One issue that keeps coming up in conversations today is the great resignation. People leaving their jobs, companies hiring or looking for talent, employers with very different positions on remote work and work from home policies, youths and quiet quitting… its being called the great resignation, or the great attrition. But what’s really happening here, what does that mean for us, and more importantly, what can we do about it?
And we begin by understanding what the great resignation is. Also called the great attrition, and the great reshuffle depending on your country, it was noticed that persons resigning from their jobs en masse from around the start of 2021, a trend which peaked at July/Aug of 21, but effects have continued into March / April of 2022.
We have seen unemployment jump in countries throughout the world. So the big question around this trend is why? Why were workers quitting?
Labour Demand and the Pandemic
Essential workers: At the onset of the quarantine restrictions, we saw the forced need to work from home, a reality that very quickly highlighted those who were essential workers and who were free-loading their way in the company.
Technological unemployment: The shift to online also meant adopting technology to automate some tasks, optimizing staff sizes, outsourcing jobs to contracted vendors or simply not hiring new workers to fill positions
Crisis cuts in staff: mass layoffs, downsizing and pay cuts at the onset of the pandemic restrictions and continuing through the duration of the restrictions in many cases. This was a function in part of available cash in hand, and in other instances commitment to the workers. In one HBR study researchers found some companies had cash in hand but no commitment to the staff, and were just as likely to layoff as those without cash. Other companies with available cash pledged commitment to their workers and kept them – perhaps at lower costs or reassigned posts.
Supply Side During the Pandemic
All these were on the demand side, companies hiring and firing. On the supply side, everyone was stuck at home, some flooded with additional work, and others languishing listlessly with a foreboding sense of stagnation and emptiness. Here we saw additional effects – shall I call them human effects:
- Divorce & Disruption: Some families got closer
together, spending more time and rebuilding relationships. Other found
themselves estranged, and not really liking the relationships they were
in. Higher divorce rates per 1000 marriages were reported globally, and
some say we haven’t yet reached the peak.
- Coping Mechanisms: boredom and loneliness are not
good ingredients on a normal day, especially when mixed with anxiety and
depression. We saw rises substance use and abuse, with increases in
alcohol, narcotics, and commensurate with this we saw increases in
addition rates. Centre for disease control and prevention stated a 13%
increase in substance use in June of 2020 – at the start. And other
sources report an increase in overdose deaths.
- Competing income: Also featuring during this time
was the issuance of government grants to those displaced, with some
persons choosing to not work, or work less, in order to access the
grants. Others saw immediate or emerging business opportunities –
particularly with the online trade, and chose to go that route –
globally we saw reports of increased business registrations during that
time.
- Reflection & Reprioritization: Being stuck at home, with no or low distractions, access to the world of information, fostering stronger bonds within your social circles and networks, many had the time to rest, reflect and in some cases recover or heal. So we started to see more content on work-life balance; the attractiveness of remote work for e.g.; persons signing up for degrees and online courses, and stuff like that.
Now it was a question of no longer running the rat race – but instead defining what direction do you want to take in life, what matters to you, and what pathways can take you in that direction faster, further. What boundaries you want to set, and what you see as acceptable for meaningful work-life balance. Some discovered a passion for cooking, or gardening, for e.g.
All this was happening throughout 2020 and part of 2021. Fastforward to mid 2021, and the waters get a even cloudier with additional layers of complexity
- Vax-to-Work: As the covid strain became tamer –
omicron and delta, etc., and as vaccines became more widely accessible,
restrictions began to be lifted, seeing a surge in demand by many to
return to the familiar. So, companies began opening back, and scaling
back up. However, many insisting on a vax to work requirement began to
see resistance. With the vax having no history, some persons had
concerns over taking this experimental drug. Others had concerns with
its efficacy – there were no guarantees.
- Health-wise: In the return to work there was little
trust in the safety at the workplace – going out to work meant
potentially exposing your family to illness contracted in the workplace.
Yet others had being pushing hell hard during the pandemic, and were
simply burnt out.
- Re-training & Re-tooling: new processes, new
technologies, new colleagues in some cases, meant persons had to
reorient to the workplace, even as they try to safeguard their health.
In some studies, persons opted to resign rather than have to re-train
and re-tool – they just weren’t up for that struggle. Others just wanted
change – to not have to go back to the same routine and bland existence
they faced before. All this of course while companies were trying to
get back on their feet, or back at scale, and looking for talent. So the
gamble paid off for some persons, we saw in reports where persons
re-entering the workplace experience a 8-10% increase in salaries.
