Why The Great Resignation is Not Over Yet & How Your Organization can Leverage

By Lilian Mutegi , Content Creator Nairobi Garage

By now, you have probably come across the term Great Resignation, Big Quit or Great Reshuffle

What at first was seen as a workforce blip has become a real trend: workers are quitting their jobs in droves

While this was initially a problem in the USA, now other parts of the globe are experiencing this.?

Signs of the "Great Resignation" are rippling across other parts, but the profile of workers ditching their jobs is different from those identified in the United States and elsewhere globally.

According to studies , about 47 million Americans quit their jobs in 2021, signaling record-breaking resignation rates.?

Globally, a key finding by consultancy firm PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey of more than 52,000 workers in 44 countries and territories, carried out in March 2022, showed that one in five workers globally planned to quit their jobs? by the end of 2022.

The Great Resignation (as economists have coined the employee exodus) reflects a deep dissatisfaction with previous employment situations.?

The COVID-19 global pandemic enabled workers to rethink their careers, work/life balance, long-term goals, and working conditions.

Before 2021, Mass Resignation, the year with the lowest monthly average was 2009, which saw around 1.75 million workers quit each month—less than half the 2021 average. 2010 and 2011 are the only other years with a monthly average below 2 million, highlighting the Great Recession's impact on workers' decisions to leave their jobs.

Economists and employers alike are left wondering: Will workers continue to leave their jobs in record numbers??

According to a study by McKinsey , among the employees they surveyed around the Great Resignation, 36 percent who had quit in the past six months did so without having a new job in hand.?

This is yet another way the Great Resignation differs fundamentally from previous downturn-and-recovery cycles and another sign that employers may be out of touch with just how hard the past 18 months have been for their workers.

Also, studies indicate worker confidence in the ability to get higher-paying jobs, which typically coincides with high economic stability, an abundance of people working, and low unemployment rates.

Conversely, during periods of high unemployment, resignation rates tend to decrease as hire rates also decrease. For example, during the Great Recession, the U.S. quit rate decreased from 2.0% to 1.3% while the hire rate fell from 3.7% to 2.8%.

What is causing the Great Resignation?

Of course, with everything starting off in 2021, The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the major contributors to the mass resignation.

The Pandemic allowed workers to rethink their careers, work conditions, and long-term goals.

As many workplaces attempted to bring their employees in-person, workers desired the freedom of remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to a survey by Bankrate in August 2021 schedule flexibility gave people an opportunity and a reason to look for a new job.

Additionally, many workers, particularly in younger cohorts, are seeking to gain a better work-life balance .

Most countries also offered COVID-19 stimulus payments and rises in unemployment benefits which has now allowed those who rely on low-wage jobs for survival to stay home, although places, where unemployment benefits were rolled back, did not see significant job creation as a result.

In another study conducted by Adobe , the exodus is being driven by Millennials and Generation Z, who are more likely to be dissatisfied with their work. More than half of Gen Z reported planning to seek a new job within the next year.

Harvard Business Review also found that the cohort between 30 and 45 years old had the greatest increase in resignation rates.

According to IDC’s Market Analysis Perspective: Worldwide Employee Experience Management Strategies, 2021, repor t a disrupted workforce accelerated changes at an exponential rate. Organizations had to quickly reinvent the way in which employees worked, creating the right technology experiences virtually and, importantly, maintaining or improving the corporate culture to ensure that workers felt cared for during a difficult time.

?The report further shows that other important factors that affect employee experience leading to mass exits could be,?

• Transparency, trust, and communications from employers
• The availability of a frictionless, collaborative work environment with digital experiences embedded in the flow of work
• An organizational culture of belonging and inclusion
• Employee listening, engagement, and recognition from management and peers
• Career development and upskilling opportunities
• Demonstrated corporate social responsibility

?The Solution…

Maybe now organizations need to see this as a great solution so as to change from Great Attrition to Great Attraction. Here are a few suggestions

Redefine your WHY: To sustain employee engagement and retention go back to your why. Check if your company’s purpose and values have shifted or not been consistently reflected in the company’s culture to date.?

Then with the current changes at the workplace, look into your why and redefine it to align with the new workplace trends.?

Re-evaluate your company’s culture and ensure it aligns with your purpose and vice versa. By building a purpose-driven, intentional commitment to culture aligned with strategy, your company has a competitive advantage to retain existing employees and attract like-minded talent with ease.?

Have a deeper look into your current culture: After redefining your why, ask yourself what’s missing or not working with your existing culture. Once identified, jot down ways to rectify these pain points.?

Remember that your employee’s engagement, commitment, and retention to your company, are primarily influenced by a deep sense of purpose and the feeling of being treated with equity and inclusion.?

Thus, it’s vital to drive a broad engagement where a deep understanding of purpose and values permeate across every corner of the organization and is embedded into the culture.

Create career paths and development opportunities for your employees: Employees are looking for jobs with better, stronger career trajectories. They desire both recognition and development.?

Smart companies find ways to reward people by promoting them not only into new roles but also to additional levels within their existing ones. This is one-way companies can more quickly reward and recognize people for good work.

Organizations can also invest in training for top-down leadership that teaches them to encourage employees and make them authentically feel there’s an urgency in the work they’re doing.

In other words, an employee should be made to feel their work is important and their manager trusts them.

That kind of training for managers should be executed consistently throughout an organization, from topline managers down to front-line managers,

Thrive to build a sense of community: As people resume work, remote work is not the only remedy for your team, but neither is a complete on-site return. In-person connectivity continues to have massive benefits for your organization.?

But it will require considerable management attention to get right as health and safety concerns continue to evolve, particularly because employees’ needs and expectations have changed.?

You can also opt for solutions like taking a desk or two for your team at flexible workspaces like Nairobi Garage as there are numerous advantages that come with this.?

With more companies adopting the Hybrid Work Model, coworking spaces can help your teams plug into a community that doesn’t necessarily have to be the colleagues.?

With a series of networking events happening in coworking spaces like Nairobi Garage , your team gets a chance to network with other like-minded people.

Check if our work environment is transactional: If your only response to attrition is to raise compensation, you’re unwittingly telling your people that your relationship with them is transactional and that their only reason to stay with you is a paycheck.?

Your very best people will always have a better cash offer somewhere else. You want to solve the problems of the whole person (not just their bank accounts) as well as the whole organization.

In conclusion, it is time for organizations to begin accepting that the great resignation is here and it will continue and may worsen before it gets better.?

As bad as it may sound, companies can also view this as a unique moment representing a big opportunity.?

In countries like Kenya other positive factors like tech companies setting up innovation hubs will cause start-ups and mid-sized companies to face mass resignations.?

To seize these opportunities, take a step back, listen, learn, and make the changes employees want—starting with a focus on the relational aspects of work that people have missed the most.?

By understanding why they are leaving and by acting thoughtfully, you may just be able to turn the Great Resignation into the Great Attraction.

#ENDS