Chief Correspondent at Business Insider, Aki Ito - Career Club Live

Ever wondered why career loyalty seems to be a thing of the past? Join us as we sit down with Aki Ito, chief correspondent at Business Insider, to unpack this complex issue. Aki takes us on a journey through her unique upbringing in Tokyo and New York, her education at Middlebury College, and her impressive career that includes impactful reporting on workplace trends. You'll hear firsthand about Aki's groundbreaking stories on "quiet quitting" and the end of hustle culture, which have garnered numerous awards and made waves in the industry.

Together, we dissect the shifting dynamics of workplace loyalty from the 1950s to today. From the job security prevalent in the mid-20th century to the ruthless, market-driven changes of the 1980s, we explore the erosion of the employer-employee social contract. Discover how outsourcing and reduced benefits have led to a resurgence of labor unions, and how these trends contrast with the stronger union influences in Europe. This conversation also highlights the importance of balancing immediate profit pressures with sustainable, long-term value creation.

As we round out our discussion, we touch on the evolving nature of work, the rise of gig employment, and the impact of remote work on employee loyalty. We also delve into generational differences in workplace expectations, revealing how millennials and Gen Z view loyalty differently than their predecessors. Finally, learn strategies for building lifelong relationships with employees, emphasizing trust, transparency, and genuine care. This episode is a must-listen for anyone keen on understanding the future of work and the critical factors shaping it.

Transcript

Bob Goodwin: 0:00

I know you're gonna find it. You gotta keep on at it. Hi everybody, this is Bob Goodwin, president of Career Club, and welcome to another episode of Career Club Live. Before we get started with today's interview, I wanted to encourage any job seekers who might be listening to go to careerclub. We've got some free resources available for you, including a free weekly coaching call that we do every Thursday at one o'clock Eastern. No infomercial, no selling. It's just strictly premier coaching at no cost and it's forever free. So we really encourage you to do that and if you know somebody who's in job search, encourage them to attend. For our HR and talent acquisition professionals, we'd encourage you to check out something new that we're working on, called Journey Forward, which is a way of taking disposition or rejection letters and actually enhancing the candidate experience and building the employer brand at the same time. Again, you can find that on our website, careerclub, under for employers and their candidate experience.

Bob Goodwin: 1:09

So with that, I am really excited to introduce today's guest. I'm always excited about our guests. I'm particularly excited today. This is somebody that I follow in the press. I think she does amazing work and I'm over the moon that she's agreed to spend some time with us today. So our guest today is Aki Ito with Business Insider. Aki is a chief correspondent with Business Insider, writing on workplace issues. I'm going to read just a little bit about her bio. In 2022, aki's story about recovering overachievers dialing back at work sparked the national firestorm that, if I remember, over quiet quitting that story, along with her feature about the end of hustle culture when the National Press Club's award for cultural criticism and was the finalist for the Gerald Loeb award in commentary. Aki's journalism is also on awards from organizations like SEBW, the New York Press Club, san Francisco Press Club, the Webys and a number of others. Before joining Business Insider, aki was a reporter and editor at Bloomberg News for 10 years, covering the tech industry, the Federal Reserve and the Japanese economy.

Aki Ito: 2:16

With that, aki welcome hey Bob, How's it going?

Bob Goodwin: 2:21

I am doing well. Thanks so much.

Bob Goodwin: 2:23

Yeah, thanks for having me, no 100% and I really meant what I said. Like you know, I follow you quite closely. I think that the kind of investigative and explanatory journalism that you do, you know, is really shedding important light on things, and our topic today is going to be on what turned out to be a two-article series that you wrote on loyalty, and we're going to unpack that a little bit. But before we do that this is our want here on the podcast We'd love just to learn a little bit about you as a human being first. So where were you born and raised?

Aki Ito: 2:59

I was born in Tokyo and I've spent, like I spent five years of my childhood in the States, in suburban New York, and then the rest of the time in Tokyo.

Bob Goodwin: 3:10

Okay, and then where are you now? Where are you based now?

Aki Ito: 3:13

I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Bob Goodwin: 3:15

And how long have you been living in the US then?

Aki Ito: 3:19

Oh gosh, the last time I moved here to the States was in the beginning of 2012. So it's been a while now.

Bob Goodwin: 3:28

It has been a while.

Aki Ito: 3:29

Yeah, I've now spent more of my life in the States than I have in Japan.

Bob Goodwin: 3:33

There you go. And then, where did you go to school?

Aki Ito: 3:38

I went to college in Vermont at Middlebury.

Bob Goodwin: 3:41

Oh nice. How in the heck did you pick that?

Aki Ito: 3:45

I don't know. I think because like up until high school I was in Tokyo and I think I was kind of done with like the big city feel I very much romanticized kind of rural New England and so I took a look at all the small liberal arts colleges in New England and then Middlebury has its own ski mountain.

Bob Goodwin: 4:08

Ah, now we're getting closer to the trip, okay.

