Do you have a clear life purpose?  Have you had or are you having a meaningful career?  Have you had roles that are hugely satisfying, rewarding and fulfilling?

About 5 years ago I came across a Japanese word and concept called Ikigai.  Although I had been providing career development and career transition advice to people for years, I had never come across such a simple yet powerful framework.  Ikigai is our raison d’etre – our reason for being.  It is your life purpose.  It’s what brings joy and inspires you to get out of bed each day.  It is the meaning in our lives, and it drives us to share the best of ourselves with the world.  Some people believe Ikigai is the reason many Japanese people live long lives (note: Japan is ranked second in the world for life expectancy).   Western culture has adopted this philosophy as a way of discovering a meaningful career.

 

Why is Ikigai important? 

Unfortunately, during the global pandemic over the last two years, the world has seen a huge increase in mental health issues, particularly anxiety and depression.  Our aim is to find ways to lead a flourishing life but sadly only about 17 percent of adults fall into this category.  Roughly 57 percent of adults are moderately mentally healthy; 12 percent are languishing, and 14 percent have a mental illness. These statistics are from 2002 (Keyes; The Mental Health Continuum: From Languishing to Flourishing in Life) and I’m certain that since COVID, the picture is worse.  Ikigai is a philosophy and tool that can help move individuals along this mental health continuum towards flourishing.

 

How can we create more purpose and meaning in our lives and our careers?

In order to establish a meaningful career, the concept of Ikigai suggests you need to find the balance between what you love, what you are good at, what you can be paid for, and what the world needs. The first element in the model is all about ‘what you love’.  We experience this when we are in the flow state, fully present, engaged and aware of the present moment.  Most people know what they love doing; however, to increase your self-awareness and insight into this aspect of yourself, a simple and useful exercise is to write a list of all the things you love about your current and any past jobs you have done and then write a list of all the elements of any job that you have done that you have not enjoyed at all.  Sometimes you can gain insights into what you love doing by looking more closely at what you don’t like.  Furthermore, you could ask yourself some key questions to understand your passions such as: are you absorbed in your work? Are you more excited about going to work than leaving work? Do you have an emotional connection to your work? Notwithstanding this, in a word of caution, not all aspects of a job can satisfy our need to always ‘love what we are doing’.  So, sometimes we need to find more fulfilment and meaning in our lives outside of work.

Another aspect of Ikigai is about ‘what are you good at?’  These are your skills and capabilities.  They may be natural talents and/or competencies that you have developed over time through effort and exertion.  Typically, we become skilled at things that we are passionate about however, sometimes we have learned to become skilled in a particular area without it being something we love doing.  For example, I have a friend who went to university and became an accountant, after working in this field for only 2 years, he realised he didn’t like it and moved across to Human Resources where he has been for over 30 years.  So, he became good at numbers but really loves people.  To build your own self-awareness of your unique skills, you could ask: Do people ask for advice on topics related to your work? Are there some parts of your job that come easily to you? Are you or do you want to be an expert at what you do?  Furthermore, sometimes the skills and capabilities that have made you successful in the past are not necessarily the ones that will serve you well into the future depending on the next role you are trying to obtain. Do you need to upskill/reskill? Are there skills you need to stop using in order to acquire new ones e.g. stop doing the doing and start delegating and managing more instead?

The third concept within this philosophy is ‘what you can be paid for?’ This part of the framework is potentially a little bit controversial because some people may argue that you should simply follow your passions and the rest will take care of itself.  However, sadly there are many unhappy people in the world who have focussed solely on their passions and neglected this more practical element of life.  It puts food on the table and a roof over a family’s head.  The aim is not to earn a fortune but rather to be paid well enough to live a comfortable life.  The research and evidence has been incredibly strong and unequivocal in demonstrating that we need enough money to live a fulfilling life, however, once we have ‘enough’ often our own desire for more than enough leads to a less happy and satisfying life.  Questions to ask yourself in this category include: Are there other people getting paid for the same work you’re doing? Do you or will you be able to make a good living out of your work?

The final concept is about ‘what the world needs’. This is perhaps the most complex of the elements to fully comprehend.  Sometimes it is hard to tell what positive impacts our work has on the world.  What will create a visible and positive impact on the world around us?  A few key questions you can ask yourself to reflect on this include: Is your work considered in high demand?  Will your work still be valuable in 10 years? Are you solving a social, economic or environmental problem?

