Back in the days when people began studying how to improve companies, they recognized that managers could help their teams by spending a little more time outside of their own offices.

By walking around, visiting their employees, and having casual one-on-one chats, they could ideally learn how things were going and how employees were feeling. It was dubbed “Management by Walking Around,” or MBWA. Overall, if done well, it was an idea that worked by blending the two vital elements of 1) keeping the channels of communication open; and 2) supporting employees in getting their work done. 

But now that Covid has unleashed the work from home and the hot desk era, what happens when those employees are no longer on the premises? This worry became a focal point of fear when examining the post-2021 new normal. How can a manager manage when the workspace has become fractured and remote? For many managers, this is a surprising twist on the path to digital transformation. They feel as if they’re losing their team, the solidarity of the business, and the control they once enjoyed. Even worse, they feel that they’re losing their identity as managers. 

But in reality, it doesn’t have to be that way. The transformation is happening all the same because many employees have discovered that they prefer working from home — especially with the cost of the commute getting ever higher. If their job is based on using a computer and a phone, they’ve realized they no longer need to travel to an office to carry out their work.  

Managers will still be able to manage, though, and they might even find that their jobs become easier. They can practice “Management by Zooming Around” (MBZA) — even though it’s not about Zoom per se. Zoom is just the brand that currently represents video chat technology in general. MBZA enables managers and employees to still enjoy focused chats, whether spontaneous or scheduled, using video conferencing, while also conveying the body language, empathy, and confidentiality that would take place in an in-person setting.  

But MBZA still feels uncomfortable to managers who’ve become used to exerting their physical presence to establish the mood and structure of a team. Here are some standard pushbacks that management presents in their arguments against the hybrid workspace, along with the reality surrounding each. 

Management argument #1: Removes opportunities for spontaneous conversation.  

Reality: The next generation of collaboration technologies are already here. They replace the Zoom grid style with an environment in which people can exist all day without looking like cartoons. This informal in-office dynamic means spontaneous conversations are just as possible in the new virtual workspace. 

Management argument #2: People can only focus on work when they’re at the workplace.  

Reality: Many people are discovering that they can focus at home, even with children and pets around, and are consequently joining the ranks of those who’ve already been working from home productively for years. What’s more, the workplace has seldom been a place of focus, with interruptions and meetings happening daily. Most at-work employees discovered they could only get focus time if they hid somewhere else, like an empty conference room or a coffee shop. That says a lot about the actual impractical nature of an office. 

Management argument #3: If my employees are working from home, I can’t see what they’re doing.  

Reality: That’s true. But why would you need to? The goal is for an employee to get work done. Managers who have embraced the work-from-home approach are unanimous in their endorsement of letting team members work when and how they want so long as the work gets done. Work should be outcome based, not face-time based. 

Management argument #4: Employees will slack off and avoid work if I can’t oversee them.  

Reality: Managers who feel this way have a bigger problem on their hands than employee productivity. If there’s no trust in a manager-employee relationship, the good employees will simply leave. The work-from-home scenario is in fact a place where trust is established and reinforced. 

Management argument #5: Coordinating distributed groups is too complicated.  

Reality: No, it’s simply different. Distributed teams enjoy success when the meetings are immersive, sharing the same virtual space where they can all see each other. They also work best when everyone is remote, regardless of where they’re logging in from, including those who log in from the office. 

It’s often difficult for people to move into new, unknown territory. To resist this, they hang on to the old ways for dear life. But history is littered with the grave markers of companies that refused to pivot, even when the marketplace offered them the opportunity. Hopefully, managers will perceive through experience and experimentation that there’s actually more to be gained from MBZA than they could have ever imagined. 

In just a matter of months, an existentially fueled, record-breaking surge in quitting has turned the U.S. job market on its head, resulting in talent shortages, positions remaining open for weeks and months, and job applicants and new hires ghosting employers.

It’s an alarming trend for business leaders, many of whom have been left reeling as more and more employees drop like flies, with no skilled workers available to take their place. As a result, processes break down, things fall through the cracks, and without enough qualified staff, some businesses may even come to a complete standstill.