- Back to the Office: we have the now famous quote by Elon Musk – return to the office or pretend to work somewhere else. We saw the return to the office policy feature for many companies, and the dedication to remote work by others – AirBnB for e.g. announced its policy of a permanent remote work – and it makes sense – if you would expect anyone to encourage persons to delink work from location, it would be AirBnB.
Quiet Quitting
Into 2022, and we saw the war with Russia/Ukraine, and of course in our last episode we spoke about the effects on inflation – high inflation, high unemployment, increases in mortgage rates – its all a balancing act, and for companies this meant having to battle increased costs in raw materials, paying higher salaries for acquiring talent, alongside low demand… requests for pay increases by staff was not something that could be entertained. So what do workers do?
Well, here comes Zaid Lepplin talking about quiet quitting – what we would otherwise call work-to-rule, or following official working rules and hours exactly as stated, to reduce output and efficiency, and it goes viral. 3.5 million views on TikTok. What I find most interesting are the comments – none of this is new. Some called it working smart, not hard. Others say it’s a matter of setting boundaries. Yet others stated this is the name of what they have been doing for months or years – with no difference. Same pay, same recognition, less stress. Quite a number of persons indicated they were doing this until they actually quit, others castigating it as poor work ethic, and what I find staggering, in the hundreds of thousands comments on the video, 1 person said they didn’t do that, didn’t have to, they love their job. One. Single. Soul.
So it seems that now we are in a work to rule environment – especially among the Millennials and the Gen Zs. Is it justified? In some cases absolutely. Companies posting record profits taking away a dollar an hour. In other cases its simply a tantrum. No material work history, no value-adding experience, but expected increase. Is it practical? Again, horses for courses – in some cases you can do this and get away with it. In others, working less hours or in ambiguously defined job specifications can cost you your job. What is alarming is the immaturity of performance tracking in all of this. As I indicated earlier – some said same pay, same recognition, less stress. It begs the question what exactly are employers doing, if not managing or leading their team?
Where do we go from here?
Persons are still imbibed with the psychology of the hustle culture – grinding 24/7 to reach higher. But also with the boundary setting and work-life balance and related priorities. So we can expect more persons to have side-hustles and pursue multiple income streams moving forward. Others would engineer themselves into the core value creation process – aiming for key roles that would have them less exposed to layoffs on one end and more marketable on the other.
Depending on the sector, a big question lingering is the need to return to the workplace. Beyond the core jobs that are location-based, the question arises are we reverting to performance by presence, or can we enrich workers’ experiences and commitment to the company by engraining remote work as part if not the basis of their performance.
And of course, as features in this episode as in the previous – the re-tooling and re-training of workers in the face of the new 4th industrial revolution is also a consideration. Now that is a loaded point and will well be the focus of a subsequent episode, but it is stark to me how we identified the requirements as things like Creativity, Analytical skills, problem solving and decision-making skills, digital literacy, emotional intelligence, entrepreneurship and leadership.
To support these of course we are seeing developments in the ecosystem, in such areas like online training
Some things we would have to reconcile. What are reasonable boundaries of work-life balance and performance expectations, so persons are free to live the rest of their live in ways that they choose. Another issue is that of productivity and performance – to what extent do we need to see persons in the office, and have a pool of persons to draw from, versus focus on the outcome, and how and when persons choose to get the work done is up to them. Seeing outcomes by deadlines becomes paramount in that regard. A third issue is presence versus perks. To what extent do we track the effort expended to justify income. How would we treat with performance bonuses and tracking outcomes.
What I see is the emergence of the gig economy into the mainstream, where workers are part of this bigger pool of available talent, and companies can draw from that pool either on an ongoing basis or as a 1-off based on outcomes, with work orders being issued in the form of block-chain driven smart contracts. So we have these and we can encourage bidding for job, etc. in order to get the talent we are looking for. With the blockchain, we would know which persons have performed against which contracts and which persons have been able to deliver. Even the assignment of tasks can be AI driven, to make the best selection of persons for certain tasks required.
Where does that leave us? In the immediate future, we can focus on our policies and our practices on things like work-life balance, productivity, perks and performance, and use of technology to drive performance. One overarching capacity is that of leadership – to inspire persons and help them define their purpose can help elicit a level of commitment beyond the boundaries of the transaction. Its creating brand loyalty for your staff in the same way you would create brand loyalty by your customers.
Brand the organisation as a great place to work, and you can expect to see impact on attracting and retaining talent. Napoleon said “A leader is a dealer in hope”. Looking ahead, where these transactional issues come to the fore, we can change the conversation and focus on inspiring persons to commit to that deeper meaning and purpose and commit to the mission that we can all share.
Dr. Faheem Mohammed
September 15, 2022