The ‘Great Resignation’ - what can we learn? 🤔
No matter where you look, the ‘Great Resignation’ is everywhere on major news sites, blogs and social media.
Originally coined by Anthony Klotz, a professor at Mays Business School, the Great Resignation has been a part of shaping the future of what matters to us when it comes to work and careers. Whether it’s better pay, benefits or an improved work-life balance. Many simply quit because they’re burned out.
In case you’re not aware, the Great Resignation is where workers around the world have quit their job (what a shock). And the impact of this? Well, according to the Office of National Statistics, there was a record number of job openings exceeding one million for the first time.
In America, four million people left their jobs in April. Followed by ten million jobs available in August.
And a study from Microsoft shows that forty one percent of the global workforce is considering leaving their current employer in the next year (along with some other interesting statistics).
So The Great Resignation is in full swing, with no signs of slowing down. I think the image used in this article by The Guardian, of where all the employees at a Burger King restaurant have quit sums the situation well.
Over the past year, I’ve seen the impact of what the Great Resignation has had on me and my thoughts on it. I’ve seen first hand at what a resignation (and multiple resignations) can do. I recently resigned from my last job myself so I’ve been thinking about this recently.
So this week on my blog, I’m going to be looking at The Great Resignation from two perspectives. From watching people leave to being a leaver myself.
Now you might have read a few articles about this topic and might be thinking “Oh no, I’m not reading this! Go back to talking about code!” - but hear me out! I’ve seen this happen over the year and I think sharing my perspective as someone who has left a job and seen the impact of it might be interesting.
On watching others leave
It’s weird seeing a lot of people leave. You can’t help but have a sinking feeling as you watch the number of people on your team start to decrease. It’s hard to not have negative feelings as you see people that you’ve enjoyed working with leave.
One of the main things I’ve experienced is the feeling of being left behind, how the morale and mood among colleagues decreases with each leaver. Plus, there’s the fear that the workload would increase after people leave. This comic from Work Chronicles sums it up well.
This article from BBC Worklife is something that I’ve seen first hand. Resignations can spread like wildfire. As soon as a one person leaves, the thought of leaving just pops into everyone’s heads. And from that point on, it’s only a matter of time until another person resigns. And then another person, and so on.
But it’s not just the number of employees leaving. It can be if certain employees leave that may push others to do the same thing.
It would get to a point where you could say ‘another week, another leaving card’.
The low morale and negative mood can also play a role in causing people to leave. Why would you want to work in an environment that takes a toll on your mental health? It also doesn’t help if your workload becomes unmanageable.
Then there is the situation on where people want to work. Now, working from home isn’t for everyone. There may not be enough space to work from home or you may want to have a dedicated working space. Regardless, how a business approaches this can cause people to resign. And I’ve seen this be a reason for leaving.
When you take the factors above into account, it’s no surprise that people are leaving their jobs. Employee retention is now more important than ever before.
On leaving
I worked at my last job for five years, and for me, leaving it was a very hard thing to do. After being there for so long and getting used to working with my colleagues and being able to know so much about a system, a change like this is kind of scary.
Not just scary for moving job but also moving job in this new world of work. Although I’ve worked from home for over a year now, there are some parts of being in the office that I’ll miss.
The situation of me leaving didn’t really hit until a few days before I was due to leave. Being with a business for five years is a long time. So starting from the beginning and not knowing much about what I’m working on is going to be an interesting learning experience.
One aspect of leaving I didn’t anticipate was the amount of handover work I needed to do. Being someone who had knowledge on several systems, I had a lot of documentation to write, meetings to organise and questions to answer. It made me think of what would happen to the team once I had left.
What can companies learn from this?
I always believe that there is an opportunity to learn from experiences, and the Great Resignation is no exception.
Listen to your employees
Seriously, taking the time to listen is important. You can’t improve unless you take the time to listen.
So organise a group meeting or even a one-to-one and just listen. You may not like what you hear but it’s important to understand what is causing your employees to leave.
Take action and improve
Following from the previous point of listening, take action. And don’t leave it too late, do it as soon as you can. Showing progress is important so your employees know that you’re taking feedback seriously and are taking steps to improve the working environment.
Repeat! (And keep repeating!)
These steps should be a continuous cycle. Just don’t do one round of feedback, make collecting feedback from employees something that happens often.
You could:
- Send a survey out once a quarter
- Have a weekly meeting to share what’s being worked on
- Be available for a conversation with your employees
What’s important here is that this process leads to actions that are implemented. Don’t collect feedback and do nothing, keep people in the loop on what’s happening.
What can we learn from this?
Your mental health is important
The study from Microsoft showed that:
- One in five global survey respondents say that their employer doesn’t care about their work life balance
- Fifty-four percent feel overworked
- Thirty-nine percent feel exhausted
These stats are terrifying. No wonder people are leaving their jobs!
Companies around the world need to pay attention to the mental health of their employees.
Remote working is here to stay (whether you like it or not)
The study from Microsoft shows that over seventy percent of workers want flexible work options to continue. I’ve seen people find new jobs where they work remotely and that was a major selling point to them.
How we work has changed forever and employers need to realise that. If you look on job sites such as LinkedIn, you can now filter down jobs if it’s on site, remote or hybrid.
Conclusion
This past year has been a year of change for the workplace. Businesses have learned that they need to do more improve employee retention and I hope that businesses continue to improve.
I think The Great Resignation is a once in a lifetime event, the pandemic has shown that people can be productive when they are working from home as well as in the office (the future of the office is a separate topic altogether, I wrote about that a few months ago, why not give it a read?).
Retaining employees is now going to be the next big challenge for companies. It won’t be about competing with companies in the local area, it’ll be about competing with companies around the world.
People have had time to evaluate what matters to them, and now businesses need to take the time to listen, engage and act. It’s more important now than ever before.
But when will The Great Resignation come to an end? I’m not sure myself. We could be in for many more resignations to come yet. In fact, I saw this interesting article on Wired that those who left may end up wanting their old jobs back.
We’ll have to wait and see if this happens.
Thanks for reading! 👏