But with the Great Resignation showing no signs of slowing down, the time for exasperation and hand wringing is over. Instead, for those at the helm of organizations strained to the breaking point, it’s time to proactively address the situation with a new approach to staffing needs. 

Solving Talent Shortages With Radical Growth

For most business leaders, there is little to no effort put into investing in the growth of lower-skilled workers. Many look externally to fill critical positions instead of promoting internally or promote people based on how well they can handle a job without any training versus how fast they can learn and grow—both of which mean your talent options are even slimmer, not wider.

However, when faced with a significant shortage of options and critical roles to fill, there are essentially two real choices: internally promoting less qualified employees or filling these spots with lower-skilled external applicants. Leaders who successfully overcome the current talent shortage will shift their focus from desperately seeking qualified candidates to teaching their remaining and new employees the exact skills and behaviors of a high performer, leaving them with far more options and a much broader pool of recruits.

Odds are, this suggestion leaves you cold—where would you even start? So how do you know what skills and habits will get your lower-performing employees and new hires up to speed and fast? Here are four tactics for defining exactly what it takes to achieve high performance in your organization to position the workforce you have for success.

Tactic #1: Examine the differences between your top performers and other employees

When you think about your top performers being replaced by lower-skilled workers in your organization, what are the visible differences in behaviors and skillsets you notice between them? 

1. First, look ahead six months and imagine you’re losing your four best employees. 

2. Then list the specific behaviors and skillsets you value most from these team members you’re losing (e.g., they find solutions instead of complaining, they go above and beyond their job descriptions).

3. Finally, think of employees left behind in your organization who may need to be unnaturally promoted and list all the reasons they’re not ready for the job. (e.g., they lack detail-orientation, they never ask for help when they need it).

What continually comes up? This will give you a list of technical skill sets and dispositions, and habits to train for.

Tactic #2: Draw from your own leadership skill sets and behaviors

Think of what makes you most effective as a leader and how these behaviors or skills could translate to your team. Here’s a brief exercise to help you think it through:

1. Imagine you’re taking a leave of absence for a few months. 

2. Upon your return, things in your organization were not only maintained but dramatically improved. In this scenario, what actions—of yours and others on your team—must have occurred to make this a reality?

3. Or, if things completely fell apart in your absence, what aspects of your leadership were sorely missing that contributed to this? 

You don’t have to look much further than yourself and the top performers in your organization to determine what makes people great in these roles. 

Tactic #3: Mine your organization’s performance evaluations for patterns

Review your most recent performance evaluations and make a list of all the areas where people needed improvement, such as better collaboration, communication, organization, or even promptness.

1. Look for the top five overall patterns across these areas.

2. Next, think of individuals in your organization who are the very best at each of these skills or behaviors. Who on your team has never once received these as a corrective action on their performance evaluations?

3. Schedule a one-on-one meeting with each person and ask them to speak for three minutes about their strengths while you record them. Prompt them to begin with the sentence, “The reason/The way I do this so well is…” and let them explain it to you in their own words.

Before three minutes is up, you will have a list of two to five steps that anyone can follow to learn the skills and behaviors of your top performers. These will become the lessons you use in training.

The bottom line is, if we regard what we do as distinct and high quality, we are by definition saying it’s worth teaching and worth learning how to do it well. The most successful leaders will respond to this moment by encouraging radical growth in lower-skilled employees to help solve talent shortages and make a permanent impact on organizational performance.

Krill Design in Milan, Italy, has created a 3D-printed lamp made from Sicilian orange peels.

At the end of its life, you can add it to your compost and put it back to work helping new plants to thrive. The lamp is called Ohmie, and the manufacturing process involves drying and grinding up orange peels, then mixing them with a vegetable-based polymer. This gives the lamps an orange-like texture and scent that helps keep rooms smelling fresh. One lamp uses the peels of 23 oranges, all sourced from a single family farm in Sicily.

