{"id":6011,"date":"2025-01-05T19:27:03","date_gmt":"2025-01-05T19:27:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/?p=6011"},"modified":"2025-01-06T14:27:41","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T14:27:41","slug":"all-about-me-me-me_010524","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/all-about-me-me-me_010524\/","title":{"rendered":"Modern-day work culture:\u00a0 It\u2019s all about ME, ME, ME"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
Have you taken a step back to reflect on the impact of social media, AI, and the pandemic on today\u2019s employee mindset? A work environment where isolation, loneliness, and self-entitlement have become the norm\u2026 an environment that is losing its connectedness and is becoming increasingly dehumanized.<\/p>\n
We live in a world that\u2019s all about ME. We want to be loved, appreciated, adulated, respected, and credited for literally everything we do.<\/p>\n
We want to earn lots of money, work when we want to, do what we want to, and not have a boss watching over our shoulders every day. We want ME in charge.<\/p>\n
We want to have an opinion on pretty much everything and choose where we get our knowledge. ME has an opinion, and that\u2019s all that matters.<\/p>\n
We need these constant little endorphin hits when someone gives us attention, whether it\u2019s a social media post or a call out at work. It\u2019s all about ME\u2026 and as much as possible!<\/p>\n
We communicate most of our time over text and talk<\/em> to people less and less because we hide in our little ME cocoons. Talking<\/em> to people requires effort and our full attention, and it\u2019s not all about ME.<\/p>\n We have become super-sensitive to criticism. The slightest accusation or hint of negativity toward us makes us get very defensive. How dare<\/em> you accuse me of not being perfect!<\/p>\n We repeatedly tell people all the amazing things we do so we can constantly get credit. Why wait for praise when we can just praise ME?<\/p>\n We invest our time in people who can advance our ME agendas.<\/p>\n We avoid people who have little to offer ME.<\/p>\n We spend less social time with our colleagues because team bonding is not very important to ME.<\/p>\n We spend time learning new things that interest<\/em> ME, not things we need<\/em> to learn about to further our work skills and knowledge.<\/p>\n We rarely work evenings or weekends anymore. ME doesn\u2019t need to go over and above unless it benefits<\/em> ME.<\/p>\n We “like” things on social media to further our ME network and never bother to read the articles. The authors should be genuinely grateful for our endorsements because they are from ME.<\/p>\n It\u2019s really all just about ME, ME, ME!<\/p>\n Can you really blame employees for feeling dehumanized when their bosses keep pontificating about bots and agents replacing and augmenting their work activities? Can you blame them for feeling lonely and isolated at home, performing mundane activities with little outlet to enjoy themselves?\u00a0 Can you blame them for needing recognition and appreciation for being human<\/em> in an environment where there is so much focus on meeting metrics, reducing costs, and sucking the very humanity out of the workplace with constant technology upgrades and new deployments?<\/p>\n People don\u2019t suddenly decide<\/em> to become selfish.\u00a0 This is a product of these dehumanizing dynamics in the work environment, which results in people crying out for affirmation and a sense of connectedness<\/em> that is missing from our work lives.<\/p>\n I would love to provide a definitive guide to employers and employees on how to make our work environments more connected, but this is a blog, not a detailed guide to HR, so I\u2019ll leave you with three simple activities to get back on the right track:<\/p>\n Let\u2019s get to know each other better.<\/strong>\u00a0 Get off the Team, Zoom, Slack, whatever text system we use for company communication and call each other up.\u00a0 Get to know each other as HUMANS again and not as mere work colleagues who provide a means to an end.\u00a0 We don\u2019t even need to like<\/em> each other but just behaving like humans and not text-generating cyborgs is a huge step to improving our connectedness and work culture.<\/p>\n Focus on work as a positive, not a negative experience.<\/strong>\u00a0 It\u2019s so easy to be negative; we all go there, and it\u2019s not a great place to be.\u00a0 When you feel negativity coming knocking, take a step away and rethink why you are feeling this way.\u00a0 Staring at a screen 10 hours a day is just bad for your brain, your eyes, and your health and saps your energy and enthusiasm.\u00a0 So take more breaks in the day, go for a walk, hit the gym, or just call someone up to talk.<\/p>\n Spend less time on social media<\/strong>.\u00a0 I am not the patron saint of this, but so many people are wasting an inordinate amount of time seeking their little endorphin hits and not getting any actual real value from this.\u00a0 Unless you have something profound to share with the world, why spend half your day just trawling through digital junk when you can spend more time improving your own work or client relationships just by talking<\/em> to them?\u00a0 Social media can be a great thing for developing your network etc., but there is a line between some networking and just wasting hours a day on this mind-numbing activity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Have you taken a step back to reflect on the impact of social media, AI, and the pandemic on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6015,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1293,867,932,80,93],"tags":[1295,151,1093,949,1324,410,496,619],"organization":[],"ppma_author":[19],"class_list":["post-6011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-agentic-ai","category-artificial-intelligence","category-employee-experience","category-hr-strategy","category-social-networking","tag-agentic","tag-automation","tag-culture","tag-employee-experience","tag-fersht","tag-hr","tag-leadership","tag-phil-fersht"],"yoast_head":"\n“ME” is the world we live in, but we need to focus more on “US” to improve work culture<\/span> <\/strong><\/h3>\n
Bottom-line: We must reverse this culture, but it will take a lot of refocusing<\/span><\/h2>\n