A new word/concept is creeping into my vocabulary: “The Great Resignation.” I have to confess, I’m not seeing much of this in my clients–at least not yet. Some are beginning to talk about it. Many friends and colleagues seem to be seeing indications of the Great Resignation.
The headlines focus on exhaustion and burnout, much driven by the hybrid work environment, WFH and other factors.
The pandemic may have been a forcing function accelerating the Great Resignation, but we’ve seen signs of it for perhaps the last decade. So we shouldn’t be surprised. And we created it!
The Great Resignation
For years, survey after survey has shown declining employee engagement. As far back as 2013, only 24% of executives believed their employees were highly engaged. Fast forward to today, 85% of employees are not engaged, 81% are looking to leave their jobs. Other research shows the adverse financial impact of poor employee engagement. In companies with high engagement profitability is much higher. Low company engagement has an adverse impact on revenues; across the U.S., more than $550B in lost revenue can be chalked up to low engagement.
And we’ve long known that employee engagement is a leading indicator to customer satisfaction and engagement.
In sales, we see indications of employee disengagement with plummeting average tenures, somewhere around 12 to 16 months for both sales people and managers.
We’ve seen this coming for years! It’s not a result of work from home, it’s not a result of a changing workforce, it’s not a result of the changing nature of work—though all of those contribute to it.
For years, too many have failed to create places where people want to work. We’ve substituted “cosmetic devices” to create an aura of a great workplace, whether it’s pay/comp, food, fitness centers, Friday afternoon beer busts; these don’t create meaning for people. Plus, when everyone else is doing the same, pretty soon it’s not a differentiator.
Workplace Constants
Work is changing, how work gets done is changing, the workforce is changing, but some things remain constant. People want to...
- Find meaning in their lives and work.
- Be heard, they want to know their points of view are valued.
- Know they are valued; that they're not just commodities that can be replaced by someone else.
- Learn, develop and grow.
- Trust their managers and leaders; in turn, they want to be trusted.
- Be successful, not just this year, but over their career. And they want to be part of an organization that is successful.
- Know their leaders and managers care. They are looking for coaching, mentoring and development.
- Be recognized, and not just financially.
These all point to some common elements, all critical to organizational and individual success: Purpose, culture, values, leadership.
Work is changing—-it always has.
But there are some common elements that persist.
The Great Resignation is not inevitable, it is the result of lack of attention/caring by executives. And they will, inevitably see this in the results.
We need to focus on how we create work and workplaces that engage the people we want to be part of it.
Contributed blog courtesy of Partners in Excellence, and authored by David Brock, president at Partners in Excellence. Read more contributed blogs from David Brock here.
