Quiet Quitting and Creative Job Titles: TOP 5 Trends From The World Of Work

What else matters this week?

The EU votes to mandate quotas for women in leadership roles in EU companies.

How to ask for what you need at work.

The Metaverse could grow to $5 trillion in value by 2030.

Lufthansa hiring 10,000 workers by 2023.  

Is the tech market in Europe set to experience a downturn?

Peggy Woolley, 103, retires after more than 70 years.

U.S labor market news: experts predict fairly solid labour market.

Salt production heats up amid scorching European summer.

We’ve got a full breakdown of all the top headlines you can’t miss this week.

1. Job titles for an uncertain time.

One sign of unsettled times: longer job titles. Over the past few years, businesses have been thrown into chaos. Freefall. And hyper-specific and unconventional roles are opening up to match this unprecedented professional landscape.

“The amount of disruption we’ve had has shaken every aspect of business,” said J.T. O’Donnell, a career coach. “What’s exciting is not just the number of new companies, and new ideas, but the number of new types of jobs.” LinkedIn, for example, has seen a 304% spike in titles that reference hybrid work and a 60% increase in titles related to the future of work since the start of the pandemic.

Some examples of these new titles?

Head of Team Anywhere. Chief Heart Officer. Head of Dynamic Work. Read more at the New York Times.

#2. How to know if your co-workers are ghost quitting.

You may – or may not – have notice this trend among your colleagues over the past several months. Your colleagues have been stealthily “ghost quitting.” Not leaving their jobs…but mentally checking out. These workers are unhappy, but they may be too afraid to outright quit. It’s easier to pull this off over Zoom and Slack, where they can put up a good enough front. Read more here.

#3. The future of the office…in the metaverse?

A unicorn start-up in South Korea is renting out online working space in the metaverse, known as “Soma World.” The start-up, Zigbang, is coming out with a 30-story building where users can work in their offices with their colleagues…and even visit a convention center that fits 3,000 people.

Zigbang is not the first company to jump into the metaverse and the world of work. Microsoft and Meta have already begun developing futuristic working environments. Working in the metaverse does have one clear benefit already: companies can reduce their carbon footprint when it comes to commuting and going paperless. Read more here.

#4. Staffing Shortage: Qantas asks executives to volunteer as baggage handlers.

Senior executives at Qantas are being asked to work frontline airport roles as post-lockdown problems and major staff shortages continue to plague airlines. The embattled airline’s Chief Operating Officer, Colin Hughes, told staff in an internal memo that the company is looking for interest for a contingency program over a three-month period.

“People who respond to the EOI will be trained and rostered into the ramp environment at Sydney and Melbourne airports,” Hughes wrote. “These people will support our ground handling partners, who are managing the Qantas operation, over a three-month period from mid-August.”

At least 100 managers will be recruited for this swap. Hughes added that there’s no expectation that the managers will perform their full-time roles on top of this. Read more at the Guardian.

#5. Amazon calls on U.S. government to get serious about green card backlog.

Amazon wants the U.S. government to get serious about clearing the backlog of green card applications that is impacting its workforce. Congress allotted 281,000 employment-based green cards for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. But as of late June, more than 100,000 of those applications still need to be processed. More here.