4 Things Your Organization Needs To Do Today To Combat The Great Resignation

By now, we’ve all heard about the great resignation. And given its scope—47 million people quit their jobs in 2021—most of us have been directly impacted by it. Many organizations blame the pandemic for this unprecedented employment purge. But the reality is, it just added fuel to a movement that was already in motion.

The below chart from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics highlights the unsettling labor exit trend that has been growing yearly for over a decade:?

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Covid & The Great Resignation: Correlation Not Causation

So what’s happening? The labor market has changed, but organizations are failing to adapt. While there are varying economical, demographic, and social factors at play, it all boils down to one main theme: work-life balance.

Over the past decade, a trend towards more flexibility fueled largely by the tech industry (think: Google, Apple, HubSpot) has spilled over into other industries. Employees in finance, healthcare, and other trades known for their grueling hours are no longer willing to “burn both ends of the candle” to get ahead.?

According to a recent survey by Gartner, 65% of employees say the pandemic has made them rethink the place that work should have in their lives.?

Basically, the labor force is pushing back in a major way, and asking the question, “Is this job really worth it?”. In order for your business to survive and thrive over the next decade, you need to make sure the answer to that question is, “yes”.?

4 Ways Crucial Things Organizations Need To Know To Combat The Great Resignation

1. Vision & Purpose: Too many organizations fail to have a proper vision in place and even if they do, many don’t live by it. Feeding the bottom line can’t be the only reason you exist and certainly won’t retain employees. Having a clear vision in place will keep everyone bought into the mission which creates a ripple effect to helping you attract and retain top talent with the evolving skill sets you need to meet long term organizational goals.
2. Workforce planning: Workforce planning is arguably one of the most overlooked and undervalued aspects to any organization’s long term success. Being overly focused on the needs of today has proven to be the nail in the coffin time and time again for businesses. Take the current healthcare labor shortage. While covid undoubtedly exacerbated that situation, there have been nursing shortages for years prior to the pandemic. This is largely due to burnout, which is an unfortunate but inevitable byproduct of poor workforce planning.
3. Adaptive & Agile: Being able to adapt and effectively navigate change is essential to an organization’s longevity. Change, for better or worse, will impact your business. Being able to innovate and evolve alongside technology is arguably the most crucial determination of success. The reality is, you can have the best vision in the world but if you’re not agile, you’ll fail.
4. Social Responsibility: Your contribution back to society is to nurture your employees to have fruitful future pathways. How do you accomplish this? By providing ample training, reskilling, and upskilling opportunities. Investing in your employees is not only the socially responsible thing to do, but it’ll boost retention and arm your organization with the skills they need for the future.

Empowering Employees Through Strategic Workforce Planning?

Forecasts show there’s no end in sight to the Great Resignation. But instead of panicking, focus on arming your organization with the tools necessary to attract and retain top talent.?

The main way to achieve this is through strategic workforce planning (or SWP for short). We do a deep dive into the topic here, but at a high-level, but here’s the definition of SWP for you:

Strategic Workforce Planning (n): An ongoing assessment of current and future workforce needs—including changes to business goals, market trends, and evolution of roles— to ensure your labor demands match organizational direction.

Basically, SWP is an ongoing assessment of organizational needs that involves employee development and upskilling. By properly determining and planning for future workforce needs, you’ll ensure work-life balance remains fully intact and avoid high rates of churn or even worse, burnout.??????????????

If you’re ready to fight back against the Great Resignation by creating a workplace environment that fosters employee growth and well-being, let’s connect people to purpose together.