One company's story in trying to solve their retention problem. For them, the solution to keeping people from leaving was to embrace reality and support those leaving. Also, this kind of tactic has massive implications on your employer brand.

Pop quiz: what’s the one thing that adds authenticity to your brand claims? When actual employers align to those claims. Even more so when they can internalize those ideas and even talk about the less-attractive aspects of the brand (all traits have good and bad features, and every strength becomes a weakness if taken too far). Charlotte Marshal breaks it down.

Oof. When HBR is arguing against “talent management optimization,” you gotta ask: why aren’t we treating each and every employee like an artist? How is it that Taylorism is still alive and well?

According to Gallup's most recent data, employee engagement is at an all-time high. Huh?

Long-time readers of this newsletter will know about my love/hate relationship I have with HBR. When they aren’t mis-representing what EB is, or clinging to a fairly outmoded sense of who is in charge of an individual’s career, they occasionally drop an article like this one around how “feel good” messages don’t always motivate your employees. Personally, I would have re-written around how not all employees respond to feel-good messages (or any one kind of message, frankly), but good for them to at least consider that employees aren’t interchangeable cogs…