We’ve seen the term getting thrown about quite a bit lately, The Great Resignation, but in fairness it’s not just record numbers of resignations but a bit of a perfect storm of increased resignations, layoffs at the beginning of the pandemic and increased rehiring at the moment.
All of this makes for a slow recovery for the economy, for companies and most importantly, for people as they re-enter the workforce or revisit the meaning of their role going forward.
We’re most interested in middle to senior white collar roles here, not because I don’t care about hourly paid workers but because I’m not on my soapbox right now, just writing a professional blog article for my professional audience. Judging by previous readership numbers, that would be both of you in my audience.
Why is The Great Resignation happening?
- Working from home has its place but without the breaks of water cooler chats, commuting, walking to a meeting, people are jumping from Zoom meeting to Zoom meeting, they’re exhausted.
- There’s no separation of work and home, it all blends together.
- 55% of communication is non verbal, for Zoom meetings you have to work that much harder to get those non verbal signals.
- That bad manager pre-Covid didn’t get better as a remote manager.
- That great team that you work with? You haven’t seen them in 18 months.
- Company performance stagnated, so did your paycheque.
- Some companies did well in the pandemic, they’re hiring. With all of those issues above you don’t have to stay put.
- Spending declined dramatically for may people. They discovered that they can live on less, maybe the second salary isn’t needed, maybe a person can take less pay? These people are gone from that particular sector of the workforce forever.
What can you do to not have it as your problem?
This section isn’t big news.
Those of you who know me and know Gateway will know that we preach employee engagement, employee retention and increased employee productivity. And we help you to achieve those goals with guidance on recruiting and onboarding.
We use Predictive Index to lay those foundations and they recently put out a study detailing what companies’ pain points are and what those companies can do to minimize that pain.
Get the study here (https://www.predictiveindex.com/employee-retention-strategies/?utm_content=great-retention&utm_source=login&utm_medium=software).
But some of the edited highlights are;
- Managers more than ever need to recognize their role and impact on their teams’ careers and lives.
- Managers also need to recognize their blind spots and strengths and ensure that they are looking after themselves.
- Companies need to introduce alternatives to work from home or work from office, there needs to be room for a hybrid model
- Do you as a manager of people know what you need to do for each employee in order to ensure that they are as engaged as possible in their work in whatever model that they’re currently working in?
Talk to us first
Managers can do little things for their team members that go a long way. Talk to me about how we can help you to engage your team, all of this is part of the onboarding that we help our clients with when we place somebody.
Here are some examples.
- Is the new employee relatively introverted? Minimize the Zoom calls , opt for phone calls instead, or turn your cameras off.
- Higher levels of patience? Give them the option of responding to your questions in writing, don’t have a Zoom meeting.
- Highly extraverted? Look for opportunities to engage with them or for them to engage with clients.
- Highly structured? Regular check ins but don’t just think of those check ins as being meetings as they are probably also relatively introverted. Ask for written reports. If you’re a dominant extroverted type that last suggestion sounds crazy but they will prefer that… trust me (funnily enough, if you’re a High A and High D, you won’t trust me, you’ll need more proof!!!).
If you’d like to get more insights with a real world example that you know well, (you), then go here to request a free behavioral study. No obligation but it will change the way that you view your team.
