No matter how much you progress in your career, do you still feel like there must be something more out there?

In this week's episode of the Happier at Work® podcast, we welcome a special guest, Brian Aquart, who shares his insights and experiences regarding the "great resignation" phenomenon that many have observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Brian, a former employment law specialist turned healthcare industry professional, offers a unique perspective on why people are leaving their jobs and embarking on new paths.

Brian introduces us to his podcast, "Why I Left," where he provides a platform for individuals to share their personal journeys of leaving stable jobs during these unprecedented times. The motivation behind their decisions ranges from a desire for alignment with personal values and aspirations, to pursuing passion projects and side hustles that foster personal growth and fulfilment.

The pandemic has forced many individuals to reflect on their career choices and evaluate if their current jobs truly bring them happiness and purpose. Brian emphasises that being happier at work goes beyond financial considerations, challenging the notion that money is the sole indicator of success. Instead, he urges us to consider the impact we have on the world and the kind of impact we want to make.

Through his own work in healthcare, Brian has found fulfilment by focusing on initiatives that positively impact lives, such as working with students and exposing them to opportunities in the healthcare industry. He reminds us that finding something we genuinely love to do and feel passionate about, coupled with making a difference in our chosen field, is key to experiencing happiness in our careers.

The main points throughout this podcast include:

- Personal stories from career changers, the main reasons people left stable jobs during the pandemic

- We don’t talk enough about job resignations, and what we can learn from the process

- How money is not purpose, and people want to have an impact through their work

- When you reach a certain level and think “is this all there is?”

- How to create more opportunities for yourself

- What companies should be offering to employees to prevent resignations

Connect with Brian Aquart:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianaquart/

https://www.WhyILeft.co

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-i-left/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officialwhyileft/

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-i-left/id1613667100

YouTube Channel Link

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMgQI4X0kEp8-o7Z9D3tRmg

Do you have any feedback or thoughts on this discussion? If so, please connect with Aoife via the links below and let her know. Aoife would love to hear from you!

Connect with Happier at Work host Aoife O’Brien:

Website: https://happieratwork.ie

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aoifemobrien/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HappierAtWorkHQ

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/happieratwork.ie/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/happieratwork.ie

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm0FKS19I5qSlFFmkx1YGqA

Brian, you're very welcome to the Half You're at Work podcast. I know we connected through a past podcast guest, which is one of my favorite ways to connect with my podcast guests is through other guest recommendations. Bev atfield connected us maybe a year ago or a little bit more. And we had a brilliant conversation. You were had either just started your own podcast or we're about to start and we just had a great conversation all about podcasting. So I know this has been kind of on the agenda since the end of last year probably, and I'm really looking forward to our conversation today. Do you want to let people know a little bit about your work history, your background and what brought you to where you are today?

Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, first, thank you IFA for bringing me on the was wow, time really flies. It has about a year. So yeah, as you mentioned, I'm Brian Akar. My background is really as an employment. I have I was in private practice for a couple of years prior to then moving into city government here in New York. I'm based in the States, I'm in New York and I worked for two different government agencies. Total was about six years, three and three apiece. And then in 2016, I actually pivoted into the healthcare space. And what really fascinated me about that was having the opportunity to work in a place where you can impact and touch lives in ways that, truthfully, I had not done so before in my career. Truthfully, I was involved. You didn't really want to see me. In my past life, I was an investigator, right? I was employment, didn't signal good things when I showed up. Now it's different. And so I've been in healthcare since 2016, work for a very large organization here regionally in New York. And now I'm in the space where kind of moved into an executive level role where I focus on workforce and community education. And what's really been great about that is you get a chance to potentially work with students and other folks who are interested in the healthcare space but really don't know how to get in. And so that's been really touching for me. I've been doing that for the past couple actually about six, seven months now. But I will say why I got into my podcast. Right. So I also host I created and host a podcast called Why I Left and it's really about why people have left their jobs during the pandemic. And really it's a topic that I, truthfully, just kind of went down the rabbit hole and just got so intrigued by what people were doing during the pandemic. This was a time in our history, most of our history that we had never experienced before. And as I mentioned, I was in healthcare at the time and I was really involved in some of the Redeployment efforts when COVID first hit that first wave of moving folks in the right location to make sure that we had enough staff to support really the onslaught of humanity that was coming in at that time. And simultaneously, now you see all these people who are starting to leave what I would think are stable jobs. And so I started asking myself, what's going on here? What's happening? And then you'd see more articles about this. I'd hear more stories. And I just got really curious given my background, right? So in the employment space and when I moved into healthcare, I was initially in HR. I focused on how do leaders and teams work better together, how do organizations better support and engage their team members, right? When the relationships go south, what happens there? What could we have done better? And so you start reading all these articles and you're like, wow, this is a phenomenon, right? And then the huge article comes out from actually Professor Anthony Klotz, right? He had made a quote, know, this thing is going to be a great resignation. Everyone's going to pretty much kind of leave. And then it started happening. It was like 41 million people who left at a certain time. It was just so many folks who just decided to leave. So I thought to myself, well, what if these people would want to tell their own stories? Because I'd see articles, I'd read different news things, and it was always so brief, right? Ryan worked here. Here's what's going on. Here's a quote. And he left. Move on. Next story. I was like, but what if I gave people who left their jobs, their own platform to really talk about their story and kind of walk us through the process? Because my big thing about the show is I don't think that we talk about resignations enough, right? And that they are something that occur frequently in our work lives. And virtually gone are the days where folks are in positions for 30 and 40 and 50 years. So when you think of the amount of people who have resigned, regardless of great resignation or not, there is something behind that. And I think there's something that people could learn from that either, about the process, the steps that they did to get there, and truthfully, what has happened next, and some of those insights that they've shared. So that was really the origin of the show. And then it was just about getting people to join, right? So that first season, my goal was to get to 20 episodes and I got it. And what was great was that I mentioned Anthony earlier was I reached out to him during that first season like, hey, you coined this mean, I'd love to get you on the show, right? And so we talked for a few months, and he was actually in his own pivot at the time. And then he opened up season one. And so it was great to get him on the show, talk about what led to that. Because truthfully, it's really the origin story for why I even created a podcast in the first place.

And it's been a lot of mean, there's loads that I want to ask about there. Maybe the pressing question is about Anthony and that pivot that he's made and you kind of wonder about these things. If he's doing this research and he's realizing all these things, then he's like, oh well, maybe there's an opportunity for me to be part of the great resignation or for me to resign. As know, when things are in the back of people's heads, I think it makes us more curious about what's going on out there. So any wisdom to share around that without giving too much away from the podcast episode itself?

Yeah, no. Well, I would say so. That's exactly what happened. I think he saw an opportunity or he received an opportunity that was truthfully kind of once in a lifetime where he noticed he was like, if not now, then when? And he happened to jump on that. And so the irony of the guy who coined the great resignation phrase ended up resigning himself and going overseas was something that wasn't lost on him. And he gives a really good story as to kind of what led to that for him. He talks about a few things. Like I said, I won't give away too much, but he talks about some of the push and pull factors that lead to folks actually resigning. So I would definitely encourage folks to check that out and learn more about what that means. Because it was interesting once he kind of put that into perspective. I then had to reflect on obviously, season one guests and some of the other folks who I had been talking with and I'm currently talking with in season two. And you think about that, it's very similar, right? Because not everybody is leaving. So we're here. I'm on the happier at work podcast. There's a lot of folks who weren't that happy at work to begin with and the Pandemic gave them space to actually recognize that. And once they did, I truthfully think this is for a lot of people. It's kind of hard to go back kind of hard to go back once you realize that, hey, maybe this isn't for me. And if I can find a way to make home life work, either with significant other kids or whoever, and doing something I'm really interested in, then why not? It's been great to hear these stories because there's so many revelations that I've just come across that I think it's beautiful. One that they're open enough to share that with truthfully, a random guy from LinkedIn more often than not, right? So I love that they're able to do that, but then it's helpful for other folks to hear like, hey, you know what, I'm not alone in this because truthfully. That is one of the pieces of feedback I get the most around that. Oh, I'm able to really I saw myself in him or her and God, that really stuck with me. And when I hear that, I'm like, okay, good, I'm on to something and let's just keep the content flowing.

