Kelly connects with Daisy Auger-Dominguez who once held the position of Global Chief People Officer at Vice Media Group. Her new book is called, “Burnt Out to Lit Up: How to Reignite the Joy of Leading People.”  

HR is a hard gig, but you were head of HR at Vice Media, which had to be an incredibly difficult gig. 

“We keep on promoting people and we keep on sending people to these training courses that kind of take the humanity out of this work. And we keep on thrusting folks into situations that are untenable. And also, Kelly, part of the challenge of all of this, this was already hard work to do in the first place, but this is also the most messy, challenging time that any of us have ever experienced. And so, a manager now doesn’t just have to deliver on outcomes, right? They have to be cultural architects; they have to be change management experts; they have to be DEI specialists; they have to be influencers across meta communities, not just their own community; they have to do all of that while also managing a workforce that is increasingly exhausted, disengaged, and untrusting of leadership. It is really hard.” 

There’s been so many articles written about burnout, books written about burnout, and that hasn’t seemed to convince corporate America that they should be paying attention to burnout. 

“It’s really fascinating that you say that because I just read a report by care.com that essentially says burnout is quietly corroding our workplaces. And there’s over two thirds of employees that say they’re at high risk of burnout, and fewer than half of the employers don’t even recognize it. It is wild to me. I did not know that burnout was going to have the moment that it’s having right now when I wrote the book, to be fair. And in many ways, I wrote it because I had been so deeply burnt out and I needed to find answers to all of these questions that I had about this work. And I really do fundamentally believe that leadership in today’s workplace needs to really focus on wellness and on how do we do this work better.” 

I’m curious what you think of this push to get people back in the office 100% of the time? 

“I call it holding onto old relics of performance and work, right? It’s it’s these assumptions that if people are in the office, they’re going to work harder. And it fundamentally comes down to control, right? It is about controlling the workforce in a way that has become outdated. Because if employees feel that their supervisors don’t understand their motivations or don’t care about the impact of return to office mandates on their lives; their sense of autonomy; their sense of agency, and frankly, their ability to get work done, you will lose them, right? You will lose them either through attrition or you will lose them because they will no longer trust and believe and be engaged in the workplace. But it is holding on to these old forms of what management used to look like.”