Aki Ito: 4:12

So, I think, it was mostly because of that. That's cool. That's good for you.

Bob Goodwin: 4:16

I think college is such a formative time. And I think it's really important that you know young people are where they want to be during college, so that they can be as engaged as they want to be. So I mentioned a little bit about Bloomberg. Obviously Business Insider. Do you mind just painting a quick picture of your career arc coming out of college?

Aki Ito: 4:35

Sure. So I actually graduated from college in 2009, which was a horrific time to be entering the job market and I managed to get an internship with Bloomberg in Tokyo. And I had a two or three month internship right after college in Tokyo and then they hired me on full time as a reporter. So I was a correspondent there for two and a half years and then I really wanted to come back to the States, and so I begged, and begged, and begged, until my editors got tired of hearing me beg and they moved me out to San Francisco, and that was back in 2012. I continued to report on the economy. When I first moved to the States, I was a Federal Reserve reporter, so I wrote mostly about monetary policy, and then, after that, I joined Bloomberg's tech team. So I was a technology editor there. I oversaw a number of multimedia projects like podcasts and video, and then, in 2021, I joined Business Insider.

Bob Goodwin: 5:49

Great and what led you to go to Business Insider? What was the lure?

Aki Ito: 5:55

Well, I'd spent 10 years at Bloomberg and I kind of felt like I was ready for something new, but I wasn't quite sure, so I actually took 2020 off.

Bob Goodwin: 6:08

That was a good year to take off.

Aki Ito: 6:09

Yeah, yeah, I had this like big plan to travel around the world actually.

Bob Goodwin: 6:14

Not so much, then.

Aki Ito: 6:16

I started in January 2020, and that didn't really quite pan out. But, you know, I was very lucky, I was very privileged to be able to, you know, take some time off and reexamine my life, yeah. And then I kind of felt, I felt ready to come back to work with like a clear vision of what I wanted, and Business Insider just happened to be hiring at the time, so it's worked out really well.

Bob Goodwin: 6:41

That's awesome and you and you're fortunate right. You could have gotten stranded someplace if you were doing global travel and all of a sudden March or whatever happened. It's like oh my gosh wasn't planning on being here for three years.

Aki Ito: 6:54

Right.

Bob Goodwin: 6:55

So good for you. And then, lastly, what do we find you doing when you're not at work?

Aki Ito: 7:00

You know, right now I'm really in the pickleball. I started playing maybe like a year, year and a half ago, but very casually, and a few months ago I started getting into it a lot more. So I play a few times a week. It's wonderful. It's such a great community. That's probably the main thing that sustains me outside of work. That's awesome. Good for you.

Bob Goodwin: 7:23

That's fun, so all right. So, as mentioned you know you, the article that really kind of got my attention because it's something I've been thinking a lot about, which is workplace loyalty, and I've sort of had this thing in my head for a little while on. You're kind of thinking of almost more like boyfriend, girlfriend, and like and like work, work. I'm just not that into you anymore. You know, it's like I'm breaking up with work, or maybe work's breaking up with me, I don't know. But when I saw your article you know one I'd like for you to just talk about what caused you to write the article. And then one of the things I really appreciated was sort of the, the level of research you did to really understand, you know kind of what loyalty means, the notion of contracts and stuff like that. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I guess, just to start with, what led you to write the article to begin with, what was the impetus?

Aki Ito: 8:17

Sure. So I think it's just a theme that's come up in my reporting over and over and over again. That's come up in my reporting over and over and over again. Probably the most recent thing was a feature I wrote about this phenomenon called overemployment, where people juggle multiple full-time jobs in secret and you know, this is kind of like the ultimate act of disloyalty right to your employer. You know, if you have a full-time white-collar job, you're almost certainly prohibited from having another full-time job. It's usually spelled out in the employment contract or at least in the employee handbook. So these people know that they're breaking the rules, but they do it anyway.

Aki Ito: 9:02

And there was a section in the story where I talked about that, where I addressed it head on. You know, a lot of people would think that this is the ultimate act of disloyalty. But these employees say employers weren't, aren't loyal to us. You know they lay us off at the drop of a hat, they don't give us warning, and so why should we be loyal to them it? You know it used to be the case that you could. If you were loyal to your one employer, then they would take care of you for life. But we just don't live in that world anymore.

Aki Ito: 9:38

And that section, I think, resonated with a lot of people who aren't over-employed, who don't have multiple full-time jobs either. And so, you know, I thought, because this theme has come up over and over and over again in my reporting, of all these people, especially young people, saying employers aren't loyal to us anymore, so why should we be loyal to them, I decided to kind of address it straight on and I, like you said, yeah, I dove into the research and tried to figure out, you know, if it was actually even true that it used to pay to be loyal and kind of how that has changed over time.

Bob Goodwin: 10:20

You know, as you, at Career Club we work with, typically, people in job transition and often it's through a layoff or some type of reduction in force that they are kind of involuntarily put into the job market. And you know very much what you're saying, which I don't think will come as a giant surprise to anybody listening. But just that I got caught flat footed. I was blindsided, like didn't see this happening and what did I do wrong? It's like you didn't do anything wrong. You just got caught up in what's essentially a financial decision and you know the company took a decision.

