Bing AI returned the following when asked about Employee Attitude Trends:

According to Gartner research, two key trends have emerged in the workplace. First, employees are charting nonlinear career paths: 56% of candidates report applying for jobs outside their current area of expertise, and this figure is expected to climb further in the coming years. Second, organizations can no longer meet their talent needs through traditional sourcing methods and candidate pools.

Another source suggests that some workplace trends you should keep an eye on include Gen Z entering the modern workforce, remote work becoming more popular, innate liking for flexible work schedules, need for centralized communication, emphasis on work-life balance, investing in employee wellbeing, focus on gender equality and social purpose becoming a priority.

With that being said, quiet quitting, the newest battle between remote and in-office work, and other generational and economic trends are likely to make the next couple of years just as chaotic as the post pandemic years.

With everything going on, if you are a leader or manage a business or a work unit or a non-profit, your most important asset is still... people. This Weblog includes some follow up thoughts to a couple of previous Weblogs, with a different take on the reasons for successfully retaining employees, and customers.

Several years ago, I wrote a Weblog titled ‘Managers Get the Employees They Deserve.’ It was a concept that I grasped early on in my career when managing a restaurant in downtown Boston. 

Other locations in the same chain in the same city were drawing from the same population for staffing, but the praise for the employees working in my location was constant, and comparative, and showed in the results. The store won a national award and was known for fast service, a critical success ingredient in any downtown lunch location.

After publishing the blog just at the end of the pandemic, (which you can read here), inspired by a local restaurant in Holden, Massachusetts, the 122 Diner, it generated a thoughtful response from a loyal reader, Nick M.

He suggested a modified theme that appeared several weeks later under the title ‘Maybe Managers Get the Employees They Deserve.’ 

Nick explained, and I agreed, that managers only had partial control of the work situation and environment. The company/owner controls a lot of the reasons that organizations get the employees they deserve. 

A great manager working for a terrible company can only do so much. And a terrible manager working for a great company, may get better results. He was right, so HIS blog was published the next month (and you can read that here).

The restaurant that was the inspiration for the original story didn’t seem to have the same struggles with staffing that every other restaurant for miles around was having at the pandemic transition, and I wondered why. The staff was professional, efficient, and friendly, and there were enough of them.

It is important to note that I knew no one at the restaurant, did not ask for permission to highlight them, and did not share the Weblog with anyone there for about three months. One day, not sure why, I approached the Front of the House Manager and gave her a printed copy. I knew if I was managing the place and someone had written something nice about the way it operated, I would want to share it with the staff, and she did.

As a result of identifying myself, I became a known quantity and an identified regular customer.

And since that original blog most Saturday mornings you can find me doing 'research' at the 122 Diner for breakfast. Although I have not been deducting my breakfast tab as a business expense, maybe I should?

The first Weblog was based on 10-20 visits. This follow-up one is based on probably more than 100 visits, including a meeting with one of the owners to try to find the secrets of their success.

They still have plenty of help. The staff still seems very motivated, well trained and definitely productive. I was a little disappointed that I discovered no unique secrets to their success. But I started noticing something else, beyond the quantity and quality of the staff.

And that something else is probably what the restaurant consultants who read this blog would refer to as ‘hospitality.’

The theme song for the hit TV show based in Boston, ‘Cheers’ included a line that said: ‘sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.’

That is definitely true, and when my family goes out to eat, which is fairly often, we do like to go where everyone knows our names. It just makes us feel more welcome. In those places, we’re generally ok if the service is a little slow, or the pinot grigio tastes a little like chardonnay, or if the fries are a little undercooked. The reason? We feel welcome.

So, when we go into the 122 Diner, for example, Sarah, who leads the dining room team, is usually our server and brings two coffees, a small orange juice and a glass of water to our table before we even order. She also automatically brings extra cream when refilling our mugs.

If she isn’t our server, someone else knows enough to bring us the same drinks. We think that is cool, and you would too.  

But what I started noticing, at first made me feel less special, but I quickly recovered. I recognized that we were not THAT special. 

A lot of the servers deliver a lot of the orders to a lot of the guests just after they were seated. I also noticed that while everyone knows our names, everyone knows a lot of the names of a lot of the guests. The restaurant is more busy than not, and I believe that ‘hospitality’ is the reason.

One morning over some wheat toast and a spectacular looking fruit bowl, I realized it isn’t just that Managers get the employees they deserve or that Organizations get the employees they deserve, it is something else. “Getting” and “Keeping” are two different things with different consequences. 

The new ‘cliches’ if you will are:

1.      Businesses Keep the Customers They Deserve

2.      Companies Keep the Employees They Deserve

Think about it for a minute and put yourself in the equation.

• Do you patronize a business that don’t deserve you? I doubt it.
• Are you a regular at a business that deserves you? Probably.
• Have you ever left a company that deserved you? I doubt it.
• Have you stayed with a company that deserves you? Probably.

What is the secret?  How do managers, or companies, or businesses ‘keep’ employees or customers? You can spend a fortune on books and find thousands of answers and most of them will be right. 

Here’s a very simple explanation.

At about the same time in my career that I developed the belief that managers get the employees they deserve, I also read a research study that identified the one question ALL employees in ALL occupations use to evaluate the company they work for. I believe guests or customers ask the same question. The question is simply:

Do you care about me?

It’s that simple and it explains, at least to me, why employers KEEP the employees they deserve, and businesses KEEP the customer or clients they deserve.

They demonstrate that they care. They don’t just talk about caring, they actually care and prove it. 

Supporting this theory is another quote I read about 15 years ago: “If you were arrested for being a good person, would there be enough evidence to convict you.”

This quote stuck with me because of the word ‘evidence.’ Evidence is defined as “proof of the actuality or existence of something.”

• If you were arrested for being a good employee, would there be enough evidence to convict you?
• If you were arrested for being a good manager, would there be enough evidence to convict you?
• If you were arrested for being a good leader, would there be enough evidence to convict you?
• If you were arrested for being a good owner, would there be enough evidence to convict you?
• If you were arrested for being a good friend, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

If the answer is ‘no’ or 'maybe' to any question that applies to you, my suggestion is to work on developing more evidence that will prove that you care, in case you are arrested for being a good_____.