How to Avoid ‘the Great Resignation’ at Your Company

The great resignation is coming,” says Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of management at Texas A&M University.

This makes it sound like it’s some asteroid or maybe sharks, and all we can do is brace ourselves, get our post-apocalyptic jumpsuits ready, and invest in crypto-currency. Or something.

Klotz is right to expect a great resignation–turnover is normal, and people postpone leaving jobs in times of uncertainty. We can all say, with a surety, that life has been uncertain for the past 15 months or so. And it makes sense that the response is people resigning.

But, you can stop it. Or at least lessen the impact on your business. Here’s how.

To keep reading, click here: How to Avoid ‘the Great Resignation’ at Your Company

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7 thoughts on “How to Avoid ‘the Great Resignation’ at Your Company

  1. It a seems to me to be important that companies keep an open mind about employees continuing to work from home. I’m hearing stories from friends of employers insisting workers return to the office arbitrarily.

    One friend’s company, for instance, has functioned very well with its workforce working entirely from home for over a year. They’re now insisting all employees return to the office full time, and forbidding employees from using public transportation. The office is in downtown Los Angeles where parking is scarce and expensive, and traffic congestion is fierce. I doubt they could legally enforce a “no public transportation” rule, but the fact they’re trying to seems foolish, as does insisting their workforce return to the office when their work has been done easily from home, and done well.

  2. Sitting on the couch, watching TV and eating, is a depressive episode? OMG, there went my entire life! Oh, wait, I also, simultaneously, play Slotomania on my Kindle, so there’s that. 🙂
    Seriously, though, I think there will be resignations over inflexible employer demands to return to the office, to mask up or not, etc., although the no public transportation issue is a new one for me.
    Agreed that the key is for employers to really listen to their employees, to try to figure out their wants, needs and