 

Whilst this framework is relatively simple as a concept, there can be challenges in its implementation throughout your life.  If you have something that you love and that you are good at, but you are not getting paid well, you are unlikely to feel totally fulfilled and so you will need to spend time marketing yourself to get noticed and be paid well in recognition of your passion and skills.  The most typical example of this would be an aspiring artist or singer.  On the other hand, if you have a clear passion and you can see that the world needs this, you have a clear ‘mission’, but if you don’t have the skill to persuade people to join your mission, you will not be satisfied. Whereas if you have something that pays you well and something you are good at, you have a ‘profession’.  This is what most people have.  Whilst this pays the bills and puts food on the table, you are missing out on a true sense of fulfilment because you don’t love your work or see how it really makes a difference to others.  This means you need to search for things that give your life meaning and purpose.  Finally, if you get paid well and you know it can help the world, then you have a ‘vocation’.  An example of this category is a University Professor who is paid well and helps the world but teaches that same subject year after year and doesn’t develop or improve.  This will lead to a lack of happiness and personal wellbeing.

If you want to move towards a flourishing and thriving life, full of engagement and fulfilment, the best place to start is to adopt the Ikigai philosophy and gradually work your way through each element to fully understand what this means for you and then create and implement a plan to achieve it.  This is not simple and straightforward to do alone, so I suggest seeking out a buddy, mentor or coach to guide you along this journey towards a more meaningful career and life.

Contact your nearest Steople office to discuss how we can help you implement the Ikigai philosophy today.

The Victorian lockdowns of 2021 have tested people’s resilience in new ways. To counter the ongoing threat of business disruption and worker exhaustion, it makes good business and social sense for workplaces to continue to instil a wellbeing culture.  Human flourishing is the experience of feeling good and having high psychological and social functioning. In the workplace, flourishing individuals experience positive emotions, are energised and motivated, find meaning in their work and function well socially by feeling a sense of belonging and wanting to help others. One of the most widely researched motivation and wellbeing theories is Basic Psychological Needs Theory (BPNT). BPNT proposes that all humans have three core psychological needs that must be satisfied in order to maintain wellbeing.

1. Competence; feeling effective and experiencing mastery.
2. Autonomy; functioning with volition and congruence with one’s interests and values.
3. Relatedness; being socially connected, belonging, feeling cared for and giving to others.

Basic need satisfaction at work is linked to a number of desirable organisational outcomes including lower burnout, less stress, increased organisational commitment and proactive, innovative behaviours.

What can workplaces do to support their employees?

The quality of social context is important for BPNT. Behaviours displayed by people who are important to an individual in the workplace, support their competence, autonomy and satisfaction.

Relatedness.

Behaviours that support relatedness needs include enquiring about others’ feelings, actively listening and expressing empathy, taking another’s perspective, taking an authentic interest and care, enjoying companionship and taking opportunities to develop connections with others. Activities could include having a weekly 15-minute check-in with the team just to share one highlight from the weekend, or if you know a colleague lives alone you could call to discuss a work matter (rather than emailing), or making sure that the quiet person on the Zoom call is asked for their point of view or endorsement of a decision. While no one needs to ever own another person’s emotions, acknowledging and listening to someone’s feelings (without having to solve their problems!) is a very powerful way to enhance relatedness.

Competence.

Competence-supportive behaviours from leaders facilitate desired effects and mastery. This includes knowledge sharing, offering tasks that are challenging, yet achievable, providing structure and guidance, and providing informational feedback. People need to be regularly acknowledged for their adaptability in different work conditions including remote working. Informational feedback involves providing a clear explanation of what “done” looks like and acknowledging progress towards “done” before factually outlining gaps or work still to be completed. Scheduling regular checkpoints on progress are extra important during remote working when spontaneous face-to-face discussion and opportunities for questions no longer exist. Peer mentoring on skills as basic as online decluttering or running engaging Zoom sessions, or as complex as mastering the art of business development can support an individual’s need for competence.

Autonomy.

Autonomy-supportive behaviours from leaders include offering opportunities for choice and input, encouraging self-initiation, and encouraging staff to problem solve. Encouraging or acknowledging even small improvements and innovations in the workplace can be a great way to satisfy people’s need for autonomy. Giving staff problems to solve with the appropriate guidance and governance can too.