“Ohmie is special because it merges technology, design, and sustainability all in one single object,” says Krill Design cofounder and R&D director Yack H. Di Maio. “We don’t just want to make a change in design. We want to make this change beautiful and meaningful. The lamp is a revolutionary and innovative product that marks a clear step toward a future where reclaimed materials are the norm, and the line between design and eco-design is erased,” he explains.

Krill Design also takes the scraps leftover from squeezing orange juice to make trays, drinks, coolers, and sachet holders for restaurants. More than 1.3 billion tons of food is thrown away globally each year, and circular design, such as the Ohmie lamp, is one way to help tackle this problem. What useful item could you make out of food waste?

I’m going to say something that might sound a little controversial, but I’ll explain what I mean after I say it. I’m so tired of hearing the exact phrase repeated over and over again by every leader and employee in the customer service space: ‘The customer is always right.’

Now hear me out. Your customers should always be at the center of your customer service efforts, but I believe ‘the customer is always right’ is bad advice. I’m sure Harry Gordon Selfridge, the person who coined the phrase in 1909, had good intentions when he came up with it, but a century of misuse has tainted its meaning and turned it into a catalyst for sabotage for both employees and customers.

Leaders often use it as a mechanism that opens up their employees to verbal and emotional abuse from customers, and employees now associate this phrase with a toxic, unsupportive workplace. It also gives abrasive customers an unfair advantage over your business when let’s face it; the customer might not always be right. And all of this ends up having the opposite effect: subpar customer service.

There is nothing more critical to a company’s success than its customer service efforts, which is why we need to stop building our outreach on the back of ‘the customer is always right.’ For leaders who have relied on this model for far too long, I have a few suggestions for how to reexamine your customer service so that you can influence even stronger relationships between your customers and your employees/brand.

1. Don’t give your customers what they want. Give them what they need

Most brands think they know what their customers want, but this differs from what your customers actually need. Take my industry, for example. As a marketing executive at Spotify, it would make sense for me to surmise that my customers want an easy, affordable way to listen to any artist they want, whenever they want. While this isn’t necessarily wrong, it’s not what they need.

If we only made Spotify convenient and affordable with endless listening options and stopped there, we’d appease customers in the short term, but we’d eventually lose them to other music streaming platforms. Instead, our customers need a hyper-personalized listening experience — playlists and podcasts that are curated for every one of our users.

As a result, our customer service efforts bleed into our bigger company initiatives. We rely on innovations like machine learning, audio analysis, and artificial intelligence to hyper-personalize our features. Additionally, to meet the needs of all of our customers worldwide, we must also fulfill our dedication to a more inclusive organization. This has inspired global initiatives like Frequency, ensuring Black creators remain at the forefront of our platform.

Customer service must be more meaningful than throwing a few bones to your customers to keep them happy. Instead, it’s about transformative efforts that show customers you’re listening to their needs and how your business can continue to impact their lives in a significant way.

2. Create an ongoing dialogue

When some companies talk to their employees about customer service, they frame it as their ability to handle one-off inquiries in a positive, professional manner. Responsiveness is vital, especially on social media, but customer engagement shouldn’t be reactive; it should be proactive. This means opening up dialogue to build a community around your brand.

Our employees use our social media platforms, our message boards, and our website to engage with customers as much as possible, and we do it in our own signature style. It’s not only about ensuring we are accessible at all times to offer quick, helpful guidance to our customers; it’s also about individualizing our outreach. And one way we do this is by leveraging what we know: curated playlists. There was one instance, for example, where one of our customers gave us a kind review, and to thank them for their kind words, one of our team members created a playlist that they made just for them. 

Does this take more effort on our end? Of course. But isn’t that the point? We rely on technology to help make our lives more convenient, and it does, but there are some instances where the human touch makes more sense than an automated message — like when talking to your customers. When we take a creative approach to our outreach efforts, we build a community rather than just responding to a customer when they want us to address a question or concern. And this is what turns people into loyal customers and then into brand ambassadors. 

