Kyle M.K. on work wellbeing and the stay interview

What this conversation is about

Kyle M.K. advises employers on work wellbeing at Indeed and wrote The Economics of Emotion. Indeed holds one of the largest wellbeing datasets anywhere, and one of its findings runs against the common assumption: pay and flexibility matter less to how people feel about work than the social factors, belonging and inclusion most of all.

Glenn Llopis opened by explaining why that finding matched something he had watched for years in his own programs:

"I've often wondered why 50% of the people that actually go through our program get highly emotional. Well, I've learned why. It's because they've been suppressed throughout their entire careers." — Glenn Llopis · 00:00:00

He then read Kyle findings from his own study: most managers say their working and learning environments work against individuality, and most say they are forced to comply with how the company wants them to behave. Kyle’s reply became the line at the top of this page.

Why healthcare is losing people

Asked what is driving the healthcare worker shortage, Kyle listed burnout, thin resources, turnover and people who simply stop showing up. It becomes a loop: the ones who leave take their work with them, the ones who stay absorb it with no more resources, and the next person leaves.

He also tracks when it got worse. Indeed’s wellbeing measures peaked a month after lockdown, when employers were visibly grateful and flexible, people were clapped out at the end of shifts, and then the gratitude stopped while the work did not.

Glenn named the pattern underneath:

"They create the illusion that you matter, and then when they don't think you matter because they think that they have control, again, it goes back to the ways that we always do things." — Glenn Llopis · 00:20:04

The stay interview

Kyle’s most practical answer is an interview most organizations never run. Everyone knows the exit interview, which arrives after the person is gone and replacing them costs months of salary. The stay interview happens before anyone decides to leave, and asks what someone needs in order to stay.

His one rule is who conducts it. Not the person’s manager, and nobody in that chain of command: a peer or someone from human resources, so the answers can be honest.

Glenn offered a story from his own work with nursing leaders. Asked for his single recommendation, he said this:

"I'm recommending that you create the space for these nursing supervisors to reintroduce themselves to the executive team." — Glenn Llopis · 00:14:15

He was told it would never happen, because that is not how things are done there. Kyle’s response was to ask what that sentence actually means: if leaders will not spend time with the people doing the work, what exactly are they doing?

Language that controls, or language that grows

Glenn told a second story from the same world. A leader handed him a list of words he could and could not use with their people. He asked whether they knew who those people were, and got a list of titles in reply.

"You've given me language to control them, not influence and help them grow." — Glenn Llopis · 00:28:29

Kyle connected it to the deficit he sees in every industry: people are promoted for operational skill and then asked to lead people without ever being taught how. His recommendation is to put every leader, from chief executive down to first-line manager, through deliberate emotional intelligence training, and he thinks it matters more as technology absorbs the routine work:

"AI is going to be doing a lot of the admin work, maybe even some of the diagnostics and stuff. We need that bedside manner more than ever, and we need training in order to do that." — Kyle M.K. · 00:25:04

Belonging is built by asking

Kyle defines belonging as feeling connected to the mission, to the people and to the goals, while still being yourself. His method for building it is almost dull in its simplicity: include people in decisions that will affect their work, and ask them before you change it rather than after.

Glenn put the whole argument in a sentence that has become part of how the method is explained:

"standardization does not solve for personalization. In other words, the old outdated ways that we've always done things don't solve for these more human-centric personalized needs. But personalization actually does solve for standardization." — Glenn Llopis · 00:35:20

"it's no longer about the institution defining the individual. It's about the individual defining the process towards a shared mission" — Glenn Llopis · 00:27:19

Kyle’s long-term prescription for the staffing crisis is three things: ask people what they need to do their best work, use technology to shorten a hiring process that currently loses candidates, and be honest in hiring about the hard parts of the job, because people say yes to hard things when they know what they are. His closing thought: even with all the automation, the future of work is human.