Any of these habits and behaviours will facilitate wellbeing during the good times. They are especially worth cultivating during times of struggle to lift or keep you and your teams at the level of flourishing.

Call Steople today to discuss the Wellbeing and Resilience needs of your team – contact us

One rude encounter can ruin your day. You expect people to behave professionally at work and to a very large extent, they do. People share information or give direction without being pushy. Importantly, their words, gestures, facial expressions convey respect. People accept you as part of a community with a shared mission that may be creating a project, interacting with clients, treating patients, or developing new knowledge. They act as if you are all working together on this mission and everyone has something to contribute.

But not always. Some encounters are really unpleasant and those events have a huge personal impact. Even when they occur rarely, they have the power to shape a workgroup’s enduring culture.

The Effects of One Act of Incivility

• Initially, the rude action will violate expectations grabbing everyone’s attention. Incivility effects the workgroup but may also take a toll on customer relationships. Research from the University of Southern California shows that many consumers are less likely to buy anything from a company they perceive as uncivil, whether the rudeness is directed at them or other employees. Witnessing one quick negative interaction leads to generalisations about other employees, the organisation, and even the brand.
• Rudeness has an emotional impact. People react by feeling angry, ashamed, or surprised. Those feelings often linger long after the encounter. Individuals may often lie awake ruminating over the event. In a recent survey by Georgetown University, 80% of survey respondents indicated lost work time worrying about the incident, and 63% indicated lost work time in their effort to avoid the offender.
• Rudeness prompts people to respond rudely. These reactions can easily spiral out of control. When people feel disrespected, it eats away at them—and their potential. Engagement, teamwork, knowledge sharing, innovation, and contributions wane even among those who choose to work around the slights. Employees are three times less likely to help others and their willingness to share drops by more than half. In short, incivility kills helpfulness and collaboration.
• When a rude action is allowed to stand, a workgroup becomes a place where people act that way. It gives permission to behave badly towards one another.

Leaders cannot rely on these situations fixing themselves. Recovering from a culture of disrespect requires ongoing and deliberate action.

The workgroup process, Strengthening a Culture Of Respect and Engagement (SCORE) was developed to help workgroups overcome forces that weaken their culture of civility and respect. SCORE targets the workgroup culture by helping workgroups to build on positive interactions and improve how they work together.

SCORE in Action

Western Health runs three major public hospitals in Melbourne’s fast-growing and culturally diverse western suburbs. After a scathing 2015 Victorian auditor-general’s report on the health sector’s poor management of bullying and harassment, Western Health launched a positive workplace strategy, called ‘Don’t Walk Past’. This strategy combined with a range of educational initiatives on each person’s responsibility to manage themselves and speak out against inappropriate workplace behaviour, and annual surveys of Western Health’s 6500 staff, had generated improvements but hadn’t effectively tackled the whole team approach.

“It was a wake-up call for all of us,” says Suellen Bruce, director of people, culture and communication at Western Health. “To not just deal with issues on a case by case basis but to look at root causes. We all needed to lift our game because there were significant OH&S issues for staff and major concerns about the effect on patient outcomes.”

This is when Steople introduced Western Health to Michael Leiter’s SCORE program. Michael Leiter is a global expert on workplace civility and job burnout, designing a world-first “civility intervention”. So far, the results are extremely promising.

The first participating units of the SCORE program points to signs of success. Suellen Bruce, the Director of People, Culture and Communication at Western Health sent out a baseline survey to the five groups that agreed to be in the trial. The two groups with the highest response rate and lower levels of civility were selected in the first wave of the SCORE program.

Preliminary results show that the two groups have improved significantly more than teams who were not participating in the program. This includes significant improvement in supervisor trust, coworker trust, and management trust. Attendance of the first three non-compulsory sessions also exceeded 90%. While the final data is yet to be formally announced, Suellen confirms that the signs are very promising.

In the end, it all comes down to respect. As the Australian workforce becomes more diverse in culture and age, it is important that we understand what respect looks like for each individual. It is not enough to just stamp out bad behaviour within the workforce through redundancies and restructures. Organisations need to actively encourage positive interactions between employees to make sure their staff are fully engaged. This will enable employees to achieve maximum levels of productivity and performance.

