TenantSee Weekly: It's About Trust
Getting More for Less.
Companies aren’t families. The employer/employee relationship is governed more by economics (math) than trust. This is at the heart of the ongoing struggle between employers and employees over return to office and asynchronous work. Let us explain.
TenantSee Weekly: What Could Go Right?
Mass psychology is literally contagious (that’s how it becomes “mass”). This is especially true in times of change, when a significant event has precipitated such change (e.g., the pandemic). These events can be positive or negative. In our current state, the catalyst was negative, and, in many ways, has resulted in a decidedly negative outlook. When things turn negative, there will always be market casualties (just as a rising tide lifts all boats in the positive context). For example, the impact to investors in the domestic office sector has been mostly negative. As change unfolds, it can have knock-on impacts that weren’t necessarily anticipated. For example, the demise of urban downtowns due to shifts in daily worker population. Collective sentiment tends to aggregate around a view and stay there until some brave souls dare to take the contrarian view. As these contrarians see success, it spurs others to jump on board and the collective sentiment begins to shift, once again, in the other direction.
TenantSee Weekly: The Disconnected Worker
I read an article recently about layoffs in the tech sector. In it, one worker shared her story of being laid off by 3 companies in less than a year. The first was a startup where she had worked for several years. She questioned why she had been selected – it clearly felt personal. The next 2 employments were each of short duration, the last being merely a month long. In the end, she was left questioning whether she wanted to continue working in tech. The tech sector, especially the startup segment of the tech sector, has never been a great place to seek job security because of its inherent volatility. Yet it has long been a place in which employers seek to espouse winning and attractive cultures that are all about “the people”. This got me thinking about job security in the post-pandemic workplace. Has employment in the information economy become more unstable because there is less connection between employer and employee? Is the relationship between employer and employee becoming more transactional?