Bob Goodwin: 11:02

But it also does tend to serve as a jading kind of a thing of like well, I guess, if they're not loyal to me, like what am I being loyal to them for? But there there's, you know, a lingering sense of even like people when they're interviewing they've got multiple things that they're interviewing for. They feel this need to tell the company, like everything that's going on in their job search, maybe a competing offer, I mean, there's just this really strong sense of of like, fidelity and loyalty and things like that. You talked about the contract. What is it? What is going on that causes this feeling that maybe it's more on the employee side, but this notion of loyalty, what's it even grounded in?

Aki Ito: 11:52

Sure. So maybe I'll take a step back and define what a psychological contract even is.

Aki Ito: 11:59

So you can think of. You know, first of all, a legal contract, an explicit contract that spells out the terms of your employment. How, first of all, a legal contract, an explicit contract that spells out the terms of your employment, how many hours you're supposed to work, what you're going to get paid, you know if you have any accommodations, like working from home, that kind of thing. But so much of you know how we work is not dictated by that explicit agreement. It's dictated by these implicit agreements, these implicit expectations that you come into the job for. And so you know you have these expectations of you, know what your employer will do for you and what you will do for your employer, and so both you know you as the employee and the employer will have these expectations of what we owe each other. And that's what academics call the psychological contract. Sometimes people refer to it as a social contract as well.

Bob Goodwin: 12:58

Are these the concepts of mutuality and reciprocity? So it's going to be mutually. Both parties mutually benefit from this and should be in somewhat equal measure.

Aki Ito: 13:08

Yeah, it's interesting, it's tricky because, since it's not fully spelled out right, it's often we don't even talk about it, you know, let alone like actually sign a contract that lists these things, and so it is often the case that the you know employee will have different expectations than the employer. So that's kind of the mutuality aspect of it. You have to both kind of be in like rough agreement of what you know even those expectations are, and the reciprocity portion of it is like you said they have to be of roughly equal measure.

Bob Goodwin: 13:45

You kind of have to feel like you're giving as much as you're taking in, correct, and so is any notion of this, because I was, I've been on the phone here recently with companies based in Europe and you know labor laws are different in Europe and you know whether it's termination notice, termination benefits, even the ability to terminate people, it's very different than in the US. Is any of the work here, even the psychological contract, kind of uniquely American or not necessarily?

Aki Ito: 14:20

Well, it's certainly culturally situated. So you know the kind of expectations that American workers have or that American employers have are very different from you know the expectations that employers in Europe would have or workers in Europe would have. Ago I was speaking to some students who had their job offers rescinded because of the increase in tech layoffs. And one of the students I was speaking to, she was an international student. She was from an East Asian country and she was just so floored that this even happened. She was like if this happened in my home country, like the government would be investigating tomorrow. This is like unheard of. I'm so shocked that like companies are allowed to do this in the United States. So that goes to show you know how different expectations are. Of course, like plenty of you know, american students were shocked with the rescinded offers as well, but you know they weren't as shocked as this. You know. International student.

Bob Goodwin: 15:28

And that's what I'm saying. I mean, the cultural context is even more pronounced here because, you know, generally speaking, the US is an employment at will kind of legal construct, and so the company, like, doesn't need to give you a reason, they're, they're. That's basically saying there is no contract here, you're, you're employed at our good pleasure until we decide you're not. And and yet again, traditionally it seems like employees have an expectation of themselves to be very loyal, to not do anything that would seem like it's going against their commitment to the company.

Aki Ito: 16:10

And so you know, I know that there's.

Bob Goodwin: 16:14

There's a little bit of historical context that you've gotten. We don't need to spend more time, but just to kind of again, we're still laying the groundwork a little bit. What were some of the major things that basically started to disintegrate the social contract, or the psychological contract in the US?

Aki Ito: 16:33

Yeah, yeah, I want to address that in a second. But to kind of go back to your previous point, it's not just about the law, it's also about kind of the social norms that companies are expected to operate within. So there's nothing that that actually says that. That's just kind of this like norm that's really solidified itself in American business culture since, let's say, like around the 80s. But so it's not just about, like the letter of the law, it's also about the norms that end up governing the behavior of companies and of workers as well. And that's probably kind of like a good way to talk about how things have changed.

Aki Ito: 17:30

Because you know, back in like the 50s and the 60s, you know, even though the laws were pretty similar, american companies didn't treat employees this way, especially if you were in the white collar workforce. If you were a white collar professional, it was kind of unheard of to be laid off, like you had to do something really, really, really wrong in order for your employer to fire you. Certainly in the 80s, as companies started to operate differently, it's really kind of grounded in the Milton Friedman doctrine of maximizing shareholder value at the expense of pretty much everything else, including a company's responsibility to its employees. And when you start trying to maximize shareholder value at the expense of everything else, right, you don't want to pay out as much in benefits to employees. You want to fire employees as soon as they're no longer useful to you. Instead of training employees in-house, you just want to, you know, hire somebody out on the market who already has those skills. So, so companies became a lot more cutthroat and that's that ended up resulting in, you know, companies being less loyal to their employees.