Yeah, no, that's brilliant. But I think it's interesting that I think, let's say prior to the pandemic and maybe even to a degree now as well, people are so busy just doing that, they're not really taking that step back to think about what they're doing. And you're so right. The pandemic gave people space to really reflect on where their life was going. Is this really what I want? Yeah. I love this idea of the push and pull factors. I'll be checking out that episode for sure. The other thing, I suppose from your own perspective, I'd love to understand more about what you've learned through the process of talking to all these people. Is there a common thread rather than just not being happier at work, is there something that kind of ties all of these people together? Or is it their unique experiences like what's going on that people resigned or at least the people that you spoke to?

Yeah, I would say the common thread is that when you go through an experience like Truthfully, more often than not a once in a lifetime experience that we had with COVID it really changes you. It changes everybody. And throughout whether the folks who have come on the show have been because I sometimes blend the topics with either coaches or folks why may not have left but just could give some insight into things that have occurred and even if it's someone who hasn't left a job, this theme of I am different. Like these past three years, I am different than I was before, that's been a consistent theme. Now what that difference means, that's where you then get the variability, right? Because I have one gentleman who said, look, I now have this time. Why would I commute an hour both ways to work? Now we're going remote, okay? We're going to be doing this. And now I have this freedom to do X, Y and Z. Okay, great. But now I'm remote. Now I can do some of my passion project that I've been working on and still do my day to day and be fine. Because what I decided to do now was now that I'm not commuting for this hour and a half, I'm going to do side hustle work in the morning. Then I do my day job, normal day job. And then what I would have been commuting, I'm now going to do side hustle work there. And that then allowed him to scale his business quicker and delete right. And then there was other folks who now the time gave them because some folks, not everyone's leaving to become entrepreneurs solopreneurs. Some folks said, you know what? Now the time. Gave me an opportunity to say, you know what? This is the type of organization that I want to be a part of, or this is the type of work that I really want to do. Where can I find that? And I love hearing those stories because those are folks who they still wanted to be in some type of industry, but they want to be a part of something greater. And I commend that. Right. And so it's really been a mixed bag, I think. So other than the pandemic really changing everybody. The other common theme, and it's one of my phrases I love to kind of talk about is that what you notice through the people, why I bring on is that we're all much more connected than we want to give ourselves credit for in this human experience that we're all living. And to have one event happen in our lives that touches everybody is so rare. Is so rare, right. Of the ones who has touched everybody. We could probably name some of those. Right. But this is kind of ours, if you will. And because of that, people now are like, all right, how am I going to use this to better what I need for myself or my family? Right? But more often than not, people are really taking that look inward to figure out what it is that they could do because now I want to make sure that I'm not making the same mistakes that I was doing before.

Yeah. Love that. Absolutely love it. And it's so right. I think one of the if you can call it a benefit, I'm not sure if you can, really but one of the positives, let's say, of COVID was that sense of connection with other people and my worry at the other side and who can tell whether it's over or whether it's still going on? Because I know people who are still contracting COVID, but it's not talked about in the news anymore. It's not really pressworthy anymore. So we feel like we're at the other side of it. But I think the worry is that loss of connection again, that we're not feeling that sense of community with other people anymore. I love this idea of the great vessel nation. I sort of assumed people were going to find other jobs as opposed to being entrepreneurs. But it's interesting to know that there is that kind of mix. There is a bit of entrepreneurship there as well and a little bit of finding something, the type of work that I want to do and having more time to reflect on, well, what does that really mean and how do I best bring out my strengths? Another thing that I kind of took from that is wanting to be part of something greater. And I think that's, again, that's something that's common with all humans. I think that we all want to be something, part of something that's bigger than ourselves. Again, it's that connection piece. It's that how can we collaborate together and how can we support one another? I think it's a really powerful message as well. Any thoughts to add on any of that?

