Can You Stop The Employee Mass Exodus?

The Great Resignation (Part 2)

Last week I shared the fact that we are now being faced with what is being termed The Great Resignation.

The term was coined by Anthony Klotz to refer to the significant number of people who will leave their jobs post pandemic.

In his words:

“The pandemic has made many realize their job does not contribute enough (or at all) to their pursuit for happiness and meaning, and they have decided to invest their energy elsewhere — in new jobs, new careers or in other aspects of their lives (e.g., family, travel, creative endeavors).”

 The cost

Last week I also shared with you the potential cost of the great resignation.

In the Microsoft Work Trend Index 2021, they predict that 46% of the global workforce is planning to move because they can now work remotely.

I live in the state of Victoria, in Australia and the Business Victoria website provides a staff turnover calculator.

It only asks for three inputs – the number of staff in your organisation; the average hourly rate; and the number of staff resignations per year as a percentage.

Let’s put in a workforce of 500 employees.

The average hourly rate in Australia from the Australian Bureau of Statistics at $36.

Let’s use the Microsoft prediction of 46% turnover.

That presents you with a cost of turnover of $5,217,416.

That is $5.2 million dollars (AUD) gone from your business.

If you don’t buy-in to the Microsoft prediction, scale it to a percentage you think applicable and scale up the calculation to reflect the size of your organisation. Can you still afford the turnover?

What about the other costs?

Talent

You will lose your best talent. They will be the first to leave because they see the vast opportunity remote work is offering them. They can choose from the best employers, and they know that they have great talent and experience to offer.

Reputation

If you had any desire to be seen as an employer of choice, you have blown it. Your lack of flexibility around work and failure to meet the needs and preferences of your workforce is not a subject kept between you and your employee.

It is exchanged across every social media channel. It is shared in conversations and in the press.

Warren Buffet was on the money when he said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.”

Despite what you might do to recover, it is going to a long hard slog. Your reputation is what people remember. Once your reputation is damaged is hard to eradicate that memory regardless of what you do to repair it.

“Your reputation is in the hands of others. That’s what the reputation is. You can’t control that. The only thing you can control is your character.” ~ Wayne W. Dyer

Brand

The differentiation between brand and reputation is often described as brand is what you say and how you behave whilst reputation is what others say about you based on shared perceptions. Whilst they are intrinsically linked there are subtle differentiators.

Your brand can help enhance your reputation; a poor reputation, however, can ruin a brand a company spent decades—even centuries—building. 

Brand is developed from the inside out; reputation from the outside in. Brand is what you want to be and what you aspire to be. Reputation is a reflection of who you are and how others perceive you.

What is the cost of destroying your brand because you did not treat your employees as your customers expected you to?

Actions

Last week I explored the need to offer employee flexibility in how they work, when they work and where they work.

You need to create a great employee experience by finding out what your employees need.

Leadership needs a seismic shift in capability and competency to lead a hybrid team

Employee wellbeing must be the priority for every organisation regardless of industry.

This week I wanted to explore four more actions you can take to stem the exodus of talent from your workplace.

1.    Listen

It’s time to stop talking and listen. I mean REALLY listen.

If you are going to stop the great resignation at your organization, you need to rethink, reimagine, and reinvent the working model, with your employees every step of the way.

It is a no-brainer. If you create a working model that does not include employees’ preferences, your employees will leave and find an employer that does. They are in the driving seat, having more choice of employer than ever before. Not only will you lose your talent, but you will also have great difficulty in attracting it.

With so many options available to your employees, they are unlikely to hang around if you don’t value their opinions. Solicit feedback and listen to it, to understand it, and act on it. Do this on an ongoing basis.

Sue Bingham, writing for Harvard Business Review, suggests three steps for establishing schedules and making ongoing adjustment in your hybrid team.

1.    Learn your team members’ circumstances for flourishing. Leaders need to be connected and understand the personal circumstances under which their employees work best and thrive as a person and a worker.