Aki Ito: 18:53

But I think the interesting thing is, like you said, like in our culture, we in society, even though we've been in this like cutthroat economy for several decades now, there's still this like expectation of loyalty. Right, like we're still stuck in, like the culture that we had in the fifties and the sixties, when it did really pay to be loyal. So we were happy to be loyal. But you know it doesn't pay to be loyal anymore. But we still feel like we need to be loyal because we were raised that way. We were told by our parents and our grandparents, like you know, stick to one employer, be loyal to your employer, and your employer will take care of you.

Bob Goodwin: 19:31

Well, and that's one of the points I think you make really well in your article. The first article is a major benefit that companies were offering people was security. Right, you know whether that was employment security, pensions, but just like we're not going anywhere. So if you show up and you do a good job, we will reward you with, you know, this lifetime employment.

Bob Goodwin: 19:55

Even though it wasn't explicit, it was fairly well implied and, like you said, you had to do something pretty egregious. You know, to fall out of favor with that understanding. And yet and I think one of the other points that you make is going back to the time period when things started changing was globalization right and companies, you know, moving factories from you know, the US to Asia or Mexico or wherever, india, wherever they went to, it's like whoa, whoa, wait a minute, like you, just you uprooted this town, you just uprooted everything that we were kind of counting on and, um, I think too and this isn't in your article, I don't think per se, but it also, I think, speaks to the kind of revitalization of labor unions.

Aki Ito: 20:46

Right.

Bob Goodwin: 20:46

Right, Because labor unions kind of fell out of favor for a while and now you know in the environment that we're in and sort of a new realization of the cultural norms, as you're saying, and kind of business norms. It's like, well, maybe we do need somebody who's kind of fighting for us, because individually, we're not winning the fight very well.

Bob Goodwin: 21:07

So maybe we need somebody that's got some clout and maybe, you know, collectively we've got a chance to protect ourselves a bit more than not having any support. Does that factor in? Did that come out in your research at all with labor unions or any kind of collective bargaining?

Aki Ito: 21:26

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, I don't think it's played a huge role in the states, just because, you know, white collar professionals were never unionized, even back in the 50s and the 60s. But if you look at cases like Europe, you know where almost everybody is unionized. You know unions are a huge reason why workers have so much control over, you know, so much power over, like, the decisions that their companies make. You know, in countries like Germany they have these really powerful workers councils where companies basically can't do anything without these councils approval. Companies basically can't do anything without these councils approval. So that's, you know, on top of kind of the standard labor laws, these, these collective bargaining units are play a huge role in ensuring that kind of job security for workers.

Bob Goodwin: 22:18

Yeah, so so if, if? Our understanding then is that, hey, the game has changed and the reality is, you know, this mutuality is different than it used to be. What are some of the implications for companies that, okay, you're having your way with maximizing shareholder value and you've got the law behind you, so there's sort of those two things. Is this coming at a cost to employers?

Aki Ito: 22:53

yeah, I mean it absolutely is. Um, when you look at all kinds of studies that have been done on layoffs, it shows that, um, you know, employee engagement ends up going down and stays down for a really long time, even after the layoffs. I think a lot of bosses kind of think like, oh yeah, they'll be mad for a little bit but then they'll get over it. Most of the research suggests that that's actually not true. People hold on to that for a really long time. So it comes at costs like that to employers, because of course engagement plays a huge role in productivity and ultimately in a company's bottom line and certainly in turnover as well. When you're less engaged, you're more likely to go work for a competitor. So there are costs like that.

Aki Ito: 23:47

But I think like there are costs to society as a whole too, because every time somebody gets laid off and there's actually research that supports this too they end up going into the next job with a more of a mercenary mindset. You know, a lower likelihood to you know, give it your all and to like, really focus on just the money and nothing else. To you know less of a willingness to go above and beyond. So it kind of creates this like entire culture of you know I think this like workplace that none of us actually want in the end. You know I don't want to like go to work with this like mercenary, transactional mindset of like I'm only here for the money and nothing else. Like I want to feel like I'm part of, like a greater purpose and to feel connected to my coworkers and to view my job in a way that's not just about the paycheck. But you know, when companies are so mercenary to us, you know so many workers feel like they have no choice but to adopt that mindset in order to survive.

Bob Goodwin: 24:57

So I completely agree, and that's what we see every day, and it's almost with regret and a little bit of disappointment that it's like finding out Santa Claus doesn't exist. It's like, well, this shit sucks. Okay, I mean, if that's the reality, I guess.