Yeah, I think we are all, like you mentioned, with us as human beings. We want to feel connected to something. We want to feel like our work has meaning, our life has meaning. And although most of us are working kind of just the nature of what we do, we're not independently wealthy and can just kind of live just live, right. Most of us don't have that type of life. If we're going to be spending so much time somewhere, why not make it worthwhile internally, right? Because I do think, and maybe this is a little naive of me, but at people's core, I think people are good people and they want to do the right thing. They want to contribute positively to society and whatever that type of way, education, tech or whatever the case may be, people genuinely want to do that. But at times sometimes you may not be working in a space that really drives your purpose but when you get a chance to do that and then you actually are doing it, it's then hard to turn back. Even if, and I've heard this before, even if you're not making as much money as you used to. And so you see those things and I commend folks who have given themselves the space to decide that and make those decisions because you can tell they're living a happier life.

Yeah, no, I totally agree on that. And I suppose it's the whole philosophy around happier at work is if you are spending so much of your time at work you do want to make sure for me it's people thinking about the impact that they're having on the world and the impact that they want to have on the world and how to make that. And you mentioned the word purpose. Like how do you bring it back to purpose? And I just made a note here saying that money is not purpose. We need to earn a certain amount to fund whatever lifestyle we have to pay the mortgage, to pay the rent, to pay for food, to pay for kids stuff to pay you know, there's loads of expenses that we have in our lives. And there might be a lifestyle that we've become accustomed to the car, the house, the holidays, whatever that might be. But so long as we're earning enough to fund a minimum basic kind of lifestyle, I think beyond that money, it loses its relevance a little bit. Unless you're maybe caught in a trap of keeping up with the Joneses, keeping up with the next door neighbors and wanting to impress other people. But I think it's a really important consideration that it's not all about money. And if you took a 10% pay cut, but you're actually much happier at work. I think it makes a huge difference because whether or not you're happier at work has an impact on all sorts of relationships. Your home relationships, your work relationships, and your overall experience of life. It has an impact on your health. It has such a wide reaching impact that I think a 10% pay cut is not a huge price to pay for something that will have such a long lasting and wide and profound impact on your experience of life.

Absolutely. And I'll share Candidly here. My inbox from a LinkedIn standpoint is there's no shortage of offers for other opportunities. That truthfully, could probably make me more money in other places. But what I found is that I'm working at a place now. COVID changed me as well. We talk about purpose driven work. I wrote an article about that right around, I think it was like 21, I believe it was like the year anniversary from when COVID actually started. It was like March 14.

Yeah.

And it was actually called purpose driven work. And what was interesting was I joined Healthcare looking to make a difference and all those things, but I'm not a clinician or anything like that, so I'd never really touched patients in that way. But how I mentioned earlier that I was a part of some of the Redeployment efforts. There was an initiative that this command center that was a part of leading that allowed us to actually save lives because we were able to move folks in the right places and all of that. And it was the first time in my life that I had experienced that type of feeling of impact in this type of way. Because like I said, I'm not saving any lives. And some of the work I was doing, I was impacting lives. Right? Arguably, people could say in which type of way you're impacting them. It's kind of depending on which side you're sitting on, right? But with this one, to actually save lives, it touched me in a way and it impacted like, oh wow, and I'll never know who those people were, never know who those families were. But the fact that it happened and it got relayed to us, it really touched me in a way. I was like, oh, wow, this is a feeling that I'd love to continue. It was almost like a high you were chasing. I'd love to continue this. And now, granted, I may not be able to save lives in that type of way, but maybe I could work on something that saves or impacts lives positively in a way that I may not have been able to do before. And that's truthfully, what I ended up kind of creating for myself within the organization was an opportunity to impact lives in a way. Currently it's around students and some of those types of initiatives, but impacting lives in ways that allows folks to see their trajectory differently. People want to get into healthcare. They don't know how to do it, but if we're able to, we partnered with a big school here, school system here, to say, hey, we want to expose kids to these types of opportunities. And I recently kind of wrapped up that project a couple of months ago. And to hear the feedback, to see the learning happening, it fed that piece of me and I was like, oh, wow. They've changed kind of their thought process of what they thought healthcare was because of this experience. And that's awesome to have been a part of that. And the team I was a part of leading we're into that. And so now it's like, boom, I think I found a nice little area. Right?

