started Foundation, has been fully remote since 2014.
Leanne ElliottAnd we have no intentions of ever changing that.
Al ElliottWe've been fully remote since day one.
Leanne ElliottAnd the key to that is really just being intentional with recognizing that remote work is different.
Al ElliottAnd with remote work, communication excellence is a necessity rather than a nice to have.
Leanne ElliottWhen you were in the office, it's easy to go and have lunch with your colleagues and peers, or even just say something across the office that the entire company hears within the matter of seconds.
Al ElliottBut with a remote-first company, you have to set a bar and a level of expectation around what great communication looks like.
Leanne ElliottAnd then as the leader of the company, you need to match it and meet it every single day.
Al ElliottSo if you want to know more about this, then go back to the episode, which was last Thursday with the amazing Rory Sutherland, the Vice Chair of Ogilvy Mathers. If you haven't yet listened to it, then here's a However, I have to say, I think Ogilvy HR did the right thing on flexible work. I'll describe our policy very happily. It is 2+1, which is you have 2 core days a week, which are the same for your whole team. So wherever possible, everybody in a team is in at a given time. Now, that also means that you can make better utilization of space.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottBecause effectively, you have, you know, obviously different teams have different core days. Okay. That's the first point. The second point is it's plus one, which is you have one flexible day. The third point, which I was particularly delighted by, is everybody gets 4 weeks a year of what's called working from anywhere within obviously tax and legal constraints. So people who, let's say, you know, have to go and look after their parent after a fall, or indeed want to go to Ibiza, okay, can do so, okay, uh, and continue to work without taking that as part of your vacation allowance. I thought that was enlightened and really intelligent. So after the break, we have our new weekly work surgery with the amazing Leanne, where we talk about how to deal with angry recruiters, When you should quit a toxic workplace, and we'll also touch on PIP if we've got time, but that might have to go to next week. See you in a second.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good looking. And you're not going to say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless. Seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. We've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioural science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff, and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is, it's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that will be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this.
Leanne ElliottSo come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out. Keep that in. Welcome back. Let's get down to business. So, Leanne, let's test your psychological powers. This is the segment we've We've codenamed Surgery. We probably think of workplace surgery. We're going to think of something clever for it in the next couple of weeks. So what we're going to do in here is I've got 3 real-life scenarios to run by you as posed on online forums, because we don't yet have your questions. So please email us your questions, email us your video, and you can be on the pod. And I'm going to ask you the question, or I'm going to read a shortened version of what the person said, and then I'm going to ask you to answer it from a business psychological perspective.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al Elliottpoint of view as the expert. How do you feel about that?
Leanne ElliottI feel good. I feel ready.
Al ElliottLet's go for it. Okay, so the first post is from someone who recently went to an interview and had a very strange experience with one of his interviewers. After the interview, he decided he actually wanted to, to stay in his current job and so wrote a really nice email. So this is what he said. I stated that while the company seems to have a great culture and work-life balance, it just wasn't a good fit for me at this point in my career. I ended it by saying that I appreciate the time and effort they put into the process. Here's where it gets weird. This is what they wrote. The interviewer removed everyone else from the reply and wrote, I know all your managers very well. Where are you really going? The tone was threatening, and the suggestion was the interviewer would contact the current employers and tell them about the interview. Now, in this case, it wouldn't matter because the current employers knew all about the interview, but it still poses a question, Leanne.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottHow should this guy have reacted to this strange reply? Should he ignore it? Should he have written back? Or should he just reiterate on what he's just already said? Leanne, what do you think?
Leanne ElliottI mean, I think you've handled this in a very mature way, actually. You know, you pursued a new opportunity. You then, you know, clearly have a very open relationship with your manager that you've discussed it with and decided there are opportunities in your current role. I don't, in terms of the person writing this, I think you've handled it really maturely and Very beautifully. Um, I mean, you said that that organization has a good workplace culture and work-life balance, but I mean, to quote John Amici, culture is defined by the worst behaviors tolerated. And if the worst behaviors tolerated is senior leadership being able to remove transparency from a recruitment process, to effectively bully a candidate into disclosing where they're really going for work, assuming That they're lying, assuming you're lying. I think that points to pockets of toxicity within workplace culture, and particularly if that pocket is a senior level. I would run as fast and far as I could away from this organization and that leader. I think you've made the right decision to stay. In terms of replying, I'm— don't bite back. He ain't gonna accept this feedback with any sense of humility or in any constructive way. I mean, in terms of his reaction, he's angry. Your goal, you know, you're goal blocking. He wanted your expertise in the organization. You said no. That's why he's, he's frustrated, but you're not gonna be able to ease that frustration at this point. You've made your decision and good for you. I would reiterate what you've already said. I would use exactly the same wording and language in the, um, in the previous email and leave it at that. You know, if, if he continues to harass you, then I would ignore it. Um, if it escalates to a, you know, position that's a bit weird.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottThen, I don't know, maybe block him or speak to your manager again. I'm sure it won't. I would say reply, reiterate what you said, ignore any— anything else that comes in.