Bob Goodwin: 25:15

I'll deal with it, and I don't mean to diminish it by introducing Santa Claus in the conversation, but what I am saying is is that we hear this. It's like well, I guess you know, and so if that's the way they're going to treat me, I guess I I have this new kind of view of what reality is and I need to kind of play by the new rules now that I understand them better yeah and but again, I think people do that with more than a tinge of regret that they wish it wasn't like that.

Bob Goodwin: 25:47

And so, you know, your point is well made too, about people want to feel like there's purpose, that they can be passionate about what they do, because they know they're going to do better work, it's going to be more stimulating to them, right, and that, as you say, isn't just about the paycheck.

Bob Goodwin: 26:09

So, you know, I still think you know, and I skew highly optimistic, just so you know that you know that people hope that they can find that potentially rarer company that isn't going to be quite so transactional and will value their people and not lay them off at the drop of a hat. But there's definitely been a sobering of. Okay, I think I understand the rules that are in play now and I need to accommodate. One of the things that you said in here you kind of referenced it sort of a minute ago is kind of this vicious cycle, right Of well, you kind of screwed me, and then the employers are going well, yeah, well, you're quite quitting.

Bob Goodwin: 26:56

And there was just an article I was reading this morning about you know kind of how Fridays are shrinking, right, you know it used to be like you know, well, one you just got to like wear blue jeans, so that counts for something. And then it's like, well, you can wear blue jeans In fact you don't need to come to the office on Fridays and then it's like, well, we're gonna give you Friday afternoon off. And then it's just like it just Friday shrinking, right. But but people are just, whether it it's shrinking because we've allowed it to shrink, or people are like, hey, I'm shrinking it myself because I'm not in the office, so I'm going to knock off a bit earlier today that, whether you're not giving me your best effort from the employer's point of view or the employee's like, why should I? Because you're probably going to fire me tomorrow for nothing, how does that vicious cycle get broken?

Aki Ito: 27:47

It. You know, um, I spoke to a few different organizational psychologists about this and and they say it is possible for employees to employers to break the cycle. It's. It's probably a little harder from, like, the employee side to break the cycle right Because you can't really control, like, what your employer is going to do to you, but certainly employers do have, you know, the power to break the cycle and it really starts with you know demonstrating that you're not like all the other employers, I think, by showing that you see your employees as humans, as people and not, as you know, line items on a budget.

Aki Ito: 28:30

You know, one professor I spoke to talked about you know treating your employees, your ex-employees, kind of like alumni. So this is something that management consultancies have done for a really long time. They have the up or out culture, so most of their employees end up not working for them after a few years. They hire huge classes of people straight out of college or out of business school and then they stay there only for like a few years and then they end up going somewhere else. But they you know a lot of those people who they end up not promoting and kind of firing as a result, end up becoming their new clients, for example.

Aki Ito: 29:19

So they have to treat them not well. So the way that they've done that traditionally is by, you know, organizing like networking events, for example, or providing like career services, even to their ex -employees, so they're part of kind of this network over their entire career. So it's not lifetime employment but it's a lifetime relationship, and I feel like that's like a little bit more honest, a more honest way of treating employees, because it's kind of like you're not pretending that there's this like lifetime employment right when bosses are mad when their employees leave them when they're like what?

Aki Ito: 30:01

but like I thought we had a great thing going. You know that's ridiculous because you know bosses are happy to lay their employees off when times get tough, so it's very one-sided in that way. But I feel like you know, these things like alumni groups are more intellectually honest in that way.

Aki Ito: 30:19

You know they're saying like we're not going to, you know, keep you on forever. Like we can't promise you lifetime employment. But we'll do our best to treat you, you know, as like decent human beings for your entire career, not just for the time that you work for us.

Bob Goodwin: 30:34

Yeah.

Aki Ito: 30:35

And so that's just like a small step that companies can take to try to restore, I guess, contract with employees.

Bob Goodwin: 30:44

I think it's really important, though I mean I think about two people I don't know. Steve Cadigan was LinkedIn's first CHRO, wrote the book Workquake. That is a huge theme in Workquake is let's have a relationship for their entire career, not just while they work for us. For all the reasons that you said, I mean it's very likely they're going to be a client supplier somewhere in our ecosystem and we want them to say good things about us. Or if somebody says, hey, aki, I see you used to work at Bloomberg, is that a good company? Because I'm thinking about applying for a role and you go, they're awesome. Yeah, or I don't know. Well, that matters to Bloomberg. If alumni are saying, no, that's a crap company, that's the whole purpose of Glassdoor. Right, it's like, hey, should I actually work here or not? So I mean there's so many reasons that you know it's in a company's best interest to do this.

Bob Goodwin: 31:39

Like you said, management consulting firms I know accounting firms the big accounting firms are very much into their alumni network. I'm in Cincinnati, as you know, procter Gamble has a very huge alumni network. I'm in Cincinnati, as you know, procter Gamble has a very huge alumni network. And or Wall Street. You know I'm ex-Goldman, I'm ex-wherever right. You know. They really encourage that because they know they're likely to encounter these people later on and they want to have built you know, a good relationship with them, even though they're not going to be married forever. That's okay. We still want to be able to attract the best talent, nurture them while they're with us and then if, for whatever reason, there's a separation, well, but I don't feel terrible about this.

