How Leaders can Respond to the Great Resignation - Inclusive Leadership and Stay Interviews

For anyone who doubted, the data is in. The Great Resignation is real and it’s happening. The U.S. Department of Labor reports that during the months of April, May, and June 2021 a total of 11.5 million workers quit their jobs. And it’s not over. According to Gallup research, 48 percent of employees are actively looking to make a change, and according to Personio research, nearly 1:4 will do so in the next six months. Those looking for new opportunities will find ripe opportunities; in June in the U.S. hit an all-time high of 10.1 million job openings.

At DLS PARTNERS LLC, we have found that many organizations are beginning to understand that retaining employees during The Great Resignation is recognizing that workplace culture has changed. For the first time experts are say the employee and not the employer is in the driving seat. We are seeing leaders who have shown resiliency and adopted inclusive leadership principles to move their organizations and themselves into a space where psychological safety for their associates is normalized and listening to all employees is a leadership norm and practice.

What is so critical and important about inclusive leadership? Inclusive leadership is emerging as a unique and critical capability helping organizations adapt to diverse customers, markets, ideas and talent. For those working around a leader, such as a manager, direct report or peer, the single most important trait generating a sense of inclusiveness is a leader’s visible awareness of bias. But to fully capitalize on their cognizance of bias, leaders also must express both humility and empathy. When we discuss the concepts of humility and empathy as leadership skills, the reception will always be mixed. It is important to realize that even though emotional intelligence has been with us for over thirty years, many organizations are wholly unfamiliar with these concepts.

We have also found that some organizations may not be ready to implement certain tools like stay interviews because the leadership culture is not necessarily open to employees expressing their opinions and perspectives. This is where an inclusion survey from a leading organization behavioral firm like Culture Amp can support as well as provide expertise and research on employee engagement.

We recommend that any culture change effort be articulated and framed as such. If you are a CEO, President, Executive Director or Chief Human Resource Officer, it is critical to not roll out initiatives without first understanding what and how the initiative impacts your organization. Some changes are targeted and specific; others are wide scale change. Make sure your are able to express and clearly articulate the difference.

Even though stay interview have been a best practice for many years, we recognize that this is new too many organizations. Stay interviews are similar to an?exit interview, except they are conversations with current employees who either aren’t planning to leave, or haven’t announced their intentions to leave yet. These conversations aim to understand the secret sauce to?employee retention, or what an individual loves about working at your company, and what your business needs to change in order to keep them engaged and retained.These conversations can also be used to assess an individual’s flight risk level, which can help your business anticipate hiring needs or jumpstart?succession planning.

If you need a speaker on the topic of Inclusive Leadership or what like to explore how to implement stay interviews, DM me.