As a brand, you will be judged by your customer service. Stop punishing employees with the mantra that ‘the customer is always right’ because this serves no one in the end. Customer service isn’t as black and white as this. When we think of how we can meaningfully and intentionally do what’s best for our customers, we can drive the kind of customer engagement that keeps everyone happy.

Most startups need a business plan because they depend on venture capital funds or banks for financing.

Understandably, pitching a business idea to potential investors typically requires a business plan. But how decisive are business plans in determining the success of an entrepreneur? It’s a good question and one that by no means only applies to startups.

“Sometimes You’ll Have To ‘Zig’ When The Blueprint Says ‘Zag.’”

In his autobiography, Michael Bloomberg, No. 9 on the Forbes list of the richest people in the world with assets of $55 billion, details the earliest days of his company. One of his key insights is that rigid planning can do more harm than good: “You’ll inevitably face problems different from the ones you anticipated. Sometimes you’ll have to ‘zig’ when the blueprint says ‘zag.’ You don’t want a detailed, inflexible plan getting in the way when you have to respond instantly.” While his competitors were still busy trying to come up with the perfect final design, he was already working on the fifth version of his prototype. “It gets back to planning versus acting. We act from day one; others plan how to plan—for months.” Bloomberg stressed that making forecasts about new business ideas is mostly a useless and meaningless task. “The noise in the assumptions you have to make is so great, and the knowledge you have of strange areas so limited that all the detailed analysis is usually irrelevant.”

“If You Plan, You Lose. If You Don’t Plan, You Win.”

The Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma is just as skeptical as Bloomberg when it comes to rigid business plans. Worth $34.6 billion, the founder of Alibaba is now the richest man in China. When he was trying to get his business off the ground, he approached venture capitalists in Silicon Valley to raise money. The investors he met expected him to present a fully developed business plan. But, much like Bloomberg, Jack Ma did not have a business plan. His motto was: “If you plan, you lose. If you don’t plan, you win.”

But from the outset, he thought big and set very ambitious goals. Shortly after he founded his company, he told a journalist: “We don’t want to be number one in China. We want to be number one in the world.” He was so convinced of his future success that he even had a meeting filmed in his modest apartment in February 1999—as a document for the company’s later history. During the small meeting, he posed the following question: “In the next five or ten years, what will Alibaba become?” Answering his own question, he said, “our competitors are not in China but in Silicon Valley… We should position Alibaba as an international website.”

Google’s Founders Started Without A Business Plan

Larry Page and Sergej Brin, worth $50.8 and $49.0 billion, are ranked No. 10 and No. 14 on the Forbes list of the richest people in the world. They also have some things in common with Michael Bloomberg and Jack Ma. They didn’t have a fully fleshed-out business plan when they started, and they changed their business model again and again. The two creators of Google, both born in 1973, had a bright idea—they wanted to build the best search engine in the world. According to the book, The Google Story, “Neither of the guys had a clear idea of how the company would make money, though it seemed to them that if they had the best search engine, others would want to use it in their organizations.”

Pivoting

Are all of these examples just exceptions? Just how important are business plans? A 2010 scientific study compared the growth of more than 11,000 companies. The study found that planning improved business performance. However, the study also demonstrated that this applies more to established companies than startups. And the researchers stressed that for any business plan, setting goals and being willing to change the business model is more important than trying to predict business developments in detail.

An important concept in terms of understanding the success of many startup companies in Silicon Valley is “pivoting.” This involves being prepared to radically change the original business model at a moment’s notice. The goal is not to implement an original concept and prove how good the initial plan was. The goal is to establish a strong market position. If that means abandoning the plan and giving the company a completely new and different direction, then it’s time to pivot.

Career coaching scares most leaders. It conjures up images of employees flowing out the doors to the competition. This is flawed thinking. Your employees care about their careers. The fact that they are already working for you does not diminish the profound level of concern talent has about growing, learning, and succeeding.