Bob Goodwin: 32:27

I'm not going to be negative on the company forever and the company, like you say, is doing things that are tangible, rather than just sort of nice words, but actually things that would be helpful to the person. Dori Clark talks about the long game, and that's a really good example. Some companies don't understand this and it's just all about right now. What's the next thing that I need or want? And I think they do it kind of at their own peril, that they're not taking this longer view.

Aki Ito: 32:59

Sure, but you know, when you're a publicly traded company and you're kind of under pressure to squeeze out every penny of profit in that specific quarter, that really creates a culture of neglecting long-term value. And it's really sad to see that because, like you say, there's so much value to be had to be added in the long-term but companies have to be patient to see those benefits over time.

Bob Goodwin: 33:30

But you'd like to think right, and you're right. I mean I'm not going to be Pollyannish and like, oh, but I mean the CEO is in charge of strategy, and strategy-based definition is longer term. And you know, I think one of the other interesting points that you identified in like why would I want to do this? I think there was a company that had like a 25% boomerang rate, so people coming back to work for the company after they had left, which is really a testament to hey like. I have no hard feelings. That was not a bad company. Like the season changed, you know, and and, but things changed again, and I still have a positive impression of the company and now there's a reason for me to be there again. I do think it speaks, though, to our whole topic, which is the changing nature of work, and actually, whether it's a 1099 or a W-2, it's just going to feel more gig-oriented.

Bob Goodwin: 34:27

Did you find that Haki?

Aki Ito: 34:29

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's Reid Hoffman, who you know once wrote that companies should see their employees as kind of like you know, completing tours of duty.

Bob Goodwin: 34:43

Yes.

Aki Ito: 34:44

Right, it's no longer like you stay at this one company for, like you know, 10 years or 20 years or 30 years. It's really like company, you know, employees will stay only for a few years. They'll, um, you know, add a particular skill set and they'll go on to something new. Um, and that's just the way that our careers work now, I think, you know, as as our tenures at each company get shorter and shorter, it's almost by definition, going to seem more, like you know, we're taking on, you know, going from like gig to gig, from, you know, project to project.

Aki Ito: 35:16

Yes, and I think the remote work thing adds to that too. You know I wrote a separate story, maybe about a year ago, about how the shift to work from home is encouraging companies to kind of like distance themselves from their workers, now hiring more independent contractors, more part-timers compared to before, and I guess, like you know, as a result, like hiring fewer full-time employees, because they're, like you know, if we can hire, being remote is does feel like a more transactional relationship at the end from the employer's perspective. So they're like we might as well, you know, lower our costs by hiring employees in this lower cost way. So I think that adds to kind of like the gigification of white collar work.

Bob Goodwin: 36:08

New word for me, gigification. I'm going to start using it like that. I mentioned at the beginning that you actually wrote two articles on this topic you had your original article that I fell in love with, and then a few weeks later you had a follow-on article. Can you tell folks why that was and what it was about?

Aki Ito: 36:26

Sure, sure. So you know, I heard from so many people after my first story ran, probably more people than you know I've ever heard from in, you know, any story I've written in my career. I think it really hit a nerve. Lots of people who are like you, put your finger on exactly what I've been feeling but couldn't articulate. But there was a subsection of those readers who you know told me that I got something you know wrong in the story and it was the section I had at the beginning where I was, you know, setting up like the, the split between the bosses and the workers. You know the bosses who say, you know, why aren't people loyal to us anymore? And and the employees who are saying, well, you aren't loyal to me, so why should I be loyal to you?

Aki Ito: 37:15

I put kind of like older workers, so like boomers and Gen X and like the bosses group, and I put younger workers, so millennials and Gen Z, into the workers group and I heard from especially a lot of Gen Xers who were like don't put us in the pro-loyalty group, that's totally wrong. Like we're more disengaged than like anybody else, like we've watched this like disintegration of you know, loyalty over the course of our entire careers. So this is more personal to us than it is to somebody who, you know, just entered the workforce. They don't know any better, but we do and I thought about it and as I was, you know, talking to these readers who wrote in to me, I came to see that they were actually right, that you know this isn't necessarily an age thing thing. And if anything, you know, the older workers, you know, feel this, you know, more poignantly than perhaps us younger, younger workers who have only seen it this way our entire careers, um and and uh.

Aki Ito: 38:19

Yes, it was. It was a very instructive moment for me, you know, because, like you don't really hear, like you know, gen xers or boomers like complaining about, like the state of the workplace, the way that Gen Zers are, you know, on TikTok. You know these older workers aren't on TikTok at all. But I guess I kind of like assumed from that that, like they weren't unhappy and it turns out they are extremely unhappy with the state of things they're just not as vocal about it.

