The Great Resignation, how to mitigate it, and The Great Renewal of 2022

With farewell posts on LinkedIn becoming increasingly common, I am sure you know this all too well and feeling it too... the Great Resignation of end 2021/ 2022 is definitely upon us. I can easily count no less than 10 friends, colleagues, ex-colleagues or associates who have left or plan to quit their current jobs. So what can companies do about this? As someone who had recently resigned, talked to founders and managers quite a bit, and have personally seen a few cycles of people leaving and entering my company previously, I offer a few thoughts and mitigation plans that you might find useful.

People typically leave for a few reasons (one or more from this list)…

1. Salary/ Compensation
2. The company’s vision/ mission/ direction
3. Company’s culture/ internal politics/ managerial or team dynamics
4. Been at it for a long time… desires a change of environment?

Salary/ Compensation

To mitigate the Salary issue, I would suggest you do the following:

1. Assume everyone in your team is planning to leave in the next 6-10 months.

Hate to say this.. but yup.. even you the rockstar CEO or manager might not be able to keep everyone! (So don't take every departure personally)

2. Categorise your teams into 3 buckets:

• A: Core team, your absolutely must-keeps (Impact to your organisation would be many months of productivity or millions of dollars lost in ideas, implementation, team morale, industry standing/ leadership etc)
• B: Good to keep (Impact to your organisation is months of lost productivity, hard to replace/ long to scale skill sets or hundreds of thousands of dollars potential lost in ideas, implementation, team morale etc)
• C: The Rest (Impact to your team is minimal. Skill set is relatively easily replaceable. The person’s performance is mid range)

3. Create bespoke retention packages for team members in categories (A) and (B) via a combination of the following:

• Time based retention bonuses of 2, 3 to 6 X monthly salary or more. (Do you know that other companies that are aggressive on hiring could be offering sign-on bonuses to bring new talents over to them?).
• Off-cycle salary adjustments (Because your competitors don’t synchronise their recruitment with your salary review cycles... just sayin ~_^)
• ESOPs. However, this might not be that useful if there is no liquidity event in the foreseeable future and your company’s vision/ mission/ direction is also lacking, which I will address next.

The Company’s Vision/ Mission/ Direction

I remember a period of time a few years back in Fave, when we were losing team members because many felt that our solution wasn’t quite addressing the market needs anymore. Our solution sets were stagnating and the market was shifting ahead of us.

It was a painful period as we started tightening up our vision, strategy... killed some existing projects and placed some big bets on evolving our product offerings. It worked wonderfully but was a 1-2 year pivot!

If your plans are getting tired, simply not working as well or not in tune with where your industry is heading, I would suggest a strategy recalibration… and relaunch your company’s direction and mission. In my experience, leading via having a strong view of the future that you want your company to head towards (that is leading-edge, invigorating, challenging, worthwhile and meaningful) is critical in attracting, retaining and motivating your teams.

A rebranding might be good to cap this off too, for example FB? → Meta… Square → Block, depending on the stage of your company’s evolution and how deep the pivot might be.

Company Culture

I quote a dear ex colleague who sent me this message recently… “I just wanted to say you were a phenomenal boss. I've never met anyone that cares so much about their team and that spends so much time and effort building culture and making sure people are setup to give their best and succeed. I'm forever thankful for everything you taught me and I hope I can be half the manager you were some day. Thanks for making sure I stayed at Fave for as long as I did. What an amazing school. You rock, AP. :) “?

and additionally from the teams over the years….

“Thank you @AP Ng for being such a great leader, teacher, mentor in the company! Treasured all the meetings I’ve attended with you and learnt so much all the time”

“I remember msging u on LinkedIn & after the first interview with u, being convinced that this place had something special to offer. That something special was the culture you built here. Thanks for choosing me, giving me a Fave family & a beautiful life in Singapore. Thanks for leading us with your every ounce of positivity , resilience, drive. We are what we are today, thanks to you ??????”

“Thank you to one of the best leaders I ever had in the workforce. You are my Game Changer and thank you for being instrumental in my personal growth. “

“With you around, I always feel that I can accomplish anything!”