Yeah.

And I won't be kind of look, there's offers that come and I'm like, jeez, wow, that could be something, but what is it exactly, right? Much more strings typically attached to that than you see in the JD. But right now I'm in a really good place where I kind of get to feed that part of my spirit and feed that part of my purpose, make some money with it as well. To your point, that's how I'm kind of truthfully my nine to five. That's how I'm kind of bringing this all it I'm living it.

Yes. Love it. I'd love to come back to this idea of purpose. And again, something that sprung to mind from a previous podcast guest Sharath, who talked about purpose as big P versus little P. So you can have big P purpose and little P purpose. And also something that I heard Adam Grant mention in the past as well in relation to purpose. And oftentimes we want whether it's as an entrepreneur and you want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg or you want to be involved in a cause where you're saving the whales, for example, you feel like it has to be this massive thing when actually, if you bring it back down to the community around yourself, it's understanding more about the impact that you want to have at that community level and how you can have that impact. For me, you're directly impacting on people's lives. It is a life or death situation. But oftentimes people, when they're working, it's not that life or death situation, but they still want to be able to have that impact. And I suppose it's a reminder that the impact doesn't have to be life or death. It doesn't have to be save the whales. It doesn't have to be this massive thing that you do. It can be the impact that you have on those people around you. And have you kind of got that sense from the conversations you've had or in your own career?

Yeah, so I'll start with me personally. One of my phrases is, my goal is to facilitate interactive dialogue that positively impacts the human experience and that is a very high level kind of goal. But through how I do that is through some of the conversations I have. I mean, on the side I consult and do trainings on things like reasonable accommodations and just bias and things like that and we talk about just being more open to how other people show up at work, how we can ensure we're a bit more inclusive at work. Right? And so I've talked about that. And so that's my big umbrella. For me personally and for others, I would say something similar, as know there are folks who recognize that. Hey, look, I want a gentleman I talked to. Who was into real estate. And what he is trying to do, a gentleman named Kamal what he is trying to do is change the perception of folks who may be on Section eight, which here is around basically assisted housing folks who need assistance with living expenses and buying into properties that allow folks who may be on section eight to one be in a property that is obviously well maintained. All of that. But then it allows them the freedom to do some of the other things that they need to do that eventually they truly may get off of that program. Right. And he was in finance before that. Right. But now it's given him an opportunity now to scale something that he's passionate about and impact people and families in a much broader way. And I commend things like that. Right. Another young lady who actually from the same place as the gentleman Kamala was talking about, a woman named Jennifer. She started her own marketing company. She had realized she's been doing all this stuff for years and doing climbing the corporate ladder and recognized that when she got to a certain place, it may have been a bit empty. But now she's able to how? Can she help other brands with their marketing, but also know her and her husband kind of started this spot in Columbus where it's like a gathering of like minded individuals, entrepreneurs, and doing things for the community that now she has space and time to do that. And so those are the types of things that I think people are kind of living their big p purpose in that here's what we want to do high level and here are now the things that kind of come into that.