Bob Goodwin: 38:48

Well. So again, what I really appreciate about you is sort of the intellectual and journalistic honesty to go hey, I thought this, I wouldn't write about that, and you actually wrote the, the follow-on article. And you know, just to make sure, I'm following them and the listeners follow. For boomers and gen x, it's like like this hurts more because I really did come into this with the expectation that loyalty mattered, right, and then I got slammed pretty hard that said oops, sorry, nope, you know, versus a millennial or gen z. It's like I didn't really expect that to begin with. So it hurts a little less, it still sucks. So it hurts a little less. It still sucks, but it hurts a little less. Am I getting that right?

Aki Ito: 39:35

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think it still hurts for the younger workers too, because they still have this expectation that they're going to be taken care of as well. But for them it's like a little bit more of like the kind of this like nebulous cultural expectation, whereas I think for the older workers they actually saw that play out, you know, saw how like loyalty benefited them at the beginning of their careers, versus now it doesn't anymore. So they have like a little bit more of kind of like a real world, you know experience, like example of loyalty, actually working back from when they were younger.

Bob Goodwin: 40:13

Yeah, so I just think this topic is fascinating. Like we said, the shelf life on this is a long time because it took a while to get here. It's going to take a while for things to change.

Bob Goodwin: 40:28

You know, some of the things that you highlighted as well are things like well, instead of laying people off, why don't we at least start with a voluntary buyout, so there's more transparency, there's more communication about what's going on in the business and to have some alternatives for people? So, you know, in our practice, we talk a lot about agency and having choice.

Aki Ito: 40:52

Right.

Bob Goodwin: 40:52

And when people feel like they don't have choice, that they don't have agency, you get very despondent very quickly versus well, okay, I understand, you know the business isn't doing as well and to your earlier point, you know the stock market must be, you know, addressed, or private equity owners or whatever it is. But at least you made me have some level, you allowed me to have some level of control in what happens, instead of this blindsided you know, I had no choice kind of a thing. You mentioned that. I think you mentioned learning and development. Could you talk just a little bit more about some things that progressive companies could be doing as we look to change the dynamic? We mentioned alumni earlier.

Aki Ito: 41:38

Yeah, yeah, I mean I think, like you know, doing more to prevent layoffs is just so huge. It's just so traumatizing for employees to go through that and like I think it means a lot to workers when they see their bosses, when they see their executives like doing every single thing possible to avoid it. So, you know, there's some examples, for example, of companies that like tell employees you know, we're having a really like we're going through a really difficult quarter right now. We're going to have to cut some costs. You know, can you help us figure out how to get through this? And and, as a result, employees end up volunteering to, you know, take in across the board. Let's say like 5% pay cut, and you know that ends up being enough so that nobody has to get laid off.

Aki Ito: 42:34

That's one way that companies can weather bad times and I feel like that goes so far in encouraging employees to be loyal to them back. So that's one thing. You mentioned the learning and development aspect Doing more to promote employees from within, to help them take on, to help them learn more real skills on the job, taking more chances on them, instead of going like the most experienced person on the outside market. I think that goes a long way too for employees to be like oh, this is a company that really like wants to help me grow, because you know that professional growth is like such a huge priority for employees. Um, so that's probably a big thing as well, but probably, you know, I think like the biggest thing is like it's not really kind of like one of the professors I spoke to told me that the psychological contract isn't really this like tip for tap thing.

Aki Ito: 43:38

It's not like we have this like clean leisure where, like on the left it's like everything we get and on the right it's like everything we give. It's not that clean. It's really about kind of the feelings of, you know, trust and loyalty that come out as a result of like expectations being met. And so I think a big part is like employers just being honest about what they're offering to their employees and coming to the table with employees and being like okay, so we're like we can't give you lifetime employment. Like you know we'll do everything to avoid layoffs, but there might come a time when we just have to do it and like we're really sorry, but that is a possibility. So we have to be honest about that. But here are all the things that we're gonna do to try to treat you like a person and to help you grow, so to really, like you know, help maximize your career. You know what are the things that you can give us in return.

Aki Ito: 44:39

And the worker would be like okay, like well, if you're going to give me all of that and that kind of transparency.

Aki Ito: 44:45

You know I'm going to promise to like treat my co-workers well and I'm gonna, you know, give it my best. You know, when, um, uh, when times get really busy a little bit more, as long as, like you, let me put in a little bit less when times are a little bit more quiet, um. So, so you can have this like real negotiation you know this like explicit negotiation for the first time, where all the cards are on the table, and I think that's like one way, that one really important way that you can rebuild trust between employers and employees Because, like right now, the thing we have now are all these like unspoken expectations, right, and employers benefited from that, because employees acted as though they were going to get lifetime employment. So they put in the kind of effort that you would put in if you had that amount of job security. And now employees are really mad because they're like, well, you didn't give us this job security that we thought we were being given. So I think, kind of starting from that point of honesty is the most important thing.

Bob Goodwin: 45:50

The word that's really really well said. The word that is popping in my head as you're talking is collaboration and more of a we and us, kind of a instead of us and them. But it's just us. And how do we? I love what you're the example you were citing on. We've got to cut expenses. You know how can we do that instead of us unilaterally going well, what's our biggest line item? People. You know, let's just start whacking.

