In July 2021, over 4 million Americans quit their jobs, which represents 3% of the workforce in the United States. That is a huge rate of staff turnover! According to a September HBR article “Who is Driving the Great Resignation?”, there were two data points of interest:
- Those in the 30 to 45 age range (mid-career employees) had the highest incidence of turnover
- The healthcare and tech industries are the industries that have experienced the most turnover
Why is that, and how do we make sure this doesn’t happen over here?
So why the turnover?
The article makes the point that the turnover among mid-career employees is probably due to three factors:
- They are more in demand in the market because, having experience under their belt, they would be able to more easily transition into a remote working role than entry-level workers.
- Some may have already been planning to transition into a new role, but held off doing so in the height of the pandemic
- High workloads during the pandemic led them to say that enough is enough
The healthcare and tech industries have seen a boom over the past year and a half, so it is understandable that the workloads have been higher and the competitive pressure has been higher as well as companies battle for market share that the pandemic has opened up. Thus, it is easy to see why these have been the two hardest-hit industries.
A different perspective on staff turnover
While I agree wholeheartedly with the analysis offered in the article, I personally don’t think that these are the deepest reasons why a flood of people have left their jobs in search of greener pastures. People can generally understand that there can be a higher workload temporarily, but if it seems that there is no end in sight and/or they perceive that leadership is just trying to squeeze them for every ounce of energy then it will not bode well for retention, even if this is not leadership’s intention.
I believe that preventing a Great Resignation this side of the pond has everything to do with employee engagement (happiness on the job).
According to Gallup, employee engagement is currently at around 36% in the United States (in Ireland it is around 13%!), which means that 36% are happy in their jobs. That means that 64% (87% in Ireland!) are just ticking the boxes and not much more or actively bringing others to wallow with them in their misery.
I wrote a post on Lencioni’s book “The Truth about Employee Engagement” a little while back, which argues that there are fundamentally three things that drive employee engagement:
- They are known for who they are, not just simply for what they do from 9 to 5.
- They perceive that their work is relevant to the organisation
- They are able to judge for themselves when they are successful in their work
You can offer remote work, more pay, and many other perks, but if you don’t offer those three, their morale will eventually take a hit, they will be less productive, and they will be more likely to be open to going elsewhere.
