cherryandbees/woman remote working from her home
By Melissa Puls
Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at Ivanti and is responsible for Ivanti’s global marketing function.
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I recently conducted a quick news search for labor market trends and saw these four articles in a row:
• CEO says many of his remote workers didn't open their laptops for a month.
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• Gen Z takes things way further than "quiet quitting," NYU business professor says. (According to the article, they're embracing "funemployment" instead.)
• "Forget "quiet quitting." Millennials and Gen Zers are quietly working second jobs as they live paycheck to paycheck."
• Report finds remote work boosted labor market participation.
At first glance, these four articles directly contrast each other. And it's true — they make completely opposite claims about labor market trends.
Are Millennials and Gen Zers embracing funemployment, taking a wildly cavalier approach to the traditional idea of work and careers? Or are they working around the clock at unfulfilling jobs, struggling to get by?
Are remote workers completely checked out and a danger to a business's productivity? Or are they contributing positively to the labor market, lowering a business's overhead while improving engagement and productivity scores?
The Underlying Factor
Despite the contrasts in these articles (and the thousands of others you could scroll through if you searched for the same topics), there is a common thread. And it's a game-changer.
That common thread? Engagement. Is. Everything.
Before I go any further, I want to make something clear. There's a common misconception that engagement is about presence and having eyeballs on a topic. Whether you're talking about Instagram scrollers or employees, many brands believe that if someone's paying attention (via a camera on during a Zoom call or a double tap on an ad) that they're engaged.
Not true. Engagement is so much broader and deeper than that. True engagement means that you feel seen and heard. It means you're devoting not just attention (which is passive), but energy toward something. It means you're not just going through the motions, but you're curious and inspired. You feel a sense of loyalty and connection to whatever it is you're engaging with. You can draw a thread between that 'something' and you — your values, your identity, your sense of self, your goals, your sense of responsibility, your pride...you.
Anyone can show up on a Zoom call. Anyone can double-tap an Instagram photo.
But are they engaged? Not necessarily.
How Engagement Makes All the Difference
Let's get back to the articles above.
The Millennials and Gen Zers who prefer funemployment to work? They're doing something with their days, to be sure. They're leveraging their passions and talents, but since they're "funemployed," those activities are simply hobbies. If they were in a workplace environment that valued those passions and talents, paid accordingly, promoted work/life balance, and created a space for them to thrive, you can bet they'd be more likely to engage. And they'd probably surprise their employers.
Is the Gen Z crowd working around the clock? The article says they're bogged down with stressful second jobs. If they were getting what they needed from their day jobs—adequate compensation, being valued and being given a chance to add value—perhaps those second jobs would be less critical for their survival, and they could engage fully for a job they cared about.
The remote employees who went a month without opening their laptop? It doesn't take an expert to see that there's a clear engagement problem here. The CEO in the article attributes the problem to the remote structure itself, and competing demands on caregivers, but the real problem is that employees simply haven't been given a reason to engage. And that falls back on the leadership. If you're in the right workplace environment, you shouldn't need to "quiet quit" by shutting down for weeks at a time.
After all, the last article points out that remote workforce participation has boosted labor force participation and helped control costs while promoting productivity. Remote work has enabled people to participate in the workforce who might otherwise be prohibited from a role by factors such as geography, commute, and family obligations.
Wrapping Up
The examples I've just given are, of course, generalizations. Everyone's circumstances are different, and I'm acutely aware of the economic considerations involved. You can't simply tell a potential worker, "Go work a high-paying job where they value you." The role, the corporate culture, and the funds need to be there.
And yet, this is where we need to go. We need to normalize work/life balance. We need to normalize Everywhere Work, whatever that looks like for the individual, the role, and the company. We need to accept that people are more productive when they care about what they're doing. That passion and productivity can happen in a huge variety of roles. It's not about the tasks; it has so much more to do with leadership, the way the role is structured, how the individual is valued, and how they're allowed to leverage their personal strengths. It extends to their Digital Employee Experience. It extends to their compensation package. It extends to recognition. It extends to giving them space to share ideas.
If we don't start working on engagement, we're going to keep seeing headlines about quiet quitting, quiet firing, and labor force volatility. You can't fix any of these without fixing the root of the problem.
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