Love that there was something that you said earlier that you alluded to was about creating something for yourself within your own role. So I'd love to explore that a little bit more. It sounds like you've kind of crafted this position for yourself and I'd love to get an understanding of how you did that. Maybe someone who's listening today can learn a little bit more about how you've achieved that.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Prior to this role, I was in a Chief of staff role supporting our President and CEO and those roles are typically time limit. Like, no one stays in these roles forever, right? So I remember probably one of the first three months, it's like, yeah, you do what you need to do here, but you need to see other places in the organization so you can figure out what you want to do next. And so a part of obviously my day to day providing that support and doing whatever I needed for him was also meeting and greeting with other execs, other folks across the system and really paying attention throughout all the different meetings I was in to say, hey, where are we going next? Right? And what truthfully is something that I want to be a part of. And it was something about education that really stuck with me. My former boss, our leader actually from Ireland, right, has a great story about basically coming up from nothing and making himself into something. And he talks about you change the circumstances of a kid from a poor family with education, right? And I heard that and I was like, he's full of gems of quotes, right? But I was like, oh, this is a good one, right? We talked more about it and then this initiative that I was working on kind of came about and I was like, oh, you know what? Yes, you could definitely change the circumstances of that kid and their family. But given how things are now, if we're able to impact maybe this one kid who has friends or whatever and they're able to talk about them, their experiences, there's a potentially a generational component to this that is much larger than we're even anticipating. And so once that really sank in with me, I was like, okay, how am I going to be a part of this? And so there was a lot of movement that was happening in the at the time. I kept my boss in loop, like, hey, I'm thinking about exploring more in this space, right? This kind of learning and education innovation space. Are you good with that? He's like, oh, absolutely. Right. And so we were having to know our former chief learning officer, and she was actually in the process of exiting. And I knew the gentleman who was coming up and I truthfully just had a direct conversation with him about, here's what I'm thinking about you're coming into this new role. Truthfully, do you have a person? Right? Do you have someone to provide some support and whatever? Because at the time, I hadn't fleshed it out or anything, but I knew I wanted to kind of be in this learning and innovation space. And he was like, no, I don't. But I'd love to. And the first question everyone always used to ask know, does Michael know about you know he does. We're very open and know Truthfully. Even quick aside, before I even started the podcast, the first person I told, other than my wife. Right. Was my former boss. I was like, hey, we talked about this, but I'm thinking about doing this thing. And he was like, hey, go for it. Right? But back to the story. It was, yes, he's in the loop, but I would just love to stay close. So my first point would be to folks is to think of is to pay attention to what's happening in let's say you want to stay in your pay attention to what's happening in your organization to see what could potentially be something that really gets you going, right? Whether it's something that's already created or potentially something you see that's coming on the horizon. Right? So if you see that, pay attention. Great. Two is you can't be shy. And I truthfully, I'm not here. I didn't get where I'm at by being shy.

Trust me. Okay.

You have to ask, right? Well, here's what I'm thinking about, and even if it's not fully fleshed out here's, high level, what I'm thinking, I'd love to explore this with you. You have a great opportunity where, truthfully, you're coming in at a clean slate. I had a couple of great mentors at the time who really kind of coaching me throughout the process because I saw what was happening. Right. And granted, the vantage point where I was was as high as you can go. Right? And so I'm like, I see what's going on. I want to get in early because what I didn't you know, the best piece of advice I got was, if you see something, go for it, because the train only comes around once, right?

Yeah.

If it comes around again, the cars may be a little different. Right. And that stuck with me because if I were he's coming in new leader in this space. Let's be a part of what's kind of now a part of the build as opposed to now folks are already kind of in, and I may have missed an opportunity, and so I didn't want to do that. So paying attention, not being why, being open about what you're looking for. And then as things started to flesh out, I made a formal pitch about what I could do, what I'd like to be a part of, and it really started to solidify. Like, okay, yeah, I'm really interested in this education space. I'm interested, obviously, from workforce standpoint, I'm interested in how we're working with the community in this regard. So how do we bring this together to ensure and mind you, there are other groups who do similar things, but how can we bring this together? Maybe this one initiative that I had was an initiative called, like, Future Ready that could show like, hey, here's how we could bring multiple departments together in one thing and get a lot of good traction out of it. And, truthfully, it worked and is working. And so that's what's been helpful. Now, you had to kind of show results right? And I was able to do that, or we were able to do that with some of the feedback that we got from the students, some of the publicity that we ended up getting. And so it was very helpful. And truthfully, I was very intentional about making sure that, one, we were able to show how meaningful this was not only for the students, but also for the school system, who we were kind of working together with. And that helped just kind of bring everything together. So now I'm at a place where you make this pitch. Truthfully, it was a little nerve wracking in the beginning because going into something that you kind of envision and create, there's not much how did they do it before? I couldn't tell you. Right? I mean, I just came up with this thing, right? It's brand new, right? But now it's like, okay, here's what we're able to do in this short period of time. Now, how can we replicate that, right? And so my big three pillars, day to day, for my day to day job are around talent, pipelining reskilling and upskilling and then kind of the thought leadership, AI and innovation work. And so I kind of dip in and out of each three on any given day. And that's been a lot of fun.

