Mark McClain is the CEO and founder of SailPoint, and the ForbesBooks author of Joy and Success at Work: Building Organizations that Don’t Suck (the Life Out of People).
McClain says, “More and more, companies are starting to understand that they need to show employees that they value them as whole people. If you respect them, value them and treat them as professionals, they will go through walls for you. If you don’t, if you create an environment where the very thought of coming to work creates anxiety, then they are going to look for employment elsewhere.”
That framing tracks with the broader workforce data. Recent Gallup engagement studies have shown disengagement at multi-decade highs, and the same period has seen explosive growth in the consumer-app categories that effectively compete with employers for an employee’s attention and discretionary energy — short-form video, mobile-first commerce, online-learning platforms, and the legal-jurisdiction expansion of casino games that pay real money all sit in that same competitive landscape. None of those categories are causing disengagement on their own; they’re filling a vacuum left when work itself stops feeling worthwhile. The strategic implication of McClain’s argument is that the answer isn’t to police what employees are doing on their phones at lunch, but to build the kind of organization where the workday holds up against the rest of the modern attention economy on its own merits.
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