Read the case study article from Lucinda Schmidt, HRM

To speak to a Steople consultant about civility in your organisation, contact us today!

How would you rate the wellbeing of your team members? Are you doing everything possible to care for their wellbeing as well as your own?

Psychological wellbeing is a key ingredient in any workplace. Research has consistently shown that when organisations invest in their employees’ wellbeing, they are more productive and innovative.

Increased creativity levels have also been shown to increase general wellbeing. In a study conducted at Otago University in New Zealand, 650 people said they felt a substantial increase in their wellbeing after taking part in a creative activity and they viewed their relationships with other people more positively. The research also indicated that creative outlets have lasting effects on wellbeing.

Wellbeing and creativity have a symbiotic relationship with each other, and both will increase simultaneously. So how do you encourage a culture of wellbeing and innovation within your workplace?

There are several steps you can take to immediately increase innovation and wellbeing. Among these are:

1. Making time for brainstorming and reflection
2. Being open to team members’ ideas
3. Holding walking meetings to exercise while discussing work
4. Building alternative workspaces with a change of scenery
5. Encouraging breaks
6. Fostering diversity
7. Providing learning opportunities
8. Creating trust and fostering psychological safety

Creating trust and fostering psychological safety are especially significant. Psychological safety is when employees feel safe expressing themselves without fear of embarrassment, rejection, or punishment. In 2016, Google analysed teams as part of their Aristotle Project to find the most optimal team composition. They analysed their own company using 50 years of team research for two years, and the top predictor of team performance (based on revenue) was psychological safety. Cultivating this is important to encourage the introduction of new ideas within your company and create high-performing teams who are not afraid to push the boundaries and elevate themselves to new heights.

There is a greater emphasis on personal mental health currently highlighted in the media, causing public awareness of this issue to be at an all-time high. Workplace health and safety is becoming increasingly legislated to protect employees. Competition in the employment market is making it harder than ever to keep the best team members. It is important to ensure that your workplace makes the necessary improvements to boost employee satisfaction. The best part is that none of these steps are too costly or too lengthy. In this case, less is more. By acting to address areas of improvement, your workforce will be more creative and more productive. To make your organisation the best that it can be, contact a PeopleScape wellbeing specialist today to teach both leaders and team members the key elements of wellbeing amid the intense demands of the workplace.

Discuss the return on investment from improved employee wellbeing with a PeopleScape Consultant today – Contact Us

By Audrey McGibbon, Co-Author, GLWS

“Is wellbeing a fad?”

We were asked this question recently and our instinctive response was “We hope not!”. Not given how much positive change we have seen come about through the recent focus on wellbeing. But, thinking more about it, it’s a fair question. Wellbeing/wellness programs and initiatives have popped up like mushrooms all over workplaces – and in some quarters, this could feel a little like ‘jumping on the bandwagon’. But our true response is a firm no – that like many other ‘themes’ of recent times (diversity, psychological safety, even engagement), wellbeing is an essential ingredient in creating a workplace culture where people do their best work, are creative and innovative, collaborate effectively and perform sustainably at a high level to meet organisational objectives.

There probably are people within organisations addressing wellbeing as a fad, perhaps implementing a few ‘lunch ‘n’ learns’, supporting a ‘get fit’ campaign and encouraging healthy eating at work. Nothing wrong with any of that, but they are unlikely to achieve lasting change in behaviour. Or, for that matter, any of the desirable outcomes from seeing a real uplift in wellbeing – such as reduced absenteeism, increased engagement, innovation and retention, and sustainable high productivity and performance. (If you are yet to be convinced that these are the outcomes that investment in wellbeing can bring, then please ask and we can guide you to the evidence). That’s because these programs, by and large, are not very ‘sticky’ – and, without fundamental shifts in how the leadership of the organisation engages with wellbeing, are doomed to under-achieve, if not fail.

For wellbeing to stick, and for organisations to see the benefits, it needs to be embedded in the expectations and behaviour of all leaders.

Wellbeing as a core leadership capability

We all know that initiatives in organisations have to be supported from the top to stand a chance of getting off the ground, surviving and achieving their objectives. With wellbeing, we would like to see this go one stage further – indeed, we believe this is fundamental to realising the cultural shifts required to truly embed wellbeing.

