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• Many workers have seen work-life balance undergo massive upheavals since the start of the pandemic in 2020. 
• Experts have tried to explain a changing feeling about work with phrases like “quiet quitting.” 
• Check out some of this year’s biggest workplace trends and what experts expect in 2023. 

This has been the year of workplace buzzwords. 

Many people have seen their work-life balance undergo a massive upheaval since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, leaving many workers and employees with whiplash. 

“In the past, employers have had all of the cards. What’s interesting now is salaries are going up, and benefits are going up,” said S. Chris Edmonds, an executive consultant and CEO of the Purposeful Culture Group. 

“Team members finally have a bit of power,” he added. 

However, in recent months,  some of that power may have shifted back to employers, said Jessica Kriegel, chief scientist of workplace culture at Culture Partners. 

Many workers are being asked to return to in-person work after years of working from home, while others fear impending layoffs. Experts say the wild swings in power dynamics have changed how employees feel about work in the US.

“One of the things I’m paying attention to is the ever-growing anti-work sentiment that seems to be happening,” Kriegel said. 

Experts and the press have tried to explain this changing feeling with alliterative phrases like “quiet quitting” and “career cushioning.” 

Kriegel said many phrases are “new ways of describing old dynamics.”

Alexandra Levit, the author of “Deep Talent,” echoed a similar idea. 

“People have always been unhappy at work,” she said. “But I think there has been an accelerated trend of burnout this year.” 

Here is a look back at some of the biggest workplace trends of 2022 and what experts say we should expect in 2023: 

The Great ResignationMore and more burnt out employees are joining the Great Resignation.

Audtakorn Sutarmjam/EyeEm via Getty Images

Employees started resigning from their jobs at an elevated rate late last year, and the trend shows no sign of slowing down. According to the latest data, 4.03 million Americans quit their jobs in October, down from September but still higher than pre-pandemic levels. 

“Employees are voting with their feet and leaving jobs,” Edmonds said. 

“Over the two years of the pandemic, 100,000 or more US workers voluntarily quit. That’s a significant number.” 

Quiet QuittingSome managers fear that remote workers can easily get away with “quiet quitting.”

MoMo Productions/Getty Images

The term “quiet-quitting” took over TikTok – and the entire internet – earlier this year. It describes the act of doing the minimum requirements of a job, declining to go “above and beyond” your job’s description. 

While the phenomenon has reportedly freaked out some managers, Hannah Morgan, a job search strategist at Career Sherpa, applauds the movement. 

“The fact that we have been asked to do so much more than what our job requires is not really fair to the employees,” she said. 

“I love the fact that employees are feeling empowered enough to say, ‘I’m not gonna do a lot more than what my job requires.'”

 

Pay TransparencyPay stub

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Beginning November 1, employers in New York City were required to post a salary range for open positions by a new salary transparency law. Colorado, Connecticut, and Nevada have similar laws, and a new law in California takes effect on January 1, 2023. 

“Pay transparency is one of the greatest trends to have come out of 2022,” Morgan said. 

“It’s forcing every organization to think about pay… it shouldn’t be a secret,” she added. 

Labor HoardingOffice workers in London.

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“Labor hoarding” is a new buzzy expression used by economists that suggest some companies are “hoarding” employees rather than conducting necessary layoffs due to the labor shortage. 

However, layoffs have picked up recently in some industries, including tech and media. 

“The way layoffs have been handled in most organizations has been bad,” said Levit. 

“I mean, we can talk about how we care about employees, and we care about their well-being and that we’re dismayed that people are quiet-quitting, but at the end of the day, employers are treating them horribly when they let them go,” she said. 

Career Cushioning

Jessie Casson/Getty Images

“Career cushioning” is one of the newer terms to enter the workplace lexicon. It’s a way to describe the tactic of developing a “Plan B” scenario in case of layoffs: searching for new jobs while still employed and brushing up skill sets and networks. 

“I like to think of career cushioning as how people are positioning themselves so that they can be found for the next opportunity,” Morgan said. 

Kriegel said the rise in trendy phrases to describe workplaces in 2022 stems from the uncertainty people feel in their careers. 