As you read this, you face a talent shortage and high turnover. People are quitting their jobs at a historically unprecedented rate. Additionally, 60% of middle-income Americans are considering making a career change (source: Harris Poll-Fast Company Magazine). This tsunami of movement in the labor market requires a savvy leadership response. One that is:

• Highly personalized and customized to each individual employee.
• Brave and transparent, giving employees honest, ongoing feedback.
• Utilizes a career assessment that allows employees to author their future.
• Bases the career coaching process on a transitional model that guides healthy career development.
• Allows employees to grow at an accelerated rate if they have met their goals and earned the right to advance (regardless of their age or years of experience).
• Coaches’ employees out of the organization if their talent and dreams will flourish elsewhere.

Unfortunately, there are some obstacles you will face if you move in this direction. Here are a few:

Hurdle One: Fear they Will Leave

For years and years, managers have focused on performance in the service of the organizational mission. They avoid discussing careers or career development because, as I said before, they think career coaching will lead to unwanted turnover.

Research consistently finds that employees are vested in staying and succeeding in your organization. They leave because their needs are not getting met, or your competition is doing a better job attracting talent. There are a few random job hoppers out there but, for the most part, your talent does not want to leave. Focus on giving them more reasons to stay.

Hurdle Two: Internal Competition

How many of your managers and supervisors truly want their employees to shine and reach their full potential? If you are honest, it’s a short list. No matter how much leadership training and business coaching you have offered, leaders use their power to propel their own career forward. They do not see their people as the first priority. Rewarding your leaders for amazing career development, and giving them career development tools, will begin to shift this toxic dynamic.

Hurdle Three: Retribution or Career Damage

Talent does not tell you the truth about their career-related concerns or aspirations because the price paid can be devastating. If they open up to their boss about their career dreams, they might be blocked or punished for wanting too much or not falling in line with productivity goals. If they go to Human Resources, they might be labeled as a trouble-maker.

Making it safe to be honest is hard. Your top management team will need to model the way, demonstrating (in a very public way) that individual career development matters. Decisions made to support talent growth at the senior level will give your workforce the confidence to tell the truth about their goals.

Hurdle Four: Old-School Recruiting

If your recruiting team fills orders with little management involvement or attention to longer-term organizational objectives, you are falling behind. Explore establishing a talent acquisition partnering program. Integrate career coaching questions in the interviewing process to determine how well the candidate knows themselves and how well they fit into the strategic objectives for the position. Make everyone in your organization part of the hiring team to bring on the very best people you can find.

The final step is consistency. Just bringing up the career conversation once or twice a year will not protect you from a talent drain. All managers and supervisors at every level should be trained to deliver career coaching, or contracted career coaches need to be made available. This highly personalized strategy will make your organization stand out as the employer of choice who goes the extra mile for their people.

Do you have what it takes to own a business? Your first answer might be that it depends on the market, but that’s only part of the story. So is thinking it depends on your product. The bottom line is it depends on you.

We tend to hear more about business successes than failures. Although this year, given the pandemic and its economic impacts, we’ve seen plenty of failures, most people still believe that if they want to be a successful business owner, they can. But if you don’t focus on your own drive, abilities, and tolerance for stress and uncertainty, you’re missing a key part of the equation. And if you start a business without really finding out if you should, you’re making a grave mistake.

Say you’ve got a great idea. You’ve got a niche service. You’ve done the research, and there’s space for you to grow a company. Before you start looking for a storefront, look in the mirror by asking yourself these eight simple but vital questions.

1. Can I listen?

Business owners must process a vast amount of verbal communication. They need to be good at listening, adept at assimilating and filtering, and doing it fast — so all communication, from employees to customers to your advisers, needs to result in a positive outcome for your business.

2. Can I lead?

Unless you’re planning on opening a shoeshine stand or a one-person consultancy, you need to be able to lead and motivate people. You’ll get the most value from your employees if they know you value them — and you may need to occasionally swap hopes and aspirations over coffee with your employees to really understand their needs. Once you understand their needs, you can better motivate them, which will in turn help you achieve your own dream. It’s an excellent trade-off.

