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Written by Kieran Delamont, Associate Editor, London Inc. | |
LEADERSHIP
Are you being ‘breadcrumbed’ at work?
You might have heard about breadcrumbing in relation to dating, but did you know you can be the victim of breadcrumbing at work as well?
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LOVE BOMBING. GASLIGHTING. Ghosting. Breadcrumbing. Yup, another popular dating term is making the rounds and showing up in workplaces.
“Breadcrumbing is when you leave little bits of bread for someone. It’s a way of saying, when you lead someone on,” explained an unlikely source for professional terminology, Caroline Flack, the host of the reality dating show Love Island.
Workplace and leadership psychologists say this is a perfect description of something they are seeing more and more of in workplace these days. “Breadcrumbing is really a modern term for what we used to call intermittent reinforcement, which is one of the strongest ways to develop someone's behaviour,” said B Lynn Ware, a California-based leadership consultant.
In practice, breadcrumbing in the workplace can be a lot of things ― your boss hinting that you might get a promotion, that a new contract is just around the corner, that you might have a raise coming, or even a drawn out hiring process.
“The basic reason an employer breadcrumbs employees ― strings them along ― is the same reason a lover does,” wrote Cosmo Mariano on LinkedIn. “They want to be able to use you how they want and the way they want. It's about control.”
Breadcrumbing is not always malicious. Sometimes, in smaller, owner-run firms, breadcrumbing is used as a way to hold onto a valued employee that they can’t quite invest in yet. In this case, there’s some bread at the end. When it is malicious, however, there isn’t. “The more vicious scenario is that your boss, for whatever reason, doesn't want to develop you, but can't necessarily afford to lose you,” Mariano said.
Not moving someone up in the organization is, sadly, not a new phenomenon in the workplace. That it has a modern terminology attached to it now probably speaks more to the notion that younger workers are more ready to identify this behaviour as a form of manipulation. That also means that while in the past, employees may have just come to see it as a fact of life, in today’s world it poses a real threat to a company’s image and reputation. It is a management behaviour that has gone from annoyance to genuine liability.
“That employee is potentially irrevocably damaged in terms of their feeling about the employer itself,” explained Betterworks’ John Schneider. “Giving them real, tangible, false hope, I think that should never be condoned. A manager who actually does that should probably be one that’s reprimanded.”
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RECRUITMENT
#Desperate times
With many recruiters saying #OpenToWork is desperate, jobseekers have started to hit back with a new LinkedIn banner: #Desperate
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YOU’VE PROBABLY SEEN it floating around LinkedIn ― that little green banner on someone’s profile picture that says #OpenToWork. With all the layoffs in the professional world over the last couple years, you might’ve seen it quite a bit, actually. Which is what is leading some jobseekers to go a bit further with the banner, to a phrase that is more revealing and, perhaps, accurate: #Desperate.
It all started with Courtney Summer Myers (pictured), who like many folks was laid off and found herself looking for work ― with some difficulty, it turned out.
“Introducing the #Desperate banner. There’s been a lot of discourse about how the #OpenToWork banner puts off recruiters and hiring managers, because it makes you come across as desperate,” she wrote last month. “Frankly, as a victim of redundancy, I am desperate, and I don’t think that’s anything to be ashamed of.”
The post struck a nerve and has racked up nearly 10,000 comments.
Good strategy or bad? The obvious downside to something like this is that saying you are desperate probably doesn’t put you in a great bargaining position (but then again, neither does simply being desperate). But it’s really nothing more than an honest satire of LinkedIn’s built-in #OpenToWork tool. “It’s almost like wearing a huge sign that says ‘please, hire me now! Anything will do!’ wrote one user. “What you really get are mysterious messages from ‘recruiters’ offering ‘positions’ at ‘companies’ you’ve never even heard of.”
But others say the honesty ― whether using a #Desperate banner or an #OpenToWork one ― is a bit refreshing (on a platform not necessarily known for it). “To those who claim it’s a sign of desperation ― well, it is,” said recruiter Mo Reddy. “When you’re struggling to make ends meet, when you need to provide for your children and when you’re unsure how to keep a roof over your head ― that is the reality.”
Even if it was nothing more than a gambit to gain a bit of traction online, it worked for Myers. She remains proud to have declared her desperation. “My job hunt had been stagnant for 10 months,” she told Forbes. “This is the only thing that’s gained any traction ― which is absolutely ridiculous that anyone would have to go viral on LinkedIn to get access to opportunities ― but I’m in a much better position now than I was two weeks ago.”