“The great resignation, quiet quitting, career cushioning, and others are emerging because people are trying to make sense of the sentiment that’s out there and with so many mixed messages. It’s shorthand for what we’re feeling and thinking,” she said. 

 

 

What to expect in 2023

Rachel Mendelson/Insider

Workplace experts predict companies will have to do more for their employees to retain engaged talent in 2023. 

“Companies will have to do a much better job defining career paths within the organization so that they can scoop up the right people and promote them into some of those harder-to-fill jobs,” Morgan predicted. 

Kriegel estimates that some companies will have to work to ensure their workers feel fulfilled in their careers. 

“The trends in the new year will focus on purpose and mission. Purpose-driven organizations will be important because the disengaged worker will look for meaning in their work beyond just salary and benefits,” she said. 

U.S. stock index futures came under pressure on Tuesday after the Bank of Japan surprised global investors with a policy shift that would allow long-term interest rates to rise more.

The BOJ decided to allow the 10-year bond yield to move 50 basis points either side of its 0% target, bigger than the previous 25 basis point band, against expectations of no change at its policy meeting.

Wall Street’s main indexes continued their losing streak for a fourth straight session on Monday as investors shied away from riskier bets, worried that the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes could push the U.S. economy into recession.

“While other central bankers attempt to cool down super-hot inflation via spikes in interest rates, in Japan policymakers have been trying to fire it up, by prolonging the era of cheap money,” said Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.

“The decision is being read as a sign of testing the water, for a potential withdrawal of the stimulus which has been pumped into the economy to try and prod demand and wake up prices.”

Treasuries fell following BoJ’s shock move, with benchmark 10-year Treasury yield rising more than 8 basis points to a three-week high of 3.6676%. Thirty-year yields were last up 11 bps at 3.7179%.

Money market participants see a 65.2% chance the Fed will hike its key benchmark rate by 25 basis points in February to 4.50%-4.75%, keeping the terminal rate at 4.878% by May 2023.

Investors will closely monitor housing starts data, due at 8:30 a.m. ET, which is expected to show a marginal decline in the number of new residential buildings that began construction in November at 1.4 million as against 1.425 million in October.

A slew of other economic data due this week including consumer confidence, existing home sales and core inflation will provide more clues to investors on future interest rate hikes.

At 6:44 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 41 points, or 0.12%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 0.25 points, or 0.01%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 14.25 points, or 0.13%.

Lucid Group Inc (LCID.O) rose 4.7% in premarket trading after the electric vehicle maker closed a $1.5 billion capital raise that the firm said would boost its liquidity.

Nike Inc (NKE.N) added 0.4% ahead of its quarterly report due after the bell.

A strong 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of northern California on Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, as local authorities and media reported thousands of power outages and bridge damage.

The earthquake was about 10 miles (16.1km) deep, USGS said, and struck about 7.4 (12km) west-southwest of Ferndale, California, about a four-hour drive north of San Francisco.

There was no risk of a tsunami after the quake, the U.S. tsunami warning system said.

In Ferndale and surrounding Humboldt County, more than 55,000 homes and businesses were without power early Tuesday, the electric grid tracking website Poweroutageus.com said.

The California Independent System Operator, which oversees much of the state’s electrical grid, issued a transmission emergency notice for the area following the earthquake.

Local media reported that the California highway patrol was responding to reports of cracks in the Ferndale bridge over the Eel River in and out of Ferndale, a town of about 15,000 people 261 miles (420 km) north of San Francisco and 19.6 miles (31.54km) south of Eureka.

If you’ve ever used the phrases “brown bag lunch” or “long time, no see,” congratulations: You’re a racist, according to Stanford University.

That’s the judgment of the university’s IT Department, which is rolling out its “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative,” an effort to purge “potentially harmful terms” from the university’s websites. The guide cautions that the phrase “blind study” is “ableist” and that saying “balls to the wall” inappropriately “attributes personality traits to anatomy.”

Stanford isn’t alone in its linguistic purge. Down the coast, California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo warns incoming students against saying “father and mother” or “boyfriend and girlfriend,” according to a set of instruction slides for student orientation leaders obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Suggested alternatives to mother and father include “supporter,” while the university prefers “partner, beloved or lover” to boyfriend and girlfriend.

