The results are in, and it appears we are heading for what economists have termed ‘the great resignation’. Keeping hold of good people has always been a key area of focus, at least for the switched-on employers out there. I’ve lost count of the times we have worked with quite brilliant practitioners, who are utterly frustrated with their organisations paying lip service to the idea of “talent retention” but do little to put their money where their mouth is.
These practitioners understand, without doubt, that focusing on employee retention is critical, and they also understand what needs to be done, but their efforts fall on deaf ears. I’m cautiously optimistic that now is their time to get their senior teams, and their decision makers to sit up and take notice, if they are to avoid the predicted mass exodus of talent.
A recent Microsoft survey of some 30,000 global workers indicated that 41% were considering leaving or changing professions. And research from Personio of workers in the UK and Ireland, found that 38% are intending to leave their job within the next 6 months. And when you overlay the current skills crisis in the UK, it is blindingly obvious that something needs to change. We need to create and build organisations where people have a positive experience, where they are engaged, where they thrive, where they want to stay and do their best work. Is that too much to ask?
So how did we get here? First up let’s be honest, some, perhaps many, organisations have been getting it wrong with their people for years. But the pandemic has exacerbated this. Employees are finally seeing the light and conditions are such that they don’t have to put up with poor experiences, shoddy practice, mediocre bosses, and toxic workplaces anymore. We’re beginning to see a shift of power away from the organisation and towards the employee.
There are a number of reasons we’re moving to, what some economists have dubbed, the ‘Great Resignation’. The pandemic enabled employees to prove that they could be trusted to work flexibly and that a soul-destroying commute was not required. And unsurprisingly, they are not keen to give up these better ways of working, so the only option might be to leave their current employer and look for a more forward-thinking place to work. And there’s nothing like a global pandemic to provide a big dose of perspective and focus you on what really matters in life. In the Persino study, over half of the respondents said that a decrease in their work-life balance or a toxic culture were the reasons they were planning to quit. The early indications are that employees are just not prepared to be treated badly anymore. People quite rightly want to work somewhere where they are valued, respected, treated like a person not a machine.
The silver lining to the great resignation is that it just might bring about meaningful, lasting change to the way organisations treat their people. At least that is what we, and the practitioners we work with, are hoping for: that finally, organisations will move beyond paying lip service to employee retention and focus on developing positive experiences for their people.
This stuff is not rocket science; we all know when you get it right with your people, great things will happen.
If you want to find out more about how we work with practitioners like you, to convince sceptical stakeholders that the time has come to make a positive change to experience your people have then we would love to hear from you.