Al ElliottWe recently had the amazing Nora Burns on the podcast. Such an interesting story. She's known as the undercover candidate, and so she went to interviews undercover. And despite being an expert in HR and work culture, she went to hundreds of these interviews undercover, and what she found was quite revealing.
Leanne ElliottSo I thought, oh, you know, I'll just do a handful of interviews in a neighboring city that I can easily drive to, but I won't be easily recognized in should the HR executive walk through the lobby while I'm sitting there to interview for a receptionist position. So, it started with a handful of interviews thinking maybe I just need to experience what the other side of this is to become better at my job. And I was really horrified by what I experienced, just lazy interviews, bad questions, some bordering on, if not unethical, at least unethical, could be illegal if you made a hiring decision based on the information.
Al ElliottHmm.
Leanne ElliottHere in the United States. And I was like, this is bad. And then I love data and I realized I needed more data. This was such a subset of being in this one suburb of Denver. And so I met with my business coach and with some HR pros and some ethicists and put together the project plan and committed to doing at least 100 interviews in different cities across the United States.
Al ElliottWow.
Leanne ElliottStates so that it wasn't a bias of one particular style of leadership in one city. And it just grew and soared from there. So, and now I actually do it as an offering for clients where we audit their hiring process by sending candidates through and looking for all of the things that I observed and identified as potential flaws and leakage of risk assessment information or just dangerous hiring practices that'll get you to the wrong hire. I think the things that surprised me the most is that we're pretty lazy about our hiring. And that sounds pretty harsh, and I can't think of another better word for it. When hiring manager after hiring manager is reading my resume or application while walking down the hallway with me, Trying to figure out where they're going to interview me. The bulk of the interview and the most important part of the interview is actually the hour that happens in preparing for it so that you have a really spectacular experience, both you as the hiring manager and the candidate. Without that preparation, the interview is not going to go well and you're not going to get the best candidate. So it was the lack of preparedness, Walking in, being left waiting in waiting rooms for 10, 15, 20, 35 minutes, and thinking you got to think about your candidate as if you're meeting with the CEO, right? You need to be on time, ready, prepared. They are so important to your overall organization, and if we're treating them poorly, then it's not going to get better. And it's like a first. Right? If you show up late and sloppy and rude on a first date, you're not getting a second one. It's not unlike that, just the questions are different.
Al ElliottYep. So that was Nora Burns. The full interview is back in episode 74. Okay, so the last one, this person asks, would you quit your job to protect your mental health?
Leanne ElliottYes. Next question.
Al ElliottWell, yeah, and I think you have actually, haven't you?
Leanne ElliottYes. Yes.
Al ElliottSo here's what they wrote. To keep things short, this job has been one of the first that I've genuinely hated going into every single day, and my mental health has taken a toll because of it. At past jobs, while there were days where I didn't necessarily love what I was doing, I never felt like it was sucking the life out of me. Now I have a constant feeling of dread. I use drugs and alcohol to cope, and I don't take care of myself health-wise. Now here's where the plot thickens a little, Leanne. This person is pretty wedged. Here's what they said. For a bit of context on my situation, I have around $100,000, and it doesn't say dollars, whether it's dollars, if it's, if it's Vietnamese currency, and that's probably about 6 quid saved up, and, and a business that generates income consistently. So I'm wondering if anyone has made the leap without anything lined up. It sounds like this person's got something lined up. I would plan to focus on my business full-time, but for some reason, if it didn't work out, I wouldn't want this to affect my career long-term if I had to rejoin the corporate world? Has anyone here quit their job because of mental health issues? Now, Leanne, there's a couple of things, a couple of questions here, I think. The first one is, will it affect their career long-term if they quit? And then I want to handle the, what happens if you start your business?
