Hello, Quartz at Work readers!
Feedback at work traditionally moves downward to employees: a more experienced teammate mentors a newer one; a leader lays out to their teams what went right and wrong last quarter; a manager writes their report’s performance review.
But what happens when feedback is flipped and delivered upwards from employees instead? That’s being tried out by an unlikely set of employees: American pro football players.
In the National Football League, the union representing NFL players is calling attention to their working conditions. Jacksonville’s locker rooms, for one, have a rat problem. Cincinnati’s are lacking power outlets. And according to the union, the subpar facilities keep linebackers, tight ends, and QBs from working (and playing) their best.
This spring, the group released team scorecards, which rate each team’s workplace based on feedback from the players. The goal: push team owners to improve the league’s working environment—and hold leaders just as accountable as players.
“We’re judged at every step,” Jalen Reeves-Maybin, a linebacker for the Detroit Lions, says in a new episode of Freakonomics that looks at what the scorecards have and haven’t accomplished. “I don’t think there’s ever really been a time where accountability has gone to the teams or the ownership of, ‘Hey, are you being excellent here? Where is your grade in this area?’ We are operating at the highest level possible—they demand excellence from us. And I think that we should be demanding excellence from the teams.”
The scorecards lend a lesson in workplace accountability, whether it includes a locker room or not. And there’s plenty else teams can learn from feedback that moves upwards.
MANAGING LIKE A MARKETPLACE
Plenty of people recognize this feeling: you sense you’re plateauing in your job. There’s no promotion in sight, and you don’t see any opportunities to learn something new or get better at what you do. It’s time, you decide, to start looking elsewhere.
For your company, that comes at a steep price: attrition can cost a median-sized organization hundreds of millions of dollars every year. That’s why savvy leaders, Quartz at Work’s Anna Oakes writes, poach talent within their company.
Poaching people doesn’t have to be taboo. It builds what’s known as an internal talent marketplace, or a company culture that helps the right people move to the right roles—and keeps people from feeling stalled-out in their careers. Oakes outlines four ways leaders (and managers) can start with their team.
AUTO WORKERS ARE PUSHING FOR FOUR DAYS
32: The number of hours auto employees want to make standard in the working week, a cut down from their current 40.
The United Auto Workers (UAW) began a historic strike last week against the Big Three—or Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis—with a list of conditions for better pay and benefits. Also on the agenda: a four-day work week.
While the four-day week has seen growing interest across offices around the world, the idea is still considered pretty radical. But the UAW is betting it’s more feasible than you might think.
In fact, the auto industry has slimmed down the working week before, thanks to Ford Motor founder Henry Ford. Back when working six days a week was the standard, Ford was an early adopter of the five-day, 40-hour week—and when he instituted it at his car plants in 1926, it helped make five days the new global norm.
So could striking auto workers slim it again? Quartz’s Julia Malleck looks at whether the UAW could hit the gas on the four-day week.
A NEW COUNCIL DIGS IN ON DEI
“[The goal is to] come up with coordinated, strategic approaches to the right-wing attacks that we’re seeing against marginalized communities, and specifically Black people all over this country.”
That’s from Alphonso David, president and CEO of the Global Black Economic Forum about the formation of a civil rights coalition to defend workplace diversity initiatives. And more than a dozen groups, including the NAACP, are linking up for the fight.
On the heels of the US Supreme Court striking down affirmative action in higher education, conservative groups have moved on to ram against diversity initiatives in another arena: corporate America. Now this new coalition is pushing back, with a plan to provide legal protection for workplace diversity, equity and inclusion (or DEI) programs.
Quartz reports on how they’ll counter a conservative crusade against workplace diversity—and how companies are responding to that crusade.
YOUR WEEKLY WORK HACK
One way to make your to-do list work for you? Put “take a break” on it. Sure, stacks of to-do lists can help us feel organized and on-track. But an obsession with listmaking can keep us from actually learning from our work–mostly because they incentivize us to clear out tasks and move on, rather than stopping to reflect on what we’ve learned from them.
Sure, it’s hard to quit the satisfying feeling of striking a line item off your list. But if you want to make all that effort actually productive, add one more task: take a break. Your brain chemistry will thank you.
QUARTZ AT WORK’S TOP STORIES
🗒 Hit your new goal by structuring it like a syllabus
💬 Instead of exit interviews, try stay interviews
🫂 How to really support employees during times of grief
🔢 Understanding these 4 work styles can help you reduce stress
🏈 What’s it like to work as a player in the NFL? The union’s team scorecard gives us a peek
YOU GOT THE MEMO
Send questions, comments, and tales of your own team-poaching to [email protected]. This edition of The Memo was written by Gabriela Riccardi.