Bob Goodwin: 46:22

The other thing you said it early in this conversation and you just came back to it and it it strikes a chord with me because it's so at the ethos of why I started Career Club to begin with, which is these are people. They're not cells on a spreadsheet, these are people. You know that you took my opinion into account. Even if you didn't do what I wanted, at least you heard me, and I believe that you heard me that that makes a giant difference because, at the end of the day, we're emotional, right, and you know we want to be rational, but we're really emotional, and I just want to not just, but I do want to be heard. I want to be respected as a person that I have an opinion that it's worth hearing.

Bob Goodwin: 47:14

I know you can't do everything for everybody all the time, mr and Mrs Employer, but I at least want to be heard. That goes so far to people feeling like, hey, I'm part of something here that's more than just me, because I genuinely believe that people actually do not want to be independent contractors. They want to be part of something. I think as human beings, we're wired to want to be part of something, and when companies can engender that feeling in people, that's authentic, not, you know, constructive, but it's authentic that I think that they will find that to your earlier points, engagement, productivity, retention, innovation all the things that they actually really care about in both the short and long term, would be realized.

Aki Ito: 48:06

Yeah, yeah, I think, like you know, if you asked me, even a few years ago, I might have been like, oh, like companies treating their employees like humans instead of numbers. I would have been like, oh, that's so naive. Like this is capitalism, this is the way the market works. But I've actually changed my tune quite a bit on this, you know, just being in this role where I talk to so many people job seekers you know, more often than I did before, and I think that's right.

Aki Ito: 48:38

I think you know we have this like fundamental human need to belong and to, you know, sacrifice, I think, for greater good, and work is one of the, you know, main structures. We have to allow people to do that, and when you do have that, you know you get these like amazing things as a result, companies accomplish incredible things. But you just can't have that when you treat your people like garbage and you can, can, you know, hide behind like this thing of like, oh, this is capitalism, this is the way the market works, like we're maximizing shareholder value, um, but that's not really the world I want to live in, and and I suspect that that's not the world that most people want to live in either, even the bosses, even the executives, who are making these decisions yeah.

Bob Goodwin: 49:27

so it's funny, as you were saying that, I'm like yep, me too Like, if you talk to a 10-year-ago version of Bob, they're pretty capitalistic about everything. And what changes is when you hear people's stories. You've got good people who are trying to do the best they can and they feel like they're being penalized for that. And I think too, back on the generational stuff, is that Gen Z is demanding better.

Bob Goodwin: 49:58

They are, they're just straight up demanding better, and if nothing else, they'll just wait you out, like so fine, if you still don't get it, I'm going to be here after you're here, so I'll go create the world that I want to be in, because it doesn't look like that. Um, so it's interesting. Is there anything else, before we put a bow on this hockey, that you would want to share with respect to the article, your findings or anything you'd want listeners to take away?

Aki Ito: 50:30

no, I think think we covered pretty much all of it. Kind of this idea of like a more human workplace and specifically like this idea of like meaning and work is one of my like long-term themes and it's something I'm to be reporting out a lot more over the next few years, I think. So, yeah, if any of your listeners or viewers have, thoughts about that.

Bob Goodwin: 51:00

I would love to hear from them awesome and speaking with that, what is the best way for people to follow you or be in touch with you?

Aki Ito: 51:08

probably the best way is to follow me on LinkedIn. That's where I post all of my stories. Or, you know, if they want to kind of make like a personal comment to me they can email me. I'm at AITO at businessinsidercom. I read every single email that comes in, even though sometimes I'm better than other times about responding, but I read every single email that comes in.

Bob Goodwin: 51:35

And as a random podcast host I can attest to she does read all of her emails and even sometimes.

Bob Goodwin: 51:42

So, aki, this has been amazing. Thank you very much. You've educated me, I think. In some ways, you, as your other people have told you, you were able to articulate something I think that people feel and that they're not crazy and like this is what's really going on. So I appreciate everything that you're doing. And to our listeners and viewers please, please, please, follow Aki on LinkedIn. She does post all of her articles. If you just click the little bell next to her, then you automatically get a notification on LinkedIn whenever she's published something. I'm a subscriber to Business Insider. No consideration in any of this. I just, you know, really like the work that they do and would encourage you to to subscribe as well. But, aki, thank you so much, this has been amazing.

Aki Ito: 52:32

Oh, thank you Bob. I really appreciate it. This is fun.

Bob Goodwin: 52:35

Thank you. So thank you again for watching and listening. Of course, as everybody says, ratings and reviews really do help. So, whatever podcast platform you're catching this on, if you're watching this on YouTube, subscribing, reviewing, rating all helps, but with that, we just appreciate everyone investing a few minutes of your day with us today. And, aki, thank you again. Thank you so much Cheers. I know you're gonna find it. You've got all you need, so just keep going.