3. Can I sell?

This question often hits a nerve. Very few products sell themselves. Generally, a business must convince a customer that have a need, and more importantly, that this product meets their need — and delivers the best possible value. If that’s actually true, it’s simply a matter of being interesting enough that the customer is willing to continue a conversation long enough for you to establish these three truths. That’s about being persuasive. If you have any doubt about your ability to persuade, ask your partner what they think. It’s likely you did some sort of sales job on him or her at some very critical juncture. Were you successful?

4. Am I competitive?

To be a good business owner, you must enjoy doing whatever it takes to overcome all your business supremacy challenges. You must be motivated by a burning desire to do these things better than your competition — and realize that few products or services are so unique that your customer can’t get something comparable elsewhere. You must have the need to not only please your customer, but to do it so well you’re beating your competition senseless. How do you know? Check your financial statements — they’re your scoreboard in this game. If you see profits, be ready to reinvest them right back into the business, or you won’t continue winning. That’s what most successful entrepreneurs I’ve dealt with do. They don’t necessarily make money so they can spend it.

5. Am I a hard worker?

Owning your own business is entering into a highly consumptive relationship, so be honest with yourself. Don’t start a business to support your golf habit. You can do that a lot easier with a high-paying job. Business ownership is the wrong avenue if your quest is simply more personal resources. Your own business must be more than just a means to an end. It’s everything — and must be a passion.

6. Am I a risk-taker?

This isn’t a matter of leaving your umbrella at home when there’s rain in the forecast. All growth comes from taking risks and executing at the highest possible level. You’ve also got to be willing to wildcat; dry holes are necessary to find the gusher. If the thought of zero return on your time and money over what could be protracted intervals is too daunting, stay put.

7. Do I have a skill that adds significant value to this market?

Successful business owners are either the best player at a critical position or the second-best player at several positions. You need to have outstanding technical skills if you’re considering a technical business; impeccable sales skills — and the desire to use them consistently and frequently — if you’re considering a sales-driven business. It’s very difficult to drive a business with only strong administrative skills. The only exception may be a franchise, which has an extremely process-driven approach. In my experience, “right-sized” former executives of process-driven public companies are often successful franchisees. In essence, a franchisor turns the operation of a business into a job with clearly defined dos and don’ts included in its recipe for success.

8. Do I have a clear goal for my business?

This last question may be the most critical: the point of your business must be much more than to escape from your current job. To create a business with real value, you need to set out to create and operate a real value business. For a business to be a true asset, it must consistently turn a significant profit after paying you a fair salary. Otherwise, it’s little more than what I call “an incorporated job.” And moving a business from the status of an incorporated job to an asset requires a series of very purposeful, difficult, and risky acts. An uncommitted owner will inevitably fail to execute these acts if they don’t make asset creation a business goal from the start.

I’ve had tough conversations with clients who were dead set on starting their own businesses, just because they had an affinity for a certain product or service. However, if they know deep down they don’t want to engage in the complicated process of value creation, then starting a business means they will endure significant pain, take on outsized risks, and work harder than any employee without achieving a commensurate reward. But if you are willing to work harder and smarter than ever before towards that goal of value creation, that is certainly laudable.

As the incoming CTO at education technology company Curriculum Associates, a major factor in my decision to work for the company was the authenticity of its mission. This commitment to social impact has kept me motivated, engaged, and driven to continue making a true difference in people’s lives.

Looking for a purposeful job in tech? Here are few ideas to focus on that I’ve picked up after years of working in and hiring for a mission-driven organization:

What are the Company and Employees Excited About?

Before you schedule any interviews, do some digging into the company, its background, and culture. Suppose a company is truly mission-focused and puts people over profit. In that case, it will shine through in the language on its website, social media channels, and other communications like company newsletters and press releases. Even if you’ve heard good things about a company, taking the time to do this so you can form your own initial opinion going into the interview is crucial. In your interview, be sure to ask any questions you may have based on your research. How do your interviewers respond? Do they seem truly happy, driven by the company’s mission and values, and excited to work there? Do they find purpose in their jobs? Is there pride in the impact to users along with pride in the product itself? There’s a lot you can learn from simply observing how they respond to your questions. On the flip side, the questions they ask you are just as important. Suppose they’re equally focused on your fit and interest in the mission as they are on your hard skills. In that case, there’s a good chance they genuinely make corporate social responsibility (CSR) a priority at their company.