It’s time to view wellbeing as an essential leadership capability.

Organisations expect leaders to have well-developed skills in people leadership, emotional intelligence, stakeholder relationships, strategic thinking, problem-solving and so on. In this day and age, shouldn’t we also expect leaders to be capable of developing wellbeing?

And by developing wellbeing, we mean:

1. Attending to their own self-care,
2. Attending and promoting ‘other-care’ for the people they lead,
3. And being champions of wellbeing across their organisations.

Here is our attempt at a fuller definition of ‘enabling wellbeing’, and we offer this up as a gift to stimulate your minds on what might work in your own organisation: “Making purposeful and well-informed choices to optimise wellbeing for self and others, role-modelling wellbeing as a priority, embedding reliable disciplines and influencing positive change in the system for others.”

How your organisation can enable Wellbeing

To make wellbeing an essential skill, it needs to be documented within your organisation’s frameworks and integrated into performance reviews.

We propose you:

1. Update your organisation’s leadership capability framework to include wellbeing as a
   clear and explicit expectation.
2. Redesign or augment your leadership development initiatives to include leaders’ development of this capability as a core component of every leadership development program, at all levels of leadership.
3. Build engagement in your wellbeing strategy to a point where you can set wellbeing KPIs as part of every leader’s performance targets.
4. And finally, evaluate performance and reward leaders for their success in enabling wellbeing. After all, what gets measured, gets done. The world is changing. Leaders are under more pressure to perform and respond to rapid organisational, social and technological change than ever before. The best of the best will understand, model and uphold positive wellbeing practices in the workplace.

Leaders who role-model and prioritise the wellbeing skills and behaviours taught to them will become an organisation’s most powerful enablers of improved employee wellbeing and all the possible benefits that come with it. But it’s only strong leadership, behavioural and cultural change driven by wellbeing data that will deliver.

Speak to a PeopleScape consultant about your Wellbeing strategy today 

As many of you know, this last year has been quite a roller coaster for my family. My dad’s diagnosis and eventual move into a memory care facility has turned our world upside down. The last six months have consisted of auctioning off the family farm equipment, selling my parent’s home of 45 years, and getting my mom packed up and moved into a newly renovated house. I know my family and I are not the only ones out there dealing with significant life events such as death, loss of a job, divorce, a major illness, bankruptcy, etc. We have all been a part of or known circumstances in which bad things happen to good people.

I recently read a book that was extremely impactful in helping understand and sort through some of the feelings that come with such life-changing events. Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, written by Sheryl Sandberg recounts the story after her husband tragically passed away when a friend offered to go to her children’s parent-teacher conference with her. Through her grief, she stated that she did not want her friend to go with her…at that moment she only wanted her husband. Her friend wisely said, “Well, Option A isn’t available, so we are going to kick the sh** out of Option B.”

We all want to live in a world in which we get to live Option A. It’s a magical world where everyone stays married, we are uber successful in a job we love, no one gets sick and no one dies tragically. Option B is more realistic and is comprised of a world in which the worst happens and we have to adapt and lean on our friends and family. None of us escape Option B at one time or another…and so, of course, much of what happens in our personal life then negatively impacts our professional life. That is why we set out to answer two questions in this blog: How can we, in our own life, handle those tough times in a more effective way? What can we do or say when our friends and co-workers are experiencing a significant loss or life-changing event?

What To Do When Life Hands You Option B

Two years ago, Sheryl Sandberg was leading a good life. She was the chief operating officer of Facebook and author of the legendary New York Times bestseller Lean In. She was a renowned business leader and a role model for women around the world. She was happily married to Dave Goldberg, the CEO of Survey Monkey, and they had two young children. Then the unthinkable happened. On a family vacation in Mexico, her husband, Dave, died unexpectedly of heart failure while exercising in the gym. He was 48.

Since that tragic event, Sandberg co-authored her new book with Wharton Business School professor, Adam Grant, chronicling her own progress from a state of overwhelming, paralyzing grief to being able to appreciate life in a new way. Grant was already an acquaintance of Sandberg and her family, and attended the shiva, the Jewish period of mourning, at Sandberg’s home. As the guests were leaving, Sandberg asked Grant to stay. “I was thinking, OK, he’s a psychologist…. I looked at him, I’m sure hysterical, I was like, ‘What do I do? How am I going to get my kids through this? Tell me what to do.’”