Universities and other elite institutions have increasingly embraced “woke” language in a bid to appear progressive. The Biden administration referred to mothers as “birthing people” in its 2022 budget proposal. Stanford is one of several colleges that urge students to use the term “Latinx” to describe Spanish-speaking people, even though most Hispanic people disavow the term.

Both Cal Poly and Stanford apparently worry that mere mention of words commonly used by most Americans will upset their students. They offer “content warnings” before listing problem language like “stupid” and “OCD.”

The Stanford guide discourages the use of “gender-based” terms like “landlord” and “mankind.” Even the seemingly progressive phrase “preferred pronouns” makes the list, since it “suggests that non-binary gender identity is a choice and a preference.” The once-public Stanford list was hidden behind a university login page sometime Monday. The university did not respond to the Free Beacon’s request for comments on the change.

Stanford claims that administrators “are not attempting to address all informal uses of language,” but simply “educate people about the possible impact of the words we use.” Cal Poly’s language initiative has a loftier aim.

The university’s presentations, which are given to student leaders who run orientations for freshmen and transfers, state that they should do more than switch up their language and adopt gender pronouns. “In order to support trans people in their lives, allies need to dismantle the binary ideas they have of gender in their heads,” one slide says.

The Cal Poly materials caution students against using words and phrases like “crazy” or “that’s lame,” because they were “used during a time of eugenics against disabled folx, such as forced sterilization and institutionalization.”

A Cal Poly spokesman confirmed that the slides have been used in orientation programs “for several years” to promote “using inclusive language around gender and ability.” The spokesman added that the speech codes are part of the school’s efforts to promote a “welcoming” campus.

Both Stanford and Cal Poly say they are committed to free speech, which the latter institution avows as a “cornerstone” of democratic societies. But students and faculty say they feel stifled by the speech codes.

“There are people who maybe 5 or 10 years ago would have been in the trenches fighting this stuff with me, but they are even sort of throwing in the hat because it’s just bigger than them,” said Brian Kennelly, a French professor at Cal Poly. “I think people are just exhausted and if they can just get by unnoticed and get a paycheck that’s enough for them, which is so sad.”

Kennelly was the only faculty member willing to speak to the Free Beacon on the record. Two Cal Poly instructors who asked to remain anonymous said that students won’t even take rhetorical positions for the sake of argument in class, as they seem afraid of saying something that violates the social justice creed.

“My guess would be there’s 30 to 50 percent of the student body who don’t buy into this and believe it, but they know they just have to show up and bite their tongue and bide their time,” one of these instructors said.

Stanford likewise stresses its free speech imperative. The university’s top leaders, however, have sought to temper its First Amendment mandate with concerns for those “who are negatively impacted by speech” and acknowledgment of the “additional challenge” of “outside speakers who may be controversial.”

One Cal Poly instructor said the science and engineering-focused university—long considered the “crown jewel” of the California State University system—has seen a complete “brand shift” as the campus became consumed by social justice.

“I don’t think it’s going to end well for the institutions,” the instructor said.

Kennelly worries about the effect on an entire generation.

“If we are expecting our students to all kind of walk in lockstep and have this group think and basically be brainwashed,” Kennelly said, “they’re going to be incapable of engaging in the way that we would normally expect a college student to engage.”

The post Bad Words: California Colleges Push Students To Purge ‘Harmful’ Phrases Like ‘Brown Bag Lunch’ appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the situation in Russian-held parts of Ukraine was “extremely difficult” on Tuesday while his Ukrainian counterpart drove home the message by visiting a frontline town that Russia has long tried and failed to capture.

Addressing Russia’s security services, Putin told operatives they needed to significantly improve their work in a speech that was one of his clearest public admissions yet that the invasion he launched almost ten months ago is not going to plan.

It followed a visit to close ally Belarus that fuelled fears, dismissed by the Kremlin, that the country could help Russia open a new invasion front against Ukraine.

Some of the fiercest fighting in recent weeks in Ukraine has taken place around the eastern city of Bakhmut. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office said on Tuesday he had visited the city to meet military representatives and hand out awards to soldiers.