2.    Ensure clarity on business needs, then make a schedule accordingly. Your employees need to be clear on the business needs for meeting customer expectations. Once those overarching business parameters are set, the team can then establish flexibility within them. 

3.    Seek insights into how well the schedule is working. With a hybrid schedule in place, leaders should facilitate team discussion about what is working well, and what could be improved. Leaders must encourage recurring feedback and adjust as needed.

2.    Close the great divide

Earlier this month, Gartner released the results of their 2021 Hybrid Work Employee Survey of 4000 employees.

They found six gaps between leader and employee sentiment on the future employee experience. They state that organisations that fail to address this divide will lose competitive advantage around the future of work.

I created this infographic to illustrate the Gartner findings. Employers must address this divide, as it will lead to a critical failure to build trust and maintain employee engagement. Close the great divide or watch it drive the great resignation.

3.    Leadership availability

We have all shown a side of ourselves our colleagues never saw before the pandemic. We have seen screaming children, barking dogs, rebellious cats, bedrooms, laundries, and kitchens.

This made us seem more approachable and that included our leaders, but it hasn't necessarily made then more visible, accessible, or available.

The availability of leaders is the degree to which leaders are approachable, visible, and accessible.

Leader inaccessibility could be exacerbated when leaders and employees are working remotely. No longer can you see if your leader is at their desk, or you can stop them to ask a question when you pass in the corridor.

A lack of leader availability can lead to another divide – us and them – senior leaders and everyone else. Leadership behaviours must indicate that we are all one team because they share our values, concerns, and experiences. Leaders must be servant leaders and there for the good of the team not themselves.

In an article for Forbes, Kevin Kruse – CEO of LEADx and author of “Great Leaders Have No Rules” – suggests ways in which leadership availability can be increased. In “How To Improve Leadership Availability In A Time Of Remote Work” he talks about computer-side chats and “Ask Me Anything” tours.

“At the start of the pandemic, Resultant began holding weekly "computer-side chats" with its CEO to share important updates as the organization transitioned to remote work. The standing virtual meeting consistently saw such high attendance that leadership decided to keep it on the calendar even as people began trickling back into the office.”

"Ask Me Anything" tour. Once a month, each senior leader met for 15 minutes with a department on a rotating basis. During those 15 minutes, employees could ask the visiting executive any question.”

Leaders must be available - approachable, visible, and accessible. 

4.    Psychological safety

Dr. Amy Edmonson, Harvard Business School Professor, and behavioural scientist, introduced the construct back in 1999 when she published an influential paper on the subject. She defined it as:

“Psychological safety is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes."

The new forms of working have affected psychological safety. Amy Edmondson and mark Mortensen writing for Harvard Business Review describe how the new forms of work affect psychological safety.

“When it comes to psychological safety, managers have traditionally focused on enabling candor and dissent with respect to work content. The problem is, as the boundary between work and life becomes increasingly blurry, managers must make staffing, scheduling, and coordination decisions that take into account employees’ personal circumstances — a categorically different domain.”

The shift is that before remote working and hybrid teams, we approached discussions about “work” and “non-work” as separate and we could keep clear of the latter. During the pandemic leaders have found they have had to discuss topics such as childcare arrangements, home working environments, health-risk concerns, and challenges faced by other members of the household.

Post-pandemic this will not stop. As a leader you cannot manage a distributed team without access to the data that allows you to effectively schedule and coordinate the team activities.  The challenge is that seeking access to often personal data can carry risks and legal implications and invade employee privacy.

The solution is to create an environment of psychological safety in which your employees feel safe to share information about their personal situation relevant to their work that allows for effective management.

“Management’s responsibility is to expand the domain of which work-life issues are safe to raise. Psychological safety is needed today to enable productive conversations in new, challenging (and potentially fraught) territory.”

Summary

You can stop The Great Resignation from your organisation. Listen to what your employee needs and preferences are, close the sentiment gap between the executive and employees, ensure leaders are available, and provide psychological safety for employees to share their work and non-work situations.