This is more than a backlash to DEI or ESG. It’s more than whether a remote or flexible workplace is the most productive. And it’s more than a market correction for a period when wages, and inflation, briefly sent economic historians back to their textbooks about the serial crises of the 1970s.
The tightening labor market, marked by fewer job openings and rising unemployment, has left employees with reduced leverage—and bosses with the upper hand.
The CEOs brimming with resentment over loss of status and power may be enjoying their moment of revenge, but they should stay attuned to all the emerging species of office sloths. Resentment, after all, is a two-way street, and it’s a jungle out there.