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Terry Talks: Handling election angst in the workplace
| In most organizations, employees have a wide range of political opinions. While some people may be feeling angry or anxious about the U.S. election results, others might be feeling relieved or excited. And while employers cannot become post-election therapists, they can offer advice on setting personal biases aside and the importance of remaining to knowledgeable and informed. | | | |
REMOTE WORK
Is everyone watching TV on the job?
Most WFH employees admit to watching TV while they work, with Gen Z most likely to watch
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LISTEN, MOST REMOTE workers are probably guilty of doing this at least once or twice ― your motivation is waning, you’re bored, so what do you do? Flip on the TV for some background noise. No harm, no foul, right?
In small doses, it’s likely that nobody is really going to bat an eye. But a finding from a new study by TollFreeForwarding.com suggests that some workers (we’re talking to you, Gen Z) might be taking things a bit far.
“Gen Z, the newest entrants to the workforce, spend by far the most time watching TV while on the clock,” the survey found, “spending a total of nine days and 20 hours of work time per year on the activity.”
Helpfully, they put this into perspective: it’s about equal to watching all of the episodes of Friends ― two and a half times per year.
Problem? Maybe, if you’re the one signing the paycheques. But surprisingly, some company leaders indicate that as long as the work is getting done, they’re okay with it.
“TV or content streaming can offer a mental reset, similar to the way others might use a walk or a meditation break,” said Deepak Shukla, CEO of digital marketing agency Pearl Lemon. “These mini-breaks offer a way to recharge in short bursts, keeping them refreshed and more engaged when they return to their tasks.”
“This generation is overworked and underpaid, and many are working multiple jobs just to survive,” HR consultant Brian Driscoll added. “So, can we really blame them for carving out some semblance of balance during the workday?”
But we’re not here to shake grumpy old man fists at the kids on the lawn. Everyone’s watching TV at work, it seems. Millennials put in about four days of TV watching a year. But contrary to what you might think, they are but a distant third in this category: Gen X ranks a close second to the youngest cohort, at eight days and five hours of TV time.
The moral of the story? If you’re a Gen Z and your boss gives you grief for TV watching, your best bet might be to ask: “Yeah? What are you watching right now?”
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CAREERS
My one and only
In an era of job-hopping and swiftly switching roles to earn greater career riches, is there a place for the company lifer?
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SHOE AND APPAREL giant Nike, you might have heard, has a new CEO: Elliott Hill. This fact alone might only be marginally interesting, if not for the fact that between 1988 and 2020, Hill had worked for only one company: Nike.
He was first an intern, and then in sales, rising to the director of team sports by 1998, VP of sales by 2000, VP of retail by 2003, and then VP of USA Commerce by 2004. He retired in 2020, before Nike brought him back this year. He is the quintessential company lifer, in an age in which that is increasingly rare ― especially in the C-suite.
Indeed, anybody under the age of 45 has been told ad nauseam that their careers would be multi-faceted, and more recently, that job-hopping is viewed as the more reliable way to progress a career opposed to a promotion. Through it all, the idea of being a company lifer has simply grown less and less fashionable.
“In many private sector industries, there is an unspoken rule that if you’re in the same role for more than eighteen months or two years, and in the same company for more than three or four years, you go stale,” explained career coach Rebecca Parker.
But Hill’s appointment is putting the lifers back in the spotlight, and leadership experts suggest that can be a good thing. (In Canada, RBC’s David McKay is one such example; he started there in 1983.) Company lifers at the top of a firm can “enhance morale as employees see clear pathways for their progression, which cultivates loyalty,” said Claudius Hildebrand, co-author of The Life Cycle of a CEO.
Lifer CEO Pano Christou of multi-national restaurant chain Pret a Manger said that starting his working life there at age 22 was valuable. “Memories of making coffee, prepping sandwiches and serving customers stay with you and gives you two advantages: a sense of authenticity and credibility when talking to teams; and a ready ability to think of people as people, not numbers,” he told The Irish Times.
Will we see a return of company lifers? That remains to be seen ― today’s workforce is still more mobile than ever. But there are seeds of change growing, and more workers are starting to consider the value of long-term growth with one company. Most often, they are interested in long-term stability, maintaining relationships with their co-workers and sticking in a job they genuinely enjoy. The lifers may not see their pay shoot up as rapidly as the job-hoppers, but many swear by the experience.
“There’s nothing more satisfying than working with a group of people,” one company lifer told the BBC a couple years ago, “ and together, producing something that’s bigger than all of you ― something that has a positive impact.”
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