The above isn’t to impress you, but to impress upon you how important culture is to retaining and motivating teams (and what team members might appreciate from you). I can go at this for hours but in short I offer 5 quick check points:

1. Create an environment where people are willing to give ideas and try. Your job is to really listen and make a call to do it, or if not, explain why not now and perhaps as a later phase project. Importantly, also make sure the work environment is a safe place to try and get up again if fail.
2. Empower your teams. Give them resources and help them achieve. Help them overcome roadblocks.
3. Encourage your teams. Celebrate small and big wins. Also, grow them! Sometimes a high potential team member can’t see her/ himself in a leadership role yet…? Your job would then be to encourage, nurture, teach, guide and mould this person, bit by bit, month by month, year by year.?
4. Empathy and real care. From work problems to personal issues and challenges to their longer term career and personal goals.?
5. Teamwork is key. Encourage and reinforce teamwork all the time. If a top performer isn’t a team player, let that person go. Like I always tell my teams… All of Us are Better and Smarter than One of Us. Teamwork makes the Dream work!

Been at it a long while and feeling jaded or yearning a change

I have had the pleasure of working with individuals who have been with a company for 5, 7, even 10 years. Pretty incredible and what keeps them going at it with you really is a summation of the earlier 3 points. Additionally, I shall now touch on their job scopes and responsibilities as follow:

1. Try shifting the teams around. I have had HR executives become stellar BDs… or sales executives becoming awesome marketing planners and vice versa, marketing folks becoming product/ project managers. Try to capture these aspirations early on, during 1-1s or during formal review and feedback sessions. And then work with them to shift, shuffle or expose their experience/ career path wherever feasible and timely.
2. Promote them! You will often not be able to promote someone who has 10/10 skills sets check list ticked and super ready for the job (it will be too late in that case, right? This individual would probably have left by then). As long as someone is 70 - 80% there… give him/ her the promotion already and let the person grow into the job, with your leadership guidance to ensure she/ he is set up for success.
3. Give them projects that aren't exactly their BAUs. Let them suggest side projects to do, or show them initiatives from other divisions that need help. Typically their current KPIs do not change, but rather, these are added on passion projects or responsibilities that help them learn new skills or broaden their perspectives.
4. Let them take a sabbatical or long break to recharge. Be it a full time or part time course, or simply take a 3 months leave to allow them to clear their minds and do the things outside of work that they might have interests in. They could then boomerang back in a few weeks/ months stronger and recharged for the next wave of deep work.
5. Set new goals and challenges. People might feel a need to move on sometimes simply because they have achieved their professional goals with your organisation, set out perhaps 2,3 or 5 years back. Maybe this team member was recruited 3 years back to help you scale up to 1Million subscribers, 100K transactions a day or get funding of $100M. And they have just achieved it 2 months ago. What then? Time to move on? So if possible for such executives... recalibrate and find new bigger EPIC goals to achieve! (wth commensurate monetary and professional rewards) :)
6. Battle fatigue & chain reaction. They might have went through the ups and downs of Covid 19 pandemic and fought alongside you over the past 2 years with blood, sweat and tears (and perhaps a pay cut or two) and just feeling tired. Furthermore, with pockets of pandemic recovery on the horizon, opportunities are starting to emerge. When one person leaves, a chain reaction might be ignited too. Best way around this is to firstly appreciate them, and then look through the above 5 points and implement whatever makes sense to your situation.

The Great Renewal of 2022

Despite all of the above, it isn’t always possible to retain every core team member. In fact, some might have just outgrown your organisation and are ready to take on bigger responsibilities in another bigger company or start up. Be happy for them and embrace it. I have seen executives whom I have worked with grow into fantastic leaders in awesome companies and that makes me proud and fulfilled!

Many are talking about the great resignation.... but with it comes a great renewal! ??

With people inevitably changing jobs en masse in 2022, one can expect cross pollination of ideas from company to company, industry to industry. Ideas in company/ industry A will not yield the same results if it is implemented in company/ industry B because of different ecosystems and resources. In fact ideas and projects might grow tangentially, which I believe will serve as a great source of innovation and overall greater value creation.

To those of you who decide to stay in your current company, don't be overly worried or feel down when a colleague leaves. Everyone is at a different stage of their career and journey with your company. It may not apply to you so don't just follow suit and leave. When the company adds new blood, you will get fresh perspectives and ideas as well... which just might make your company and your current role even more exciting and impactful! Besides, you could be the next gen leadership due to vacated positions too.

Meanwhile, if you are in management and HR, keep working on the above points and also ensure your leadership and team recruitment pipeline is healthy and growing to weather through the great resignation of 2022. It's definitely a really difficult period so my heart goes out to you. Hang in there!

With Lunar New Year around the corner… Here's wishing everyone who celebrates it a Happy, Prosperous and Healthy New Year. 恭喜发财 万事如意! May you HUAT in the year of the Tiger. Keep Roaring! ??

Cover image by Claire, IG @sqwooshie