Earlier, he renewed calls for more weapons after Russian drones hit energy targets in a third air strike on power facilities in six days.

Putin ordered the Federal Security Services (FSB) to step up surveillance of Russian society and the country’s borders to combat the “emergence of new threats” from abroad and traitors at home. Western countries have imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia and the rouble slumped to an over seven-month low against the dollar on Tuesday after the European Union agreed to cap prices of gas, a major Russian export.

In a rare admission of the invasion of Ukraine not going smoothly, Putin cautioned about the difficult situation in regions of Ukraine that Moscow moved to annex in September and ordered the FSB to ensure the “safety” of people living there.

“The situation in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions is extremely difficult,” Putin said in a video address to security workers translated by Reuters.

In September, Putin sought to regain the initiative after a series of battlefield defeats by declaring that four partially occupied regions in Ukraine’s east and south had joined Russia. Kyiv and its Western allies said the move was illegal.

In October, Russian forces drew back in one of the regions – Kherson – and dug in elsewhere. They have failed to gain ground and earlier this month, Putin said the war could be a “long process”.

On Monday, Putin made his first visit to Belarus since 2019, where he and his counterpart extolled ever-closer ties at a news conference late in the evening but hardly mentioned Ukraine. On Tuesday, Russian news agencies reported that Belarus had reached an understanding with Moscow on the restructuring of its debt and had agreed on a fixed price for Russian gas for three years.

Kyiv, meanwhile, was seeking more weapons from the West after weeks of attacks on energy facilities which have knocked out both power and water supplies amid freezing temperatures.

“Weapons, shells, new defence capabilities … everything that will give us the ability to speed up the end to this war,” elenskiy said in his evening address.

Ukraine’s military said it had shot down 30 of 35 “kamikaze” drones fired by Russia on Monday, mostly at the capital Kyiv. The unmanned aircraft fly towards their target, then plummet and detonate on impact.

Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday that five people had been killed in the eastern Donetsk and southern Kherson regions, with eight wounded, and that 21 missiles had knocked out power in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia.

To the northwest of Ukraine, there has been constant Russian and Belarusian military activity for months in Belarus, which Moscow’s troops used as a launch pad for their abortive attack on Kyiv in February.

Lukashenko has said repeatedly he has no intention of sending his country’s troops into Ukraine. But the commander of Ukraine’s joint forces, Lieutenant General Serhiy Nayev, said his country was prepared.

“The level of the military threat is increasing, but we are taking adequate measures,” he was quoted as saying by the defence ministry on Telegram. “The Armed Forces’ General Staff provides for the expansion of units in the event of a significant increase in the other side’s forces.”

The Kremlin on Monday dismissed the suggestion that Putin wanted to push Belarus into a more active role. The RIA Novosti news agency quoted Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying such reports were “groundless” and “stupid”.

Both Putin and Lukashenko were also at pains to dismiss the idea of Russia annexing or absorbing Belarus.

“Russia has no interest in absorbing anyone,” Putin said.

Asked about this comment, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said it should be treated as the “height of irony”, given it was “coming from a leader who is seeking at the present moment, right now, to violently absorb his other peaceful next-door neighbour.”

The 10-month-old conflict in Ukraine, the largest in Europe since World War Two, has killed tens of thousands of people, driven millions from their homes and reduced cities to ruins.

Ukraine’s General Staff said Russian artillery hammered 25 towns and villages around Bakhmut and Avdiivka in the east and several areas around Kupiansk, a northeastern town retaken by Ukraine in September.

Alexei Kulemzin, the Russian-installed mayor of the city of Donetsk, said Ukrainian shelling hit a hospital wing, along with a kindergarten, posting on Telegram a photo of what appeared to be a waiting room with smashed furniture and fittings.

Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield accounts of either side.

Russia says it is waging a “special military operation” in Ukraine to rid it of nationalists and protect Russian-speaking communities. Ukraine and the West describe the Kremlin’s actions as an unprovoked war of aggression.

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Britain’s nurses’ union issued an ultimatum to the government on Tuesday to respond to its pay demands or face further strike action in January as staff walked out for the second time in a week, piling pressure on ministers to act.