Brilliant. I think it's so interesting. I think and an earlier conversation I had on the podcast was about taking responsibility and taking control and being proactive in your career rather than waiting for opportunities. And I think it's such a prime example of spotting an opportunity and going for it, making your intentions clear, and then pitching and getting the support that you needed to make that transition as well. Well done to you.

Thank you.

Brian, something that you mentioned very early on in the conversation, I've been meaning to kind of come back around to this and that's more from the organization perspective. So if you're talking to all of these people who've left and we know that the great resignation has happened, one of the things that you said earlier was, what could we have done better? So as an organization, what do you think organizations can do better to retain staff, more generally speaking, and maybe specifically in these times of crisis and change?

Yeah, I think a lot of it we're kind of seeing now. Right. But one of the things that big themes around burnout around folks not recognizing how stressed they actually were until they, truthfully, had this time to kind of sit. But one of the things that I think is important to the extent that it's able to happen, given the respective industry, is that remote work opened up a ton of opportunity for folks, family wise, home life wise, to really continue to do what they needed to do successfully and also more successfully manage their life. My advice from an organizational standpoint is when it comes to the flexibility around people's work schedules. I don't think we can go back to pre 2020.

No.

And you see a lot of organizations and I don't know if that's happening overseas as well, but you see a lot of organizations here stateside who are now kind of reversing the clock on before it was people wanted to work. I saw a funny meme about this pre 2020. It was like, we want to work flex. No, we can't do it. People are going to take advantage, blah, blah, blah. 2020 comes. We need everybody to go.

We have to.

Everyone's doing great work. I've seen some of the numbers. People productivity is up. People are truthfully sometimes working longer, right. Because when you're sitting at the desk, you don't know. So that's a whole other aside. But productivity is there. And now pandemic is, quote unquote, over. Now we need you back. Working remotely didn't work. Wait a minute, it was working for three years.

Exactly.

To kind of play these games with employees. I don't think it's a smart move. Right. And people may have different opinions on that. I'm comfortable with that. But I think that this remote work. I think the future truthfully is hybrid and even myself, I like working remote, but there's times I feel like I need to be in the office as well. I like having that flexibility. But to force people to come in for an arbitrary number of days either during the week or for the month, I don't think it really makes much sense. So my piece would be let adults be adults. I think we are all comfortable in what we're doing. A lot of us are good at what we do. And to the extent we have a position that allows for us to work remotely, successfully, I think that should be an option. Now, certain places that's not an option, right. But where it is, I think that should be a viable.

Absolutely. And you know, to be honest, Brian, I think we could have a whole other podcast episode talking about the topic of flexibility and the future of work and hybrid and how to get it right and all of those kind of things. Like one of the big challenges, particularly here with a lot of my clients who are based in Ireland, is the challenge with hybrid. I think there's a lot of companies that are struggling to get it right and they're looking to kind of outside sources of like, what are they doing and how are they getting it right. But I don't think anyone has it figured out just yet. I think it's going to be an iterative process, I think try stuff out and if it's not working and have ways to measure it as well. How are you measuring the effectiveness of it? Are you looking at things like retention rates? Are you looking at things like productivity and how you actually measure that productivity and has the way that you measure productivity changed since the pandemic. So are you looking at the right things in your business? And how can you make a case for or against hybrid working and how do you enable people to do their best work?

Absolutely. And a lot of these conversations really stem around truthfully real estate costs, right?

