Tag Archives: Opting out

If we all know something has got to give, then why is it so hard to change?

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All the years I’ve been researching, writing and talking about opting out and in, sustainable solutions for work and work place wellbeing, I’ve never come across anyone in the organizational world who doesn’t think all this is of the essence. I’ve been at it for a while now, and the whole time my work has been received as timely and important and with great interest. 

Still, even though there is a lot of consensus regarding this, people continue struggling with the same issues at work and more and more of them dream of opting out. 

Okay, before you say anything, I do know that not everything is the same. The pandemic showed us that we can change when we have to and there are a lot of organizations that now provide their employees with more flexibility regarding where, when and how they work. Also, some organizations have started prioritizing mental health more and now have routines and policies in place to support that. 

Nevertheless, there are a lot of organizations that don’t. Some may talk the talk but not walk it, and some – all too many – don’t even talk it. 

Why is this? Why is it so hard to change?

Well, one of the main problems is that the way we understand work; and what we know to be a ‘good’ way of working or organizing our work has become something of a truth. When things have been in a certain way for as long as we can remember, we tend to think that is the natural way for them to be and it becomes hard to even imagine doing things differently. It is simply the way things are done. 

But let me let you in on a secret. The way we understand work isn’t a truth. It isn’t a law of nature, it has been invented and implemented by us and not even that long ago. It’s actually quite a recent invention. 

The current career ideal was developed as a result of industrialization and the prosperity many nations experienced after World War II. Employees were expected to be loyal to one employer and career advancement involved an upward movement in the organization in a timely fashion, brought about by promotions. As mainly men started working in the industries, some argue that the career wasn’t created for one, but one and a half people: the man with the career and the wife who took care of everything he didn’t have time for because he was so tied up at work. 

Although a lot has changed in society since then, this is ironically still the career ideal today: the timely upward movement and the expectation of complete dedication and devotion to work. Anything else it considered suspect, at least if you want to advance to the upper echelons of corporate hierarchies. 

But guess what, we don’t have to organize work the way we do! There is nothing natural or predetermined about it. We can reinvent why we work, how we work and how much we work. 

The problem is just that in order to change we have to want to change. And not only that, we also have to realize that we need to change. We have to have that lightbulb moment. Until we do, and if it’s going well enough, it’ll just feel easier to continue the way we have.  

So how do we do that? How do we get people and organizations to see the light? Do we have to wait until things get so bad that there will be no choice but to change?  

The Great Resignation, Opting Out, The Quit, The Great Reshuffle, The Great Attrition… What’s really going on?!

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It’s all over the media:

The Great Resignation! No no, no one is calling it that anymore, it’s The Quit. The what? No, no one wants to quit altogether, people need to make a living. The Great Reshuffle is more accurate. Although since it is something that is happening to workers all over the world, maybe The Great Attrition is the thing?

…and on it goes. Meanwhile, I’m still talking about ‘opting out’. 

What really is going on? What’s what?

I’m going to let you in on a secret. It’s actually all the same thing.

I started researching opting out in 2009. Yes, it’s that long ago. When I started, it was a debate that had been going on for a few years already, ever since that by now famous New York Times article The Opt-Out Revolution was published in 2003. And the truth is, although people were talking about a revolution, it really wasn’t that revolutionary at all. People have opted out to work on their own terms long before we knew to call it opting out. What was different in 2003 was that they were thought to be doing it in larger numbers than before. 

No one really knew, though, exactly how large the numbers were. No one was measuring how many people actually were leaving their jobs or careers to work on different terms. There were numbers on how may left the workforce altogether, but as I already mentioned, people do need to work, so not surprisingly those number weren’t very high at all, nor were they on the rise. 

But then COVID hit and suddenly everything became extreme. 

Companies started doing things they thought were impossible. Governments and organizations started cooperating in ways they had never dreamed of. Restaurants and entertainers fell on really hard times – harder than most of us can imagine. People actually slowed down enough to smell the coffee, except for healthcare worker of course who became the temporary heroes of the world (I say temporary because let’s face it, we have really short memories and now that things are somewhat under control I think most people have gone back to taking them for granted).

Things became extreme and people in the US started quitting their jobs in never before seen numbers. Hashtags like #quittingmyjob or #antiwork started circulating on social media. Terms were coined left and right to describe what was happening (see my first paragraph) and people started to feel a pressing need to measure what was really going on. And presto, now we have numbers:

About 40% of people are considering quitting their jobs and up to 70% (depending on what study you read) are dreaming of doing so. In addition, over 50% of the work force is burned out. These number are shockingly high!