Leanne ElliottYeah. So the first bit, will it, will it affect your long-term corporate career? I mean, it depends. I'm sorry, but it depends. Any gap on your resume that's 6 months or less, recruiters and hiring managers are going to get over pretty quickly. Because as long as you've got the skills they need for the job they're recruiting for, 6 months ain't no thing. So anything less than that, I, I don't think you really need to worry. It can be explained away. Um, I mean, yeah, if you, if you run your business for 3 or 4 years somewhat successfully, you decide to go back into corporate, will it be more difficult for you to get back in? Yeah. Because you're out of that world, you're out of that, that culture, arguably that discipline and and hierarchy. But I'd be more inclined to think about your perspective at that point, whether you'd want to go back into a corporate job, or where actually, you know, entrepreneurs typically want to remain entrepreneurial. We've also seen— I've also worked with clients who have gone through that type of experience, and rather than go back into corporate, have gone back into small or medium-sized organizations. They tend to be a bit more, um, flexible and a bit more open-minded in terms of the skills that you can bring, having a corporate career and an entrepreneurial career, actually for scaling smaller business. That's a really valuable skillset. I think you'd need to work with a coach if there is a larger gap than 6 months to just kind of refine your value proposition as you go back into the market. But that is a problem for another day. The thing that I would focus on, if you're gonna leave this, leave this role now, I'll hand over to Al to deal with the, the business side of it, cuz that is definitely his area of expertise. The thing is, you said there that you're using drugs and alcohol to cope and you don't take care of yourself health-wise. That's really common. You know, drugs and alcohol are a coping mechanism. They're a maladaptive coping mechanism, but they are a coping mechanism. The thing is that when you leave your, your job now, which does sound pretty toxic, it doesn't necessarily mean that removing that, that toxicity, removing that sadness is suddenly gonna mean that you're happy. There's gonna need to be some work around your mental health recovery. to put you in a position where you're, you know, you're back to surviving and then working towards thriving. One of the things I'd say is if you are gonna, um, move into setting up your business, keep some boundaries in place, whether it be, um, your typical working hours, whether it be that you go and see your mum every Monday, whether it be go to the gym twice a week, whatever structure you currently have, um, either in your professional life or your personal life, I would try and keep that structure in place and then build on that, build out from that. the habits and more, um, um, the more effective, um, long-term coping mechanisms that will help you make this transition. Because let's not forget, owning your own business, being an entrepreneur, as you all well know, is pretty stressful.
Al ElliottIt is. Instead of having one boss, if you've got customers, you've got multiple bosses. And, um, often they— you've not got as many rights, but the upside is incredible. And a couple of things I would say to you there is that, first of all, Let's talk about runway. This is what, um, us business nerds talk about, the amount of cash you've got and how long that will last. Uh, so if you have $100K, um, sort of saved up, then work out what are your expenses every single month, divide your— divide that into 100, and you know how many months you've got left. So you know that even if you, if you give a really, really good try, then you've got X number of months left. Um, the second thing I'd want to talk about is ramen. They talk about in Silicon Valley being ramen profitable.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottUh, that is when you, uh, if you ate ramen every single day, you know, ramen, the little dried pots of pot noodle, you'd call it in the UK. If you ate ramen every single day, then how much could you reduce your costs? So therefore increase your runway. And the final thing is just your risk. Think about the risk of this. If you aren't prepared to back yourself and to wager that $100 grand or $50 grand of that $100 grand on yourself, You may not be cut out for business. And it's not like I'm saying you shouldn't be an entrepreneur. I'm just saying that if, if your risk profile is that way, maybe it's not for you. Maybe you should just go and get another job. Because if— but then just bear in mind, if you go and get another job and you look back in 5 years, you might really, really regret not having taken that step and not having done that thing. So if it was me, I'd go for it. But obviously, you know, everyone's different. Like Leanne says, it depends.
Leanne ElliottWell, best of luck to you. I mean, I'll be honest, if I had that runway and I was in a toxic environment and I had a successful side hustle, I, I would probably make the leap knowing that, you know, doing it for 12 months, even, um, 2 years, there is, there is time to recover, um, from that period. I mean, I say that you're talking as if you're, you're a younger person, perhaps early to mid-career. If you're, you know, if you're approaching the late stage of your career, then perhaps there isn't as much time to recover.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd that's why your savings might be a bit more, a bit more precious to you. Um, but yeah, if you've got time to recover, I'd say go for it.
Al ElliottSo I think that's just about it for this week. Uh, if you haven't listened to Thursday's episode where we hear a pretty angry Rory Sutherland tell us why a blanket demand return back to the office is just plain stupid, then go back to that. And if you like that kind of thing, then you definitely want to look on this Thursday coming. We've got Isabel Berrick. She's got part 2 of this, Future-Proofing Your Work, but where you future-proof your career. So, that's definitely something which perhaps the, the OP of that post would be interested in listening to. If you have a question, if you want Leah to answer a question next Tuesday, you know how to get in touch. Everything's in the show notes.
Leanne ElliottAnd also feedback, please. If you have a news story you want us to include, perhaps something that's happened in your organisation that you want to celebrate and shout about, or indeed a hot topic that you want us to debate with the help of our experts, get in touch. You can contact us directly. We'll leave all the links in the show notes. LinkedIn's always a good, always a good shout as well. Um, but yeah, let us know, and we will see you on Thursday with Isabel Berwick, and then again this time next week for another This Week in Work episode.
Al ElliottThanks for listening. See you soon.
Leanne ElliottBye-bye.