Kickstart: Exploring what the 'Great Resignation' really means

Some human resources leaders have a message for companies struggling through the "Great Resignation": Stop calling it that.

"First of all, it's so hackneyed, and everyone's talking about it. It could be boring. But here's what I want you to think about," Keith Ferrazzi, the chairman of consulting group Ferrazzi Greenlight, said in a Harvard Business Review interview. "We're not in the Great Resignation. The Great Resignation is something that will be the outcome of companies that aren't proactive in the movement that's really going on."

Instead, Ferrazzi is urging businesses to reframe the labor shortage as "The Great Exploration," a term developed by Mike Clementi, the head of HR for consumer products global giant Unilever, a major buyer of plastics packaging.

"[It's] that exploration of, 'What do I really want for myself? What is work to me? What kind of flexibility do I require for myself?'" Ferrazzi said. "That's the Great Exploration. If you don't meet that face to face, you will be the victim and suffer the Great Resignation."

Reconsidering lessons from the pandemic can help companies refocus their operations to a "bottom-up" structure with opportunities for more employees to share ideas and contribute to growth, rather than hearing ideas only from a few people at the top, he said.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned Jack White's call for more companies to invest in vinyl record production. (He owns Third Man Records in addition to being a musician, and he has been adding presses.)

It turns out that vinyl isn't the only old music format that's been gaining listeners. In 2021, CD sales jumped 21 percent in the U.S., according to the Recording Industry Association of America. But obviously CD sales now aren't going to save 100 jobs cut by Sony as it closes its last U.S. CD production plant in Indiana.

Streaming remains the most popular way Americans consume music, making up 83 percent of sales, RIAA says, but with the growth in CDs and vinyl passing the $1 billion sales mark in 2021 for the first time in more than 30 years, there remains an appetite for physical copies of music.

Apparently, we can't go a day without another big announcement about lithium-ion battery production investments for the auto industry.

Just a day after LG Energy Solution said it would spend $1.7 billion to expand battery production in Holland, Mich., it joined with Stellantis — the parent of the Chrysler and Jeep brands — to say it would spend $4 billion to build the first lithium-ion battery facility in Canada.

The Windsor, Ontario, site, "the largest in the history of Ontario's auto sector, will help position Canada as a leader in North American EV battery production. It will also orient the company toward its EV targets," CEO Carlos Tavares said.