Yes, of course. Well, we've invested all of this money in renting or buying this office building and therefore we need people to come in and work here to make it cost effective.

Right. And once that's taken away, I think people will or organizations will be a little bit more flexible because look, that's a huge cost. Space is a huge cost. And so unless they're able to repurpose it, I do truthfully see kind of some of these trends continuing. But I do still think it's unfortunate.

Yeah, no, it is. And I was listening and I'd love to be able to quote this better, but I was listening to a podcast the other day and in it they were talking about the fact that you're only working, let's say on average 8 hours per day, 40 hours per week. But that's actually only 25% of the entire usable time of that office building. So actually, if you're getting people in, then it's not that they're wasting all of this time, it's that if you think about it from that perspective, you could be using those offices for lots of other things overnight or on the weekends. So when you're thinking about utility costs, I think is essentially what they were trying to say. And the utilization of the office buildings, actually they're only being utilized 25% of the time, even when you're working nine to five, Monday to Friday. So it's changing that perspective of how you're phrasing it or how you're framing it and how you're using the office buildings.

That's actually a great point. And now I'm thinking about I haven't really thought about it like that. Right. Because let's think about most of these places. Let's say states like the big companies, they have overseas offices, right?

Yeah.

And so when they're open, they can be open there, but folks sitting over here, Park Avenue or wherever, 06:00, 07:00, they're shutting down, but someone cleaning and sourcing and electricity and all that stuff to keep things going. That's a great point. Maybe offline. I'd love to listen to that badass.

If I could find it. I'll have to go back and have a look at what podcast I listened to recently. But it was just something very striking to me as an argument against this whole thing about why are we using this real estate argument as a reason to bring people back to the office. Essentially, I thought it was quite interesting. And for anyone listening today, if I do find that, I will put a link in the show notes so that you can listen back and hear for yourself and not my butchered version of I think it said this and it was something like, yeah, but it was just an interesting perspective, I think, that was shared. Brian, the question I ask everyone who comes on the podcast, what does being.

Happier at work mean to, you know and love? Love this this question. I think being happier kind of blends some of the things I was talking about earlier around, if you know what you're passionate about or what you feel as though you're kind of working in your purpose, if you will, I think that allows you to be happier. Being happier means working in something that you genuinely like to do. Love may be a bit strong, right, but you genuinely like to do and you feel like you're making a difference, whatever that means to you. For me, it means potentially making a difference in the lives of future healthcare leaders, right, or making an impact for those why may work in the field now, but with the advancements of technology and things like that, some jobs may not be here in a few years. So how could we then give them an extra set of tools for their toolkit to then do something else still within this industry, so grow them within that space? For me, I potentially have an opportunity to work on initiative, or I do have and am working on initiatives that can do that for people. And to me, that strikes something in me that, one, I genuinely like to do it, and two, it does make me happy to have this impact on folks'lives. And so that's what being happier at work means to me. Working in your purpose, having some fun, too.

Fun is so important.

Having some fun and then genuinely trying to make a difference for the betterment of other people at times. Yes, there are certain you have to kind of look out for yourself, right? Don't get me wrong, I got two kids and a wife. Got to make sure that everybody they're good, right? But also, I want to make sure that other people are doing well too. And if there are things that I can work on to help impact that, that really drives me in ways that I'm learning more about each day. Truthfully.

Brilliant. Love that. And Brian, if people want to connect with you, what's the best way they can do that?

Yeah, no, absolutely. So you can find me on LinkedIn. Brian akar A-Q-U-A-R-T. I'm probably the only one there with that last name. And then also, if you are interested in checking out my show, you can visit me at www dot. Yi left, co that's where you can find all of our episodes. I'm in season two currently and so it's been a lot of fun.

Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time today. Absolutely love this conversation and I'm sure we could dive into solving the world's problems and the future of work for hours and hours, but time to close up now. Really, really enjoyed this conversation, and I appreciate your time today as well. So thank you so much, Brian.

Thank you. And I look forward to checking this out, and you have a great show, and so I hope the listeners get a lot out of this. And thank you again for having me.

Thank you.