How are Employees Treated?

A truly mission-focused company values its employees, supporting them and ensuring they are satisfied and fulfilling the greater purpose they seek in their workplace. While researching to determine if a company has competitive benefits and good professional development opportunities before your interview is wise, it’s also important to ask your interviewers some targeted questions to uncover what life is like is really like at the company. Ask about topics like the company’s work/life balance, volunteering opportunities, and CSR initiatives that the company has implemented. Be sure to inquire about how the company measures and nurtures employee satisfaction. This will help shed more light on the working conditions of people who are actually employed at the company.

Does the Company’s Focus on Mission Extend to Its Products?

A company treating its employees well and prioritizing purpose is great for internal communications, but if you’re looking for a truly mission-focused environment, do some research into the company’s products as well. Companies with a deep dedication to mission are more likely to measure a product’s market reach, revenue, or customer acquisition and how those products positively benefit consumers and, as a result, further the company mission. Consider asking your interviewer about top company priorities for the year or quarter, listening carefully to how the work and its impact are described. Also, when speaking with members of the tech team, ask if they get opportunities to have first-hand access to the people their work helps. This is an especially crucial component because it fosters a connection with the technology work and the real faces and voices of those they reach and demonstrates the company’s true commitment to social impact.

What is the Turnover Rate?

Technology workers typically remain at a company for roughly two years, but mission-driven companies can often retain their employees much longer. When you speak with HR, ask them what the company’s turnover rate is, both generally and for tech employees specifically. In addition, if you talk with the engineering team, be sure to ask how long they have worked there, what drew them to the company, and what has kept them there. Listen for answers that highlight how the meaning and impact of the work are a big factor.

How Did They Handle the Pandemic?

As we move past the COVID-19 crisis, asking about the company’s COVID-19 response is a great way to determine a company’s true character and how they handled an extremely difficult situation. How did companies step up and support employees during the pandemic? Did they recognize their changing responsibilities, such as working from home while their children were also trying to learn from home, and make efforts to help them succeed? Is it mandatory for all employees to be back in the office now, or is the company giving them more freedom of choice on working style? On the product side, did the company shift resources to prioritize products essential to their customers, even if they risked revenue decreases? These are a few important questions to ask as you’re making your decision.

Determining if a company is actually mission-focused takes effort, but it is crucial to do your research if it is important to you. Taking the time to ask the above questions will ensure you are making an informed, educated decision on your next position to help you land a role that leaves you feeling fulfilled, supported, and motivated by the higher purpose of the company you choose.

The fleet of de-icing vehicles at Munich Airport has received powerful and environmentally friendly support. Recently, an all-electric “Elephant e-BETA” from Danish manufacturer Vestergaard has been used for de-icing aircraft.

According to the manufacturer, the “Elephant e-BETA” is the first electric de-icing vehicle. The spray arms and nozzles driven by electric motors perform the de-icing of aircraft silently and effectively and the heart of the vehicle is a large lithium-ion battery power pack that enables the electric de-icing of around 10 to 15 aircraft. The battery allows the de-icing vehicle to complete around two to three hours of operation without recharging.

The vehicle still drives to the de-icing areas with a conventional diesel engine, but at the aircraft site itself, the engine is switched off, and the all-electric de-icing begins. Elephants are known to have great endurance and exceptional sensitivity, and the Danish manufacturer adopted the Elephant e-BETA name to demonstrate that these attributes of nature can be applied to technology and machines that perform important jobs, while reducing environmental footprints.

Compared with conventional de-icing vehicles, the electric version can avoid up to 87% of the CO2 emissions caused by traditional vehicles. The vehicle is the latest initiative to be added to Munich Airport’s climate strategy, which envisages the airport operating in a CO2-neutral manner by 2030.