“I hate my job, so I’m going to quit.”
This used to be an idle threat in the wake of a tough week or an especially bad day at work. Or a daydream. Some of you might remember Johnny Paycheck’s country song Take This Job and Shove It. But today, employees are leaving in droves. And financial experts are calling it “The Great Resignation.”
This term isn’t a by-product of the pandemic; it was first coined back in 2019 (pre-pandemic) by Texas A&M professor Anthony Klotz, who at that time predicted a mass, voluntary exit from the workforce.
Folks, it’s happening.
A new Gallup poll found that 48% of America’s working population is actively job searching or watching for opportunities. Businesses are facing a huge quit rate. In April, May and June, a total of 11.5 million workers quit their jobs.
These are just the people who left by choice.
As we all know, all kinds of industries and companies shed millions of jobs during the pandemic. According to ILO Monitor, the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdown caused 114 million people worldwide to lose their jobs over 2020. That’s almost 9% of the global workforce.
As a result, most companies today are already screaming for additional employees. Manufacturing, accounting, retail, trucking, supply chain, etc. You name the industry, and they are looking to hire. Many are not having much success.
As we’ve moved further into the day-to-day of living and working in a pandemic, people are simply not coming back after temporary layoffs, or they are actively looking for something else. And many have already left to find that something else.
Employees got used to working from home and having more flexibility. Work-life balance improved for most; there was more time for family—especially for those with small children. I think we were already moving to a “work from anywhere” model in a lot of cases, but the pandemic speeded things up by about 10 years.
Many of these employees are choosing not to go back to business as usual. This means a record-high number of unfilled positions. And the cost of any turnover is expensive.
Interestingly, even in the midst of global economic upheaval, “The Great Resignation” is a workplace issue for the most part. The people resigning are those who are not engaged at work or (worse) are actively disengaged. They want new opportunities, different and better work environments, better compensation sure, but also more challenging and engaging work … period.
They want their work to mean something more.
Some employers today are so desperate for people, many are hiring candidates they would not have considered just two short years ago. What if they could simply keep the great employees they already have in place? The key, often, to retaining valuable talent is employee engagement.
In our next blog, we’ll offer some ideas about how to do this.
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