Year-End Reflection: The (Right) Time to Change

As 2021 comes to a close, I find myself reflecting on this past year that feels a bit like a roller coaster ride. We started the year hopeful that the COVID-19 pandemic would soon be over, we were confident that the vaccines would improve our herd immunity in a significant way that by mid-2021, life could go back to normal, or as close to “normal” as possible.

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By mid-2021 however, it seemed the exact opposite happened. Instead of the pandemic slowing down and life returning to “normal”, we found ourselves once again in lockdown, with the Delta variant wreaking havoc in our healthcare system and forcing us to deal with the painful question of, “What if life never goes back to normal?”.

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It was that question that made my son, who is in university now, start to reconsider his future. It wasn’t so much that he began to change his plans for his future, but more that he changed his mindset about the future. He told me that he has abandoned the idea of making a long-term plan. He was going to take it year by year, and basically see how things go each year. These past two years life has forced us to change so much that it seems even the duration of our personal development or our metamorphosis has to be accelerated as well and it’s the same in the workplace.

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As an HR practitioner, I have been noticing how quickly people change companies, or even careers over the last few years - and even more so after the pandemic. Back in the day, we used to work for at least five years in a company before moving on to the next, now, especially amongst millennials - to stay in a company for longer than two years seems to be a record.

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“It does make me wonder if real change, real adaptation, and real growth actually takes place when we only stay for a brief period of time in one place before hopping off to the next. Despite change being the only constant in life, constant change may be detrimental to our personal and character development. It takes time for real change to take root and shape our character in a deep and meaningful way. In my opinion, without being completely rooted, the changes and growth within us feel a bit superficial. They lack a certain depth.”

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We have been through a year that has more or less forced us to constantly change and adapt - knowing that nothing was for certain. Most of us have made major changes in our lives, but are these the kind of changes that will help us grow and develop? Is it a real and lasting change? Do we change because we want to or because we have to? How do we know that this is truly the time for us to change? And what can we, as HR practitioners, do to respond to the employees’ desire to constantly and rapidly change?

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I certainly don’t have the answers yet, but if we start this conversation - maybe this can be something that helps us to not only able to constantly adapt and change but, as HR practitioners and as a company, also create room for change without sacrificing the system that’s put in place to help employees grow - both in their career and in their personal development.