His response was something that might not have worked for everyone, she said, but for her was “incredibly comforting….He started summarizing research.” (Sandberg is a self-described “geek” who holds a B.A. in economics from Harvard) She said, “When anyone gives you any steps you can take — particularly for me, ones that social scientists had studied that they knew worked — that was a lifeline.”

How Can We Better Handle Our Own Option B?

What Sandberg learned, with the help of Grant, was that there are three myths people cling to that make it harder to spring back from adversity. Martin Seligman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, bases the three myths on research. He is widely considered the founding father of the positive psychology movement. Seligman proposed that our ability to deal with setbacks is largely determined by three P’s: Personalization, Pervasiveness, and Permanence.

1. Personalization. Personalization refers to whether a person attributes a negative event to internal or external factors — in other words, whether it’s their fault. Sandberg said that after her husband died so unexpectedly, she blamed herself: “I pored over his medical records asking what I could have — or should have — done.” Once she read about personalization, however, she accepted that she couldn’t have prevented his death: “His doctors had not identified his coronary artery disease. I was an economics major; how could I have?
2. Pervasiveness. Pervasiveness refers to whether a person sees negative experiences as global or specific, or as Sandberg says, whether “an event will affect all areas of your life.” Sandberg said she went back to work at Facebook 10 days after Dave died — and for a split second during a meeting, she was able to forget her grief and get absorbed in the discussion. At that moment, she realized that her professional life could still be rewarding and worthwhile, even after tragedy had struck in her personal life.
3. Permanence. Permanence explains whether a person sees an event as stable or unstable, or how long they think the negative feelings will last. For months after Dave’s death, Sandberg said, “no matter what I did, it felt like the crushing grief would always be there.” Gradually, Sandberg said she learned that “we should accept our feelings — but recognize that they will not last forever. In other words, you don’t have to deny that you’re feeling sad or hopeless — but you can also take heart that one day soon, you’ll feel a little less sad and hopeless.”

What Can We Do When Others Struggle With Option B?

Keeping these three P’s in mind can have a positive impact when you do have to deal with your own Option B. But not only do we have to know how to survive these times ourselves, there will be people in our life that are dealing with negative events and knowing how to help those we care about can be significant. These are five tips that Sandberg suggests in order to acknowledge those difficult times:

1. Ask “How are you today?” In Option B, Sandberg writes about how painful the casual greeting “How are you?” was to her after her husband’s death. It hurt, “because it didn’t acknowledge that anything out of the ordinary happened,” she writes. Instead, Sandberg suggests asking “How are you today?”—a formulation that shows you’re aware that the person is struggling to get through each day. For Sandberg, the phrase became a shorthand among her coworkers to express empathy.
2. Instead of offering ‘anything,’ do something. The question, “Is there anything I can do?” seems innocuous enough, but Sandberg points out that it is the opposite of helpful, since most of the things the aggrieved wants either feel like an imposition or are impossible. (The Facebook exec’s example: “Can you invent a time machine so my kids and I can go back and say goodbye to Dave?”) A better approach is to do something specific, no matter how small, because “instead of trying to fix the problem, they address the damage caused by the problem.”
3. Use “we” language and make your presence felt. One of the most painful parts of grieving, Sandberg recounts, is feeling alone. She writes: “Lots of people nicely tried to assure me, ‘You will get through this,’ but it was hard to believe them. What helped me more was when people said they were in it with me.”
4. Share your problems, too. After the initial shock of the event fades, it’s important to restore balance in your relationship—and that means talking about worries and troubles even if they feel trivial when compared to those endured by the aggrieved. “I wanted those close to me to know that I was there to help carry their troubles too,” Sandberg writes.
5. Follow the “platinum rule” of friendship. The golden rule of friendship is to treat others the way you want to be treated. The platinum rule, according to Sandberg, is to treat others the way they want to be treated. “Instead of making assumptions about whether or not someone wants to talk, it’s better to offer an opening and see if they take it.” In the end, everyone copes differently. The best way to be there for someone is just to be there—and make sure they know it.

Acknowledging our own and other’s struggles can be powerful. We hope some of these thoughts and ideas help you in some small way.

 

For assistance supporting your employees through life-changing events, contact PeopleScape today.