Ambulance staff in England and Wales are set to follow suit on Wednesday and Dec. 28, leaving those with all but the most life-threatening conditions to make their own way to hospital.

The industrial action by up to 100,000 nurses is unprecedented in the British nursing union’s 106-year history, but it says it has no choice as the soaring cost of living leaves workers struggling to make ends meet.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) union, which says its members’ real-term earnings have fallen by 6% in the last decade, has called for a pay rise of 5% above the RPI rate of inflation, which stood at 14% in November.

The government has offered nurses around 4% on average, on the recommendation of an independent pay review body, and has declined to discuss pay further. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says the nurses’ demands are unaffordable.

“I will negotiate with him at any point to stop nursing staff and patients going into the new year facing such uncertainty,” RCN head Pat Cullen said.

“But if this government isn’t prepared to do the right thing, we’ll have no choice but to continue in January.”

The RCN gave the government 48 hours from the end of Tuesday’s strike to respond before it announces further dates.

“Our door is open to discuss with the unions anything relating to working conditions. What we can’t do is go back into reopening the pay award,” junior health minister Will Quince told Sky News.

The strikes are putting extra pressure on healthcare provision in the state-funded National Health Service when it is already stretched by staff shortages and record backlogs due to COVID delays.

“Our members are tired of going to work every day and in some cases, spending the whole of their shift sat on an ambulance outside an A&E department with the same patient,” Rachel Harrison, GMB union public services national secretary, told a committee of lawmakers on Tuesday.

“We’ve had examples where our members have clocked off at the end of one shift to return the following day to the same patient being on that ambulance.”

The military have been put on standby to help drive ambulances, although they will not have the powers regular emergency vehicle drivers do.

Ministers are meeting with unions on Tuesday to discuss which emergencies ambulances will still respond to, amid media reports those suffering heart attacks or strokes may be left to make their own way to hospital.

“I’ve been absolutely clear with the unions … that life threatening and emergency situations must be covered as part of minimum service level guarantees and we’ll be repeating that expectation later,” Quince told the BBC.

The government has said it is looking at introducing new anti-strike legislation next year which could include banning strike action in key sectors.

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A Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives committee on Tuesday is due to decide whether to release details of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns, after a years-long court fight and just two weeks before their party surrenders power to Republicans.

The House Ways and Means Committee is due to examine them behind closed doors at 3 p.m. ET (2000 GMT), the day after the House probe of the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters urged the Justice Department to prosecute the Republican for his role in sparking the riot.

Trump, unlike previous presidential candidates, refused to make his tax returns public as he sought to keep secret the details of his wealth and the activities of his real estate company, the Trump Organization, and he fought Democrats’ efforts to get access to them.

Candidates are not required by law to release their tax returns, but previous presidential hopefuls of both parties have voluntarily done so for several decades.

Trump’s tax returns are still subject to confidentiality restrictions, but Democrats who control the committee could vote to make some details public.

Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee have said they need to see those records to assess whether the Internal Revenue Service is properly auditing presidential tax returns, and to gauge whether new legislation is needed. The committee’s chairman, Representative Richard Neal, has not said whether he supports making them public.

They have little time to act, as Republicans are due to take control of the committee, along with the full House, in January.

Another House committee on Monday asked federal prosecutors to charge Trump with obstruction and insurrection for sparking the deadly Capitol attack. Republicans are expected to dissolve or redirect that panel when they take control of the chamber.

Release of any financial details could lead to more unwelcome scrutiny for Trump as he seeks the Republican nomination to run for the White House again in 2024.

Trump, who served as president from 2017 to 2021, reported heavy losses from his business enterprises over several years to offset hundreds of millions of dollars in income, according to news media reporting and trial testimony about his finances. That allowed him to pay very little in taxes.

The Trump Organization was found guilty on Dec. 6 in New York of carrying out a 15-year criminal scheme to defraud tax authorities. The company faces up to $1.6 million in fines, though Trump himself is not personally liable. He has said the case was politically motivated and the company plans to appeal.

He also faces a separate fraud suit in New York that accuses him of artificially inflating the value of his assets.

During his presidency, he faced persistent questions about conflicts of interest, as foreign dignitaries and Republican Party officials spent money in his luxury hotels.