Great Resignation: Karmic Justice

Employees across the globe are returning back to office with the safety of covid vaccinations. But the bigger news is a lot of them are not returning and a lot many of them are not returning to the organizations where they were Pre-Covid or during Covid.

Management Thinkers and Organizational Leaders across the world are talking about Great Resignation.

What is Causing it?

This is not the result of only what happened during COVID. This is bigger than that. There are two sides to this story.

ORGANIZATION SIDE

A) This is the continuation of Employees assertion to gain empowerment and control over their life and work. This has started right from the time Industrialization started in the Early 18th Century and further strangled its control over people working in these organizations around the early 20th century. It is around the mid-1900 when People started realizing the inherent problems of the organization and its oppressive control. From then onwards there have been continuous efforts by many successful organizations to design organizations that are centred around People. However, only a minuscule of people was working in these organizations. For a large number of people, this remained a dream.

B) IT revolution around the late 1990s and early 2000 fast-tracked this dream of bringing a balance between life and work of people. A number of these organizations emerged as desired places to work. Other industry sectors tried to emulate but in a partial manner.

C) While COVID has been scared people around the world for the whole of 2020 and 2021, Some interesting events also happened in parallel. You may be wondering what parallel events I am talking about? Let me elaborate:

1. A large number of Organizations failed to protect their employees and went on downsizing. Some people may say that is economics. I say that's bad economics. Many of these organizations who did it were long-running organizations seating on cash piles. They found a great opportunity to create a lean organization in the pretext of COVID. While they saw employee costs they were blind to savings on office, travel and infra.
2. Some Humanistic Organizations understood the pain of Humanity: They innovated and shaped the early contours of the Future of Work. This is not a mean achievement. this learning will help them lead through the new ways of working and organizing.
3. Irrespective of which side of the value spectrum, Organizations adopted digitalization with open arms during COVID. This literally fast-tracked the adoption. What could have happened in 2025 got adopted and experimented with in 2020 and 2021.

PEOPLE SIDE

This side of the story is very humorous and painful at the same time.

a) Organizations went into lockdown. Yet Working hours, Work Stress increased for people. Work-Space Intruded in the Homes of People. Meetings entered bedrooms of People.

b) Grand Dilemma: While People were dealing with forced redundancies, pay-cuts, Fear of Covid and Loss of loved ones, Organizations were fighting with the issues of continuity of businesses.

c) Melting Blinkers: Many people realised that they were wearing blinkers all along to define their growth. Stay at home made them realize what all they have missed while building their so-called careers. Social Media platforms buzzed with People practising their lost hobbies. They reconnected with life once again. This time Puppet knew that He/She is the Puppet and ran towards Life Causing Great Resignation.

Should we be Worried

The answer to this is a big 'NO'. The history of work is much longer than the history of modern organizations. Organizations that were on the right side of this crisis and stayed with human values and adopted newer ways of working will be winners. Organizations that only saw an opportunity for cost optimization and downsizing will die just like many other times in the history of organizations to meet their Karmic Justice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOphIpddRAk&t=2s