Sophie Solomon

Like mental health, pregnancy, and parental leave, menopause is a workplace issue that should be openly discussed to ensure that stigma or a lack of accommodations doesn't result in industries, economies, and society as a whole losing some of its most seasoned, insightful, and resilient minds.

Are you familiar with this proverb: “God, grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, the courage to change things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I don’t know about you, but it sure feels that the last three years were meant to assert the truth of this proverb. Whether or not you have an aversion to change and unpredictability, or you go where the wind blows, the lack of control and uncertainty over these past few years has been trying for all. So much so, that mental health continues to make the headlines. Many corporations not only talk openly about it, but they also provide mental health-specific benefits to their workforce. No wonder that in its latest research, Gartner named wellbeing a key metric in the future of work. It doesn’t matter how well-equipped we may have thought we were; nothing could have predicted the past three years.

As professionals, throughout our careers, we are called to go through multiple cycles of “job searching.” It is the accumulation of all these jobs, assignments, and missions that in the end constitute our professional journey.

I remember an instance when I was looking to hire a project manager for one of my clients. This role required a few years of work experience and specific technical skills. I posted the role, and once the resumes started pouring in, two caught my attention. They could not have been more different from each other, and yet, I was equally drawn to them.

In 2017, I was on a quest to grasp how mindfulness and emotional intelligence played a role in the work environment. I intrinsically felt that the artificial boundaries between work and home were ... well, artificial. I also trusted, from my personal experience, that being humanly connected with the individual...

The challenge is shifting towards the employer’s ability to create a destination appealing enough for a workforce looking for more than a livelihood in an area of expertise. Each month in this column, “The Future of Talent,” I’ll be exploring the drivers that influence the talent market and offer suggestions on how to address them.