Recent piece examined lack of joy in modern work, something I could not see at recent events
‘How working in America became so joyless’ was the proposition of a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, which posited that the loss of perks, the rise of AI and a crushing focus on productivity is killing corporate enthusiasm in the US.
Anecdotally, we’ve all seen companies tighten their purse strings in recent years. Gone are the days of long lunches, expensive gifts and bulging budgets for overseas travel – at least, from my perspective, for firms hoping to woo financial journalists! Instead, there are bigger teams to manage; less reliable career paths; and even charges for the company coffee machine.
One figure stood out to me in the Journal’s report: CFOs at large US companies mentioned ‘efficiency’ at least once on 307 conference calls in the latest quarter as of March 26, up from 219 a year earlier and the highest level since at least 2020, according to AlphaSense data.
That focus will be of no surprise to our readers and visitors to our events. After three weeks on the road for our events in Palo Alto, New York and Toronto, I was struck by how many of our panelists and attendees alike were still grappling with the impact of macroeconomic shifts and communicating the impacts to their stakeholder audiences.
At time of writing, there’s a ceasefire in the Iran conflict, but those tensions – and the knock-on impacts on energy markets and national security – are likely to stick around for a while longer.
For many IROs, it’s another set of parameters to analyze and understand how to communicate around. That was one of the main thrusts in discussions at both the IR Impact Think Tank in New York and the Forum in Toronto, which saw hundreds of IR professionals get together to examine the issues impacting their daily work.
Something else struck me at both events – and perhaps more keenly at our awards ceremonies for the US and Canada, held later those same evenings. IROs, for all of the hard work, long hours and grueling demands they face, certainly find joy in what they do.
That joy is not just limited to free fruit in the office or puppy yoga classes – though I know IR teams who benefit from both – but particularly comes out when people celebrate excellence in their fellow professionals.
With so many people nominated for our awards, we always feel like we have to break some hearts when we hand out trophies. But one conversation at the bar after our Toronto event really stayed with me: an IR professional who had narrowly missed victory in several categories told me with a big smile how proud they were of their peers – and how motivated they were to improve next year – rather than expressing any sense of bitterness in defeat.
As I watched IR teams – both those clutching their golden IR Impact trophies and those without – celebrate into the small hours, I knew that the Journal had missed a trick not interviewing at least a handful of IR professionals before they penned their piece.
