Chapter Ten: The Great Reevaluation

This time of year, people tend to become reflective about what they accomplished in the previous year and what they hope to accomplish in the next. With a new year looming ahead, people are sharing their goals and resolutions for what life might look like in the future. Another topic of widespread discussion around the country has been what is referred to as The Great Resignation, or the drastic changes in the American workforce that have seemingly left employers without laborers.

For nearly two years, the world has been reconciling our typical way of life with the harsh realities forced upon us by the COVID-19 pandemic. So many changes have taken place that are overwhelming to consider, both in our daily lives and in our long-term planning. It’s only natural that this had led to what we at Noteworthy Communications instead refer to as The Great Reevaluation, because these reckonings brought on by the pandemic go far beyond the workforce, rather affecting every aspect of our lives and the changes we want to make for improvement.

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Looking Back

What is often left out of discussions about hiring and employee retention is that most people aren't just up and quitting their jobs with no plan on how they are going to provide for themselves. They aren't leaving jobs to languish on the couch and watch television all day, as plenty of abandoned employers might want us to believe. Most people are finding better opportunities elsewhere or have even created their own opportunities where none previously existed. There are countless reasons why employers might be losing workers. Over the past two years, the death count and the retirement count across the entire workforce were above average due to the pandemic, not to mention those that used the pandemic to go back to school or switch careers altogether.

A business is not entitled to employees. Staff must be enticed to join a company and they must continually be enticed to stay. If a certain business is having drastic retention difficulties, perhaps the answer lies with them. Making broad claims that everyone is lazy and no one wants to work anymore is an easy out, but ultimately false and useless. Maybe people just don't want to work under poor leadership or in a toxic environment anymore. Writing people off as lazy won't solve any of the issues at the heart of this problem, but could result in even further loss of skilled workers.

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Looking Ahead

When people are given time to evaluate their priorities and how they may or not align with their reality, they will make the changes necessary to realign their lives to reflect those priorities. So many of us had become accustomed to being unhappy or unfulfilled because our time was accounted for and our ends were meeting. The daily grind had worn us down so much so that only the ramifications of a global pandemic could make us pause long enough to reevaluate our circumstances.

The pandemic has a way of highlighting the worst that our society has to offer, on the individual level and within our longstanding societal and governmental systems. When we evaluate how this affects our physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing and the direction our lives are taking because of it, why would anyone want to lean into that negativity? If employees do not feel valued by their employers, either in their paycheck or in their overall treatment, the natural next step is to make a plan to make a change.

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Here and Now

If we must spend a certain amount of time every day, which adds up to years of our lives, away from our loved ones in service of someone else's bottom line, demanding more in terms of compensation, work-life balance, and overall workplace culture should not even be a question. As an example, if employees don't feel protected by their employers when working with the public during a global pandemic, of course they will find other employers who will make their safety a top priority.

Those who choose to embrace this reevaluation can become excited by the opportunities and the changes ahead, and even feel a sense of empowerment at the various news roads before them. Those who cross their arms, dig in their heels, and demand for things to get back to normal will forever be disappointed. There is no going back, only forward.

As previously discussed in Chapter Nine: Disconnect to Reconnect, taking a break from online spaces can be beneficial to our mental health. Similarly, choosing to remove oneself from real-world negative spaces can do wonders for a person’s overall wellbeing. If an employee dreads going to sleep at night because they know they’re going to have to wake up in the morning only to go to a toxic work environment with poor leadership, soon enough that employee will face their own Great Reevaluation, and they might just realize that their values are not being met.

The world has been irrevocably transformed and so have our priorities. Noteworthy Communications itself was born as a direct result of The Great Reevaluation, as have many other small businesses and creative ventures. There is a liberation in deciding to choose yourself, invest in yourself, and leave behind that which does not value or uplift you. The Great Reevaluation has arrived, and it has been a long time coming.

Chapter Nine: Disconnect to Reconnect

Modern technology and the rise of social media have changed our world forever, as well as how we all interact within that world. In so many ways, we have never been more connected. In many other ways, we have never been more disconnected. While there are undeniable benefits to using social media and incorporating certain platforms into our lives, we also have been made increasingly aware of the potential dangers of too much indulgence.

As with everything in life, balance is key for health and happiness, and this philosophy also rings true in regard to social media. Making the conscious choice to temporarily disconnect from these virtual platforms could be considered a form of healing and rest for a person who has developed an unhealthy attachment to social media. By disconnecting, for however short a time, from our virtual lives, we are forced to reconnect with ourselves and our flesh and blood lives in even more meaningful ways. We cannot afford to wait for media conglomerates to make positive changes to their platforms to improve our relationship with social media. It is up to us to decide when we need to disconnect in order to reconnect.

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Why Do We Use Social Platforms?

The reasons to participate in social media are numerous. Businesses can find great success in marketing their services or products to a wider audience. We can stay in touch with people who we cannot see regularly due to long distances or even just busy schedules. People have also had success in finding various support groups through social media. We can stay up to date on news and entertainment, or maybe just unwind with fun games or quizzes. A good meme also makes us laugh out loud every now and then.

Before we make any moves to disconnect from social media, it’s important to understand why we choose to engage with social media at all. Furthermore, we have to question why we use the specific social media platforms that we use. If we don’t understand the why before we make the change, we may never realize when we need to disconnect at all.

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How Do We Feel Using Social Platforms?