But when you scratch the surface, it turns out that it’s always about the same thing: It’s about people. It’s about stress. It’s about feelings of insecurity. It’s about not having control over your life. It’s about exhaustion. It’s about lacking a sense of meaning. It’s about feeling that something has got to give. 

And all this is hugely important regardless of what we call it. 

There have always been people who have opted out. That isn’t new. But what is different now is the sheer magnitude of it. Up to 70% percent dream of doing it!

So yes, something has got to give.

I’ve written a book on women opting out, and another on men, and now it is high time to focus on what organizations need to do. 70% is not sustainable, organizations need to act and they need to do it now. We need work places people don’t dream of leaving, we need organizational cultures that make people want to stay. 

With that, I’m starting to work on my next book. I’m going to revive this blog (yes, it’s been relatively quiet here lately) and I’m going to use it to explore and discuss issues and aspects of my book. 

I hope you will follow me on this journey. In the meantime, I would love to hear from you. If you work somewhere where they are doing things right (anything, big or small), or if your workplace is a place you don’t long to leave, please tell me about it. 

What are they doing right and why is it good? You can email me at theoptingoutblog@gmail.com

If Finland is the happiest country in the world why do people long to opt out here too?

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I’m reading Anu Partanen’s book The Nordic Theory of Everything at the moment. It’s really an excellent read; I wish I had read it sooner. Partanen’s book so clearly explains the differences between life in Finland (or the Nordics) and the US and how these two very different social, political and cultural systems come together to create independent or not so independent individuals. 

Now, especially if you’re from the US, you may be guessing that the US system is the one that creates independent individuals, not the Nordic welfare state, but, perhaps surprisingly, it’s not. It’s the Nordic system that does that. 

One of Partanen’s messages is that the Nordic countries are most certainly not socialist, despite popular (American) belief, and that any Nordic person would balk at the idea. On the contrary, the Nordic model of social security and support allows individuals to be independent and to create good lives for themselves, instead of having them depend on for example parents, family members and employers just to be able to afford important, but basic, things like education, health care, day care etc. And yes, if you visit the Nordic countries, you will see that individualism actually does run strong throughout our cultures, for better or worse.

I strongly recommend the book, but that wasn’t actually the point of this blog post. What I want to talk about is how it is possible that opting out experiences can be so similar in both countries despite the differences that rank Finland at the top of so many lists* and the US much further down? How is it that people in a country like Finland long to opt out of their current jobs and lifestyles just as much as Americans do? 

Finland has recently, once again, been declared the world’s happiest country. It kind of makes you wonder, if this is the case, why is it that the opting out stories I have collected in Finland and the US are so remarkably similar? Why is it that people who live in a country with free education, free health care, more reasonable working hours, five weeks of legislated vacation time per year, long maternity leaves, paternity leaves, even longer parental leaves after which they are guaranteed their job back, high quality affordable day care etc. etc. etc., have very similar experiences to those who do not enjoy any of the above? 

How can it be that they also feel exhausted, they feel a lack of control over their lives, and they also have difficulties creating coherent life narratives? How can it be that they also reach a point when something’s got to give, or if not, at least long to leave their current way of living and working?

How come so many of the world’s happiest people don’t seem so happy?

Well, first I want to say, that no system or country is perfect. The happiest country in the world does not necessarily mean absolute happiness at all times. Finland is also ranked one of the most gender equal countries in the world, but that does not mean that the work here is done. Finland has not reached a state of perfect gender equality, nor will it any time soon at the rate we’re going.

I recently read that Finnish mothers are among the most stressed and exhausted in the world. The main problem is (in addition to the all-consuming motherhood ideal of today) that while Finland has among the highest percentage of women working fulltime, women also continue to be mainly responsible for childcare and household chores. While working life has become more equal, home life has been lagging behind, compared to Sweden for example. 

But one factor that has become glaringly obvious to me during all these years of researching opting out and having the privilege of hearing countless people’s opting out and in stories, is that regardless of any national differences, one common denominator is corporate cultures and ideals. They tend to be similar throughout the world thanks to globalization and global organizations, and they also tend to override local practices and sometimes even legislation. 

Let me give you an example. 

It happens, in Finland, that when a man wants to take some legislated paternity leave to get to know his child and to share the load with his partner, his employer may let him know that ‘it is simply not done in this company’. 

Research has also shown that men with low incomes are more likely to take time off to care for their children than are men in high-powered corporate positions. 

So what should we do? We need to work on changing work. We need to create corporate cultures that belong in the 21stcentury. 

* In addition to being ranked the happiest and one of the most gender equal societies, Finland is also considered one of the most stable, best-governed, least corrupt, and best-educated countries in the world.