The 2024 North American Workplace Fulfillment Gap Index released today by Ricoh USA, Inc., a leading provider of integrated digital workplace solutions and services, found that fulfillment is an often-overlooked factor employers should focus on in their talent retention strategies as companies implement return to office (RTO) policies.
The report surveyed over 2,000 U.S. and Canadian adults between ages 18-64 who are employed full-time. The findings show that by nearly every measure, employers are falling short of their employees’ expectations to invest in organizational priorities that matter most to their fulfillment: work/life balance, purpose-driven work, a frictionless environment, and a growth-oriented culture. Workers ranked their overall fulfillment at a 6.89 out of 10, with pronounced fulfillment gaps between on-site (6.92) and remote workers (6.61).
Workplace fulfillment needs to factor into companies’ renewed RTO policies
Most employees (51%) reported feeling less fulfilled compared to five years ago, with hybrid workers feeling more fulfilled than their remote and on-site counterparts. And yet, most employees (84%) say their fulfillment is an important deciding factor in whether to stay at a company. This is particularly key for employers to balance with their enhanced enforcement of renewed RTO policies.
Generations (and countries) are divided in how they view the role of work in their lives, and the sense of fulfillment that comes with it
Approximately four in five (82%) North American workers say their sense of fulfillment at work helps them feel happier at home, but less than a quarter (21%) of employees feel completely fulfilled through their work. This disparity signals that most workers could be happier in their personal lives if the gap in workplace fulfillment closed. The findings also show a stark difference between the United States and Canada, with Americans (29%) more likely to be fulfilled at work compared to Canadians (14%).
Across generations, more Gen Z (63%) employees associate their personal identity with their profession than any other generation, with Boomers being the least likely to say this (52%). Gen Z employees are also the most likely (85%) to say that feeling fulfilled at work helps them feel fulfilled at home, yet they’re the least likely (79%) to say that they feel like they’ve contributed something positive to the world after a day’s work.
Most North American employees are optimistic that the advent of AI and other technology innovations will free up more of their time to do what they love
Contrary to popular belief, most employees view AI as a tool to enhance their productivity and support their current job roles as a collaborator instead of a replacement. Approximately two-thirds of respondents agree that AI will allow them to work more efficiently, with hybrid employees (73%) more likely to say this than remote and on-site workers. Additionally, three in five (60%) employees agree that AI tools could allow them to have more time for passions outside of work.
People are the fulfillment glue
North American employees rank their comradery with colleagues in their organization higher than any other measure of what’s keeping them engaged in their current role. Moreover, respondent data shows a correlation between feeling more disconnected from coworkers (47%) to feeling less fulfilled at work (51%). Nine in ten (91%) employees say the culture among those they work with is important to feeling fulfilled in their job, with hybrid workers more likely to say this than onsite workers.
For more details and insights regarding the survey results and optimizing the workplace experience, visit: https://www.ricoh-usa.com/en/solutions/workplace-experience
New “Codefinger” Ransomware Abuses Amazon AWS to Encrypt S3 Buckets
Posted in Commentary with tags Hacked on January 13, 2025 by itnerdResearchers have identified a new ransomware threat actor dubbed “Codefinger” targeting Amazon S3 buckets leveraging AWS’s Server-Side Encryption with Customer Provided Keys (SSE-C) to encrypt data, demand ransom payments for the symmetric AES-256 keys required to decrypt it. This attack doesn’t require the exploitation of any AWS vulnerability but instead relies on the threat actor first obtaining an AWS customer’s account credentials. With no known method to recover the data without paying the ransom, this tactic represents a significant evolution in ransomware capabilities
You can read more at the link below:
https://www.halcyon.ai/blog/abusing-aws-native-services-ransomware-encrypting-s3-buckets-with-sse-c
Darren James, a Senior Product Manager at Specops Software, commented:
“This is a great example of where password reuse or sticking with easy to guess passwords, along with no two-factor authentication, will come back to bite admins.
Admins are human just like the rest of us, and we all hate passwords and have too many to remember, so they, just like us, fall into bad habits, such as using default passwords or an easily guessable password, or reusing the same password across multiple systems. We’ve seen this on a number of occasions when we run our Specops Password Auditor tool and in our own analysis of stolen credentials.
It’s vitally important for admins especially to make sure that they use different passwords for all systems they use and enable strong, phishing resistant 2FA wherever possible.
If they had used these simple steps, this latest ransomware attack could have been avoided.
On the upside, at least SSE-C is a strong encryption method, but it is not good to see it used against the good guys rather than for them.”
This illustrates that doing the simple stuff will help you to not get pwned by threat actors. Thus this should serve as wake up call to do just that ASAP.
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