In the midst of The Great Resignation, we are now experiencing a historically competitive Candidates’ Market. According to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey run by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 33 million people, over a fifth of the total U.S. workforce, have left their jobs since April 2021. Typically, these employees are resigning to switch jobs rather than leave the workforce altogether indicating the turnover is not a result of not wanting to work but rather not wanting to work for the company that previously employed them.
The solution most employers have turned to is pouring resources into their recruiting efforts to backfill positions. This reactionary approach is similar to the metaphor Dan Heath uses to set the premise for his book Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen:
You and a friend are having a picnic by the side of a river. Suddenly you hear a shout from the direction of the water—a child is drowning. Without thinking, you both dive in, grab the child, and swim to shore. Before you can recover, you hear another child cry for help. You and your friend jump back in the river to rescue her as well. Then another struggling child drifts into sight … and another … and another. The two of you can barely keep up. Suddenly, you see your friend wading out of the water, seeming to leave you alone. “Where are you going?” you demand. Your friend answers, “I’m going upstream to tackle the guy who’s throwing all these kids in the water.”
We are living in a downstream world and have developed a bias for downstream action. The majority of our time and resources are spent responding to problems reactively rather than dealing with them at their source. Currently, 53% of employees are open to leaving their employers and 44% of employees are active job seekers according to the Willis Towers Watson’s 2022 Global Benefits Attitudes Survey. It is time to shift our energies upstream and tackle the causes that lead to resignations.
Recognizing the reasons employees are leaving their jobs is the first step to making positive changes. The top three noted in current studies are:
Feeling Disconnected
An unsurprising 70% of employees said remote work helped them achieve better work/life balance however 52% of remote employees said working remotely left them feeling disconnected from their team. Creating opportunities for employees to interact with each other in non-work specific ways can help them connect person to person, not just employee to employee. Things like intranet platforms and scheduling virtual and in person events can provide the space for connection.
Failure to Recognize Performance
In the book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink delves into our intrinsic drivers and how to best motivate employees using that insight. Perhaps the most significant yet overlooked method was peer-to-peer recognition. Peers have a unique understanding of the work and effort required to perform day to day tasks and recognition of those efforts has been shown to be more meaningful than coming from a superior. Encouraging and facilitating peer-to-peer praise fills in recognition gaps leadership may not be able to reach and as a bonus, it keeps employees feeling connected with each other.
Search for More Meaningful Work
A few years ago I attended a conference with breakout sessions doing volunteer work for charity. They were scheduled twice a day for the three days of the conference and they were booked up from day one. The opportunity to do something meaningful was so popular, they added additional volunteer sessions after hours to accommodate the demand. In a recent study, more than 9 out of 10 employees are willing to trade a percentage of their lifetime earnings for greater meaning at work. This is not a new notion. The study cites one of my favorite authors, Studs Terkel, making the same claim back in the 70s in his popular book Working, where he affirms meaning is an equal counterpart to financial compensation in motivating employees.
If your organization isn’t one of the few working towards finding a cure for all diseases and achieving world peace, there’s still hope. There are several ways your organization can include philanthropy in your culture from offering volunteer time off to team building volunteer projects. Encouraging employees to volunteer a couple of hours a month or week and carry the company name makes them proud to be a part of your company.
We are facing new challenges daily with the quickly evolving employment landscape. This period poses a critical opportunity to re-examine work culture, priorities, benefits and more. With the right approach, organizations can attract and retain highly skilled employees, no matter what other challenges might come.
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