Is TikTok the New Glassdoor?

What is QuitTok, and What Does It Mean for Employers?

In November of 2021, the US labor market broke a record. 4.5 million Americans, or 3% of the labor force,?quit?their jobs. It was the highest rate of resignation since the Department of Labor began tracking the statistic in 2001. Analysts and pundits were quick to name the trend the Great Resignation.

Economists say that a high resignation rate is a good thing. It means employers are hiring. Most employees who quit either have a job lined up or believe they can get one in fairly short order. In other words, people have confidence in the economy. On a smaller scale, even employers who find themselves temporarily short-staffed when an employee resigns should have relatively little trouble finding a replacement. After all, the country is full of qualified people who recently quit their jobs.

However, this is cold comfort for employers who are having trouble holding onto employees. A short-staffed workplace is inefficient, as is a workplace that's training new employees. Hiring specialists?believe?that the cost to replace an employee is 33% of that employee's annual salary. And that's only if the employee quits on good terms. What if you have a worker who quits a little more gleefully?

QuitTok'ing

Picture this: you're an HR manager for the small business XYCorp. One day, a clerk comes in and hands you a resignation letter. You accept it, talk him through how to shut down his company email account, and call his manager to tell him that he has to reassign some jobs. The next day, as you're writing a job posting for his old position, you get an email from a friend with the subject line "Don't you work there?"

You open it and find a video of your former co-worker sitting in his cubicle and beaming as a peppy pop song plays. "I'm about to quit the worst job I've ever had in my life," he says. "Please, if you value your sanity, never work for XYCorp." It was shared on the short video service TikTok and has two million views. You close the job posting you were writing.

As resignations rise, so do viral social media posts about them. Dedicated sites like GlassDoor have long been a way for ex-employees to warn jobseekers directly, but lately, posts on social forums like Reddit and Twitter have reached much further. TikTok is a particular favorite for this type of post, with so-called QuitTok videos garnering?hundreds of millions?of views. These posts are seen not only by jobseekers, but also by potential customers. What does a QuitTok mean for a company's brand reputation?

Staying on the internet's good side

Fortunately, keeping yourself from becoming Twitter's villain of the day can be as simple as applying the employee retention strategies every good manager knows. Some of the reasons why employees are quitting their jobs in the 2020s are unique to this point in history. A recent?survey?by CareerPlug showed that 13% of people who are thinking about quitting are doing so because they don't feel safe from COVID. Keeping an employee could be as simple as providing better masks in the workplace, granting more paid sick leave, or offering the option to work from home.

However, most of the reasons why people want to quit are the same reasons why people have always wanted to quit. Low pay is still the number one concern, followed by insufficient benefits. Remember that health insurance is a top-of-mind concern in the pandemic era. The third-place reason, tied with COVID safety concerns, is scheduling. Bear that in mind the next time an employee requests a shift change.

It's no secret that employees get excited about switching jobs, and everyone has had a job that they fantasize about quitting. Now, in the age of social media, those moments of celebration can go viral. But it's every manager's job to work to keep experienced employees on their side, so that they don't wind up as social media villains.