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Great Resignation – Lessons And What Next

Post COVID: Great Resignation and Causes

Changed Priorities

Why did the Great Resignation happen? Because we’re human. As we know, our experiences create our perceptions. These then determine our behaviour in response to different situations. All of us had come through two years of being locked in and locked down. We all saw serious illness on a scale that none of us had ever experienced. Some of us suffered personal tragedy. It was brought home to each of us how precious and short life could be. As a result, many of us reprioritised what was important in our lives. For most, this meant that the importance of work compared to the importance of family, free time, quality of life and wellbeing significantly dropped. It was probably the greatest reality check many of us have ever experienced.

It was those changed perceptions that raised the benchmarks by which we measured what we wanted and expected from work. People are no longer prepared to tolerate poor leadership, excessive work hours, not being treated with respect, having our personal lives undervalued, not being able to grow and develop as a person or see a positive future ahead.

Pre-COVID, people tolerated these. Post-COVID, the world is different.

That feeling was so powerful that, as the world of work slowly re-opened, record numbers of employees (36%) left their current job without having a new role to go to, a resignation rate never seen before.

The Great “I’m Not Going Back”

The Great Resignation records people who returned to work when able and who then quit their jobs. But there were also a large number of people whose pre-pandemic work experience left them deciding not to return to work at all! Many unemployed and furloughed workers had time to think about what mattered most to them in their work life and what they truly wanted. For many, their pre-COVID jobs didn’t make the grade.

Employee Engagement Drops

This is also confirmed by employee engagement scores; the percentage of people in an organisation who consistently give their best. For 10 years, this percentage has been rising across the board. During COVID, it fell, perhaps unsurprisingly. But the trend has continued post-pandemic. The most plausible reason is not that leaders have gotten worse since the return to work but rather that people now have higher expectations of them. The evidence supports this; according to Gallup in the UK, employee engagement is now down at around 9%.

Take a moment to reflect on that. This means that only 9% of people on average in UK organisations are giving their best. That’s worrying enough, but what about the other 91%?

Taking aggregate Gallup data from across Europe, potentially of these 70% are only “sometimes engaged” – which is not good – and about 20% are “disengaged” – which is a serious problem.

Employee Engagement in the UK

 

What does disengaged mean? It means this: disengaged people aren’t just apathetic to the organisation’s objectives, they are negatively impacting it. To counter the impact of one disengaged person on a team you need to have 4 people or more to prevent this. The estimated impact of the disengaged is a potential loss of between £50-70bn a year. Not only do they negatively impact others at work but they have the same impact at home with gallup funding 51% behaved badly towards friends of family as a result. Bringing Work Problems Home (gallup.com).

How good can things be if you get leadership right? WD40, the household chemicals manufacturer, led by long time CEO Garry Ridge has an engagement rate of 93%.

The Perfect Storm

When you combine the change in personal perceptions and priorities that COVID has caused, the significant number of jobs suddenly coming on to the market as businesses reopened, the ease of access to a new job literally anywhere in the world via the Internet and the high proportion of people who are prepared to leave jobs without another to go to it, you have the perfect storm; the Great Resignation.

Do Employers Understand Why People Left?

Why did people leave their jobs? Here are the reasons people gave:

  • Uncaring leaders: 35%,
  • Unsustainable workloads: 35%,
  • Lack of advancement potential: 35%,
  • Lack of meaningful work: 30%
Why did people leave their jobs?

 

Employers, however, believe the top reasons are different. They say that people left because they wanted better pay, were poached, or had health concerns. Note that none of these reasons attribute any blame to the employer. This demonstrates poor management of recording the cause of employee exits. They do not accurately reflect the reasons for departure.

All of this serves to demonstrate why organisations which do not try to understand the drivers behind The Great Resignation are at significant risk.

Chris Roebuck
Chris Roebuckhttps://chrisroebuck.live/
Chris Roebuck is a speaker, advisor and executive coach who has a unique approach that helps leaders, teams, and organisations reach their full potential and be successful in just three steps. This is proven to add investor value, deliver better customer service, build the brand externally, develop innovation and entrepreneurial thinking, optimise risk and boost the bottom line by 10% + at no cost. Chris unique experience as a leader in the military, business, government and as a Hon Visiting Professor of Transformational Leadership has enabled him to develop this innovative, entrepreneurial and highly effective new approach for leaders and organisations to achieve success: I CARE Leadership. It’s simply about you being the leader people always give their best for empowered by authentic and inspirational servant leadership. Chris shows how building on leaders current knowledge via simple, practical day to day actions can immediately deliver real improvements at all levels; individual, team, and organisation. One organisation who implemented it increased the number of staff happy to recommend it as “a great place to work” to friends or family in 2 years from 40% to 82%, an exceptional change, and increased revenue by 40%. When Global Head of Leadership at UBS, 70,000 staff & 100 countries, his team helped the bank transform organisational performance to increase profitability by 235%, market capitalisation by 50% and win awards. This is now a Harvard Case Study. Chris experience spans many sectors and geographies; from having held senior roles in UBS, HSBC, KPMG & London Underground to advising legal firms and construction, from the UK National Health Service of 1.4m staff and UK Government to the Red Cross in Myanmar, from Investment banks in London to Middle East Telecoms, from the Chinese Space Programme to retail in USA and many more. Chris has been quoted as a business leadership expert globally in the Harvard Business Review China, FT, Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, New York Times, Business Week, Time Magazine, Washington Post, Times of India, Straits & Gulf Times and many other titles. He has been interviewed on TV over 350 on leadership and business issues on BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, and other channels and his books have been translated into 11 languages. Chris has been recognised as one of the Most Influential HR Thinkers regularly since 2011 by the HR profession.

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