There have been multiple studies and findings about the negative effects of social media on mental health. This can occur due to increased opportunities for bullying, constant comparisons between our achievements and the milestones achieved by others, and warped perceptions of beauty, which can be altered with countless filters and photography tricks to give false impressions. Social media has also been proven to negatively affect our physical health, with instances of sleep deprivation skyrocketing and eye strain appearing in younger people than used to be typical.

Self-monitoring how we feel mentally and physically while engaging with social media is a crucial step in understanding what we could potentially gain by taking a break from the platforms. By choosing to disconnect, we allow ourselves the chance to refresh and recalibrate, getting back in touch with our own minds and bodies to discover what we need in order to feel healthy and balanced.

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Who Are We Outside Social Platforms?

By disconnecting from social media platforms, our minds are free to focus on our true selves, rather than a curated and artificial world behind glowing screens. We can remember who we are in the real world. We can reconnect with our honest thoughts, instead of amplifying our echo chambers. We can rediscover our values outside of algorithms designed to target all aspects of our lives.

By temporarily disengaging from social media, we rid ourselves of the distractions that take up so much of our time and we turn off the potentially negative spaces that can affect us subconsciously throughout the day and night. Social media can be addicting, so taking regular breaks to reconnect with other aspects of our lives might just strike the ideal balance we all need.

As previously discussed in Chapter Eight: The Megaphone Metaphor, we all possess our own platforms, both online and off, to share whatever we believe to be important. By disconnecting from social media, we give ourselves the time and space to reevaluate how we are using our megaphones and our social media presence, as well as what kind of impact we are making in the world and within our own consciousness.

Just because an individual may be ready to disconnect from social media doesn’t mean a company can afford to vanish from their platforms. At Noteworthy Communications, we take the responsibility of putting together a personalized social media package for local companies specifically so their focus can go to other priorities. Planning ahead with Noteworthy Communications allows business teams to disconnect so they are free to reconnect with what makes their business thrive in the first place.

Chapter Eight: The Megaphone Metaphor

We all have our own megaphone, which is to say, we all have a platform we use to share our thoughts, opinions, values, and important updates. We do this consciously and subconsciously. Websites, blogs, and social media accounts all serve as amplifications of our individual megaphones, in addition to our daily interactions offline.

We use our megaphones when we want to be heard, when we feel we have something of value to share with the world. However, if we do not wield our megaphones wisely, it can all just come out as noise. At Noteworthy Communications, we make it our mission to turn that noise into a cohesive story that keeps an audience enthralled. Every person and every business has a megaphone, but how we choose to use them can make all the difference in whether our message is truly heard or not.

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Amplify

Some people have louder megaphones than others and have the power to reach more people than the average person. There is a great responsibility in this, because what we say can cause ripple effects, both positive and negative. If we want to contribute to a conversation in a positive way, finding the right approach is half the battle. As a society, we have adapted to a continuous flow of content. We have twenty-four-hour news cycles and bingeable streaming services, so the competition for an audience's attention has never been steeper.

We have to utilize the megaphone that makes the most sense for ourselves and our business. A blog has a different impact than a YouTube channel. Publishing information through the press reaches a different audience than a targeted email campaign. Every entrepreneur needs to find the channels of communication that will amplify their individual message, their niche, in an otherwise crowded consumer market.

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De-Amplify

Sharing our particular expertise is how current and potential customers learn to trust our services. That is what our megaphones are for, and we should use them proudly. However, we all must learn how to tune our megaphones with intention. If someone were constantly screaming in our ears, we would find a way to tune them out so we could find a little peace. When consumers become inundated with constant updates or irrelevant content, they can easily choose to silence the noise with a push of a button. Unsubscribe. Unfollow. Block.

Our megaphones, as valuable as they are, hold a potential trap. We could dilute our own power by not carefully considering what we are choosing to say with that power. Oversharing, sharing low-quality or irrelevant content, or crossing boundaries between sharing personal content and professional content can all have the opposite result of our intention--accidental de-amplification. Before we use our megaphones, we must ask ourselves, does this specific content really need to be amplified and is my megaphone the best method to do that? If the content does not serve the higher purpose of our brand or business, our megaphones should reflect that.

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Listen

Sometimes choosing to mute our own megaphones in favor of hearing someone else's is the best thing we can do for our overall message. There is value in just listening and absorbing the point of view of others. With all that is going on in the world, it is impossible for any one of us to have the answers to everything. There is absolutely nothing wrong with admitting when we are not educated enough on a specific topic to voice an opinion. In fact, there is value in that honesty, especially when reactionary hot takes are a dime a dozen. The alternative is sharing a misguided opinion that we could regret putting our name to later. The internet never forgets, after all.

As entrepreneurs, sometimes our credibility is all we have. When we spread misinformation, even accidently, we forfeit that credibility. This is not censorship, or cancel culture, or political correctness, but rather the responsibility that comes with employing our megaphones. Seeking out education and choosing to reflect before we speak can make our megaphones that much more powerful. Thinking critically and searching outside of ourselves and our limited experiences can help increase our megaphones' overall impact when we do decide to use them.

As previously discussed in Chapter Seven: The Continuous Evolution of Language, we are all active participants in this evolution, generation after generation. We use our megaphones, both online and off, to share what we think is important. We all do it, even when we might not realize it. Words, and how we employ them, matter.

Every person and every business will utilize their megaphones in the ways that work and feel right for them. At Noteworthy Communications, we understand that no one's megaphone is identical, so neither is our approach. Communication strategies can only become impactful when we finely tune our megaphones while keeping our broader purpose in mind.