The discontent of employees with 21st century working conditions has resulted in the "Great Resignation" with more than 90 million Americans quitting their jobs in 2021 and 2022 (Lagurci, 2022). In total, 50% of the U.S. workforce has been identified by the Wall Street Journal as "Quiet Quitters" who have chosen not to take on work that is outside of their job descriptions (Smith, 2022). The cause of this employee resistance has been the failure of employers to meet employees' expectations about the nature of work--raising important concerns about the importance of organization cultures in leading today's employees and the most effective ways to meet employers' and employees' long-term needs (Mahand & Caldwell, 2023).

The purpose of this paper is to address the status of employer-employee relationships in the modern organization and to identify what employers and employees can do to create healthier organization cultures so that organizations and employees can flourish in today's challenging economic times. We begin by describing the current nature of the modern organization, identifying characteristics that typify unhealthy and toxic organization cultures, and summarize the current perceptions of Millennial and Generation Z employees who work in those organizations. We then explain the importance of employees and organizations thriving in today's competitive marketplace. Drawing upon research about the modern organization, we identify ten recommendations to help organizations create healthier and thriving work cultures. Acknowledging the importance of a proactive response of employees, we also identify ten action steps which employees can take to help themselves and their organizations to thrive. We identify five contributions that this paper makes to practitioners and to the scholarly literature and conclude the paper by noting opportunities for future research.

The Nature of Organizations

Organizational culture is a by-product of a company's proclaimed values, the ways that people are treated, and the degree to which leader behaviors mirror their organization's priorities and standards (Kumar, 2016). When leaders, managers, and supervisors align their actions with the values which they espouse and create systems that reinforce those same values, their culture consistently earns the trust and commitment of their employees (Schein & Schein, 2016). Companies like Enterprise Rent-A-Car (Busse, Swinkels, & Merkley, 2017), Herman Miller Furniture (Euchner, 2014), and Southwest Airlines (Marshall & Adamic, 2010) are known for their corporate cultures; consistently outperform competitors; achieve greater employee engagement, and experience less turnover (Cameron, 2009).

Unhealthy organizational cultures consist of working conditions which seem to serve an organization's short-term needs but that are ultimately counterproductive--and those cultures fail to create relationships that are based upon mutual respect and shared values (Lyons, 2022). In organizations with unhealthy cultures, employees dread going to work, feel that they cannot always be honest with their managers, and believe that their organizations are often unfair in their treatment of employees (Mirza, 2019). According to a Harvard Business Review report written by Villanova University's Manuela Priesemuth (2020), abusive behavior at work is contagious and becomes the standard of "how it's done around here" in an organization.

Inevitably, mistreatment of employees...