by Hayden Jewell | Strategic & Organizational Emphasis
March 9, 2022 was a cool, calm day in Los Angeles. Gentle winds tumbled over the mountains, swaying the palm trees as they made their way over the city toward the Pacific. Yet, on this peaceful Wednesday, a storm was brewing on Santa Monica Blvd. The editors at Variety were working on a feature article covering one of America’s most famous families: the Kardashians.
The article was helmed by Variety’s chief correspondent Elizabeth Wagmeister, a woman who was named on the prestigious Forbes’ 30 under 30 in 2019 (Forbes 2019). Her article was supposed to focus on Hulu’s upcoming show, The Kardashians, and, of course, the series’ titular family; that is not what the feature is remembered for. No, the most memorable takeaway was a quote from contemporary philosopher Kim Kardashian – a quote that has been haphazardly slung around tables in boardrooms and dining rooms ever since.
“It seems like nobody wants to work these days” (Wagmeister 2022).
And, from what we can tell, it’s true: people really don’t want to work anymore. Gallup, one of the most respected names in workplace consulting and global research, published in a 2024 report that, since 2020, employees “feel more detached from – and less satisfied with – their organizations and are less likely to connect to the companies’ mission and purpose or to feel someone cares about them as a person.” The data backs it up: in the same report, Gallup shows that only 23% of employees claim to be engaged at work. In the United States alone, people who are not engaged or actively disengaged in their work account for approximately $1.9 trillion in lost productivity (Gallup Inc. 2024). Nobody wants to work.
The sentiment has been used as a rallying cry by disgruntled managers who are frustrated by what they believe to be a generation of lazy workers, though Shannon Gabriel, Vice President of Leadership Solutions at TBM Consulting and member of Forbes’ Human Resources Council, believes that the notion is a cop-out for lackluster leadership and poor work culture (Gabriel 2024). It’s a trend that has proven true for over two decades: in a 2009 research study by Mitchell Kusy and Elizabeth Holloway, 94% of people reported having worked with a toxic person in the last five years, while 87% said team culture suffered as a result (Kusy & Holloway 2009). Companies with poor work culture tend to see turnover rates of 48.4% while companies with a healthy culture see just 13.9% (Medina 2012). Nobody wants to work in a poor culture.
Of course, it’s not all management’s fault. In a study of more than 4,500 doctors and nurses, 71% of respondents saw a link between disruptive behavior (defined as “abusive personal conduct,” including condescending, insulting, or rude behavior) and medical errors, with 27% of people – over one in four – connecting such behavior to actual deaths among their patients (Rosenstein & O’Daniel 2008). It isn’t even work-related issues that cause the most problems. In the United States, 62% of employees see personality clashes and egos as the number one source of workplace conflict (CPP Global 2008). Nobody wants to work in a poor culture with toxic people.
These data help us understand why people are struggling to remain engaged at work, yet it’s important to remember that behind each numerical figure is a group of people who are suffering. The Māori have a proverb: He aha te mea nui? He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata. In English, it roughly translates as, “What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people” (He Tāngata Principle 2021). As a nation, we aren’t doing enough to help each other handle the stresses of working with other people, yet we know it’s up to each of us to make it happen. Less than 4 out of every 10 U.S. workers have received formal conflict management training, yet over 95% of those who have received such training report being able to positively navigate conflict; six out of ten people believe that everyone in the organization must do their part in transforming conflict (CPP Global 2008).
Resolve is designed to equip people with the mindset, motivation, and skills needed to transform conflict from a destructive, disabling force into a motivational, team-building experience. Facilitators and participants alike will learn how to use conflict to generate what Dr. Linda A Hill of Harvard Business School calls “a marketplace of competitive ideas” (Swetzoff 2015). Used properly, Resolve can create a workplace culture that will foster a true desire to work – not just on projects, but on people, too.
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Included in my project is a Facilitator’s Guide, a Training Companion for participants, and a Resources Appendix with items to be printed out for workshop activities.