Episode 0 - Introduction to MWNS
The Make Work Not Suck podcast aims to address the issues and challenges people face in the workplace and find solutions to make work more enjoyable. It is a platform for employees, managers, executives, and founders to share their experiences and discuss ways to improve work environments. The podcast focuses on the concept of making work not suck for everyone, regardless of their role in the organization. The hosts believe that by working together, sharing tips and tricks, and aggregating data, they can create a better work experience for all.
Transcript
The Make Work Not Suck podcast is really our response to the epidemic, not COVID, but the epidemic of work. The Make Work Not Suck podcast is all about bringing everybody together. You know, this isn't a podcast just for employees or just for managers or just for leadership. There's plenty of podcasts out there, especially for leadership and for management. But this is all about giving a voice to everybody. People hate work.
Almost universally, it's almost a meme. In fact, there's thousands of memes about how much people hate their work. Because at the end of the day, everybody in an organization is an employee. Even if you're a manager or even if you're an executive, I'm not counting the founders and owners, but everybody is an employee in an organization and everybody deals with some level of suck, even if you are an owner or founder. So this is how do we make work not suck for everybody, not just for one level of the organization.
People hate work. As we sit back and reflect on that, we think, well, you know, we can just kind of join the complaining or we can do something about it. And bringing a voice to everybody so that together, if we can all work together, we can aggregate data together, we can share tips and tricks, then we can help make the world a better place and make WorkDocs up for all.
I would much rather be part of the solution than just continue to contribute to the problem. The Make Work Not Suck podcast exists to recognize where there are problems, but also begin to try and change the conversation, to begin addressing some of the underlying issues of why work sucks for so many people and see if we can't maybe change the narrative, find a better way to do work so that it doesn't suck so much for everybody. The Make Work Not Suck podcast is a
a labor of love and a passion project from several decades of work from a handful of people. We wanted to have a place where everybody that is an employee, whether you're a manager, an employee, or an executive, or even a founder, you still work in the business. And we wanted a place for everybody to just have a common place of hearing why work sucks and what we can do to fix it. The Make Work Not Suck podcast is for anybody who has a job.
Ryan Hodges (:young or old, new or seasoned, work can be challenging. And yet we spend a significant portion of our waking hours at work. Now, whether you're working from home or working from an office, it kind of doesn't really matter. Most of us spend a lot of time working. And if you've spent any amount of time working, you've probably had experiences where work sucked. We want to find a way.
to encourage people, to educate people, to maybe challenge people to think about work differently and see if they can't do their part, whether they're entry -level employees, mid -level managers, or the CEO of the company. We want to encourage them to do their part to make work not suck for them and for everyone around them.
Ryan Hodges (:Make work not suck. Our podcast that talks about exactly that. Our process, vision, journey, culture, and results. We present real world business solutions that make the difference. Our goal is to make work not suck. Hosted by Ryan Hodges, cohost Daniel Steer. Join us each episode and make work not suck.
Ryan Hodges (:Welcome to the Make Work Not Suck Podcast.
Ryan Hodges (:Welcome back to the Make Work Not Suck podcast. I'm pretty excited about our episode today because we're going to do something a little different. We're going to take a topic and we're going to hear from three different guests listening to their perspective on this same topic. So the topic for today is really labor shortage. What do we do when there is more work than there are people to do the work? And we're going to think about this really from three levels. We're going to think about it from
the frontline employee perspective, what does that look and feel like? What does it look like and feel like from the mid -level manager? And then what does it look like and feel like from the standpoint of a senior leader or an executive within a company? So, Ryan, you've held all of those roles, but I would say you've probably held more of the senior leader executive roles than the other two. So, from your perspective, what have you done when you just can't find enough good people?
to do all the work that has to get done, how do you handle that situation? Probably not gonna like my answer to this one because there's never a shortage of people. Oh, all right. Say more. If your company is well set up, and it doesn't have to be perfect, don't be wrong. It doesn't have to be perfect. But if you've got a very clear mission, you're very purpose driven, and you've got the job spec outlined,
then you never have a problem finding talent because you will find people that are dissatisfied in their current job and they will jump ship and go to work for the better company. Bruce is a Chick -fil -A operator, owner -operator and technically not a owner -operator, but Chick -fil -A operator. And today we're going to be talking a little bit about the challenge of labor and labor shortage.
what organizations do when they can't find enough good people, when there's more work than there are people to do the work. And we've had this conversation with a couple of different people at different layers of an organization in different types of industries and companies. But I'm excited to hear this conversation today from Bruce and hear his perspective as the guy at the top of the org chart. What does that look like for him and how does he wrestle with it? So I'm going to chime in on that one extra bit there because labor shortage, right?
Ryan Hodges (:Everybody, for the most part, knows Chick -fil -A. And Chick -fil -A is known for having top talents at every level at the restaurant. But the real question is, is everybody thinks Chick -fil -A's got it nailed and you don't have a labor problem because you got the best people? I don't think that's true. Based on what he just said in that context, I'd love to hear your perspective. Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, you are correct. And thanks for having me on, my boy.
appreciate that. You are correct. The perception is not always reality. We do a pretty good job at shielding the general public from some of our issues. And that's part of the culture at Chick -fil -A as well. But the first thing that comes to my mind when we think about the challenge of the labor shortage is when you're faced with that challenge,
at the level that we're going through, you know, post COVID. And I think things are definitely better, but we're not there yet. It's already too late. I mean, from your perspective, I mean, I'm sure it's actually your daily life. I'm sure like in the restaurants you go to, the stores around you. And if I remember right, you live in more remote part of the northern part of the country. And so it may be even more impacted than like down here in where I'm at in Texans, where, you know, there's a lot of people where we had a lot of influx. So, I mean, I'm just curious from your part of that.
where like how is labor shortage impacting like more on personal side or you're just seeing for friends and family, et cetera? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great point. It definitely has impacted me in my personal life. It's been a couple of months ago, but my husband and I were going to go out to dinner on like a random weekday. And we were thinking, oh, where do we want to go? Let's try somewhere new or get the phone out. We're looking at different places we can go to. And it was like a Wednesday. And
Like three different restaurants that we looked at were all closed or they had already closed. It was like eight o 'clock. They had already closed or they were just closed on Wednesday or sorry, we're due to like, you know, low kitchen staff or we're closed. And it's not only, you know, you'd look at it from that perspective and it well, obviously that is, you know, an inconvenience to me. I didn't want to cook. But those are also businesses. They're small businesses. They are.
Ryan Hodges (:employees that are probably not getting compensated for their time that they're not working and their employees that are dependent on tip wages and other work to pay their bills. So it's definitely, it impacts me and that I'm mildly inconvenienced, but at a larger scale, it impacts the business owners, the employees, the landlords that they're renting the space from.
You know, you made a very valid, or you made a very, in that nuance there, right? There was, you know, how those people are depending on the tips and et cetera. And I honestly didn't think about this until you just said it. It's by not having enough people work, it's making my work suck because the restaurant's closed. And so I don't get work because there's not enough people to do the work, therefore the restaurant's not open. So my work sucks because I'm impacted by everybody else.
Well, welcome to the Make Work Not Suck podcast. Today we have Joe, and this is not an average Joe, like his name is actually Joe. And we're gonna be talking a little bit about, you know, obviously why work sucks from the perspective of an employee, of somebody who maybe doesn't have the management responsibilities or executive responsibilities. They just show up every day to do their job.
And the angle that I want to take in the conversation today is really around this idea of labor shortage, right? With the great resignation and COVID and all these other things happening in the world, a lot of businesses are struggling to get enough people to do the work that needs to be done. And had this conversation with some other people at different layers of the organization. But I'd love to use time to talk about it from the perspective of the average employee. And so we brought Average Joe.
in half a ship. Ree, Ron, Joe, time for this conversation with us. So Joe, thanks so much for joining us. Absolutely. I'm happy to be here. It sucked for us. I mean, you're plain and simple. You don't have the qualified personnel to help do the workload. So the employees are already there, have to carry the extra workload. So yeah, that's tough. Have you seen or what have you seen from employers that can help?
Ryan Hodges (:that, you know, like what's been done that's made it better or to me it even works. I'm just curious as to what you've seen out there. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, one thing that I have to say is life changes every day. It's always a never ending change, right? Sure. So something that worked 10 years ago probably won't work now. Right. You need to adapt to your surroundings. Joe, what's your...
experience then like, and making what do you think's happening behind the scenes? Like what's some, maybe some of the root causes of why so many employers are struggling to get good people in the right roles? Yeah, so one thing is, you know, everything's not as simple as it used to be. It's a constant change in life, right? So how you hired employees 10 years ago is probably not the same way that you do it nowadays. It's not as simple as,
It's black and white on this piece of paper. So this is what it says. Let's hire this person or You know This is how we've done it for 20 something years. Let's just keep on doing obviously it's not working anymore You need to adapt to your surroundings, right? Okay, so Yeah, I mean that's probably the biggest problem is that a lot of employers are not adapting to how?
even current technology is, say. So. Yeah, I thought that you were like, what are some of the things that you think employers need to be adapting to? Is it technology? Is it culture? Like what are the things that you would encourage them to start thinking or doing differently? Oh yeah, technology is way up there. Okay. Technology is just in the past five years, just totally different than what it was. Culture is a huge thing. Yeah.
you know, after COVID, we've all experienced that a lot of people work from home, you know, you got to get that culture, you got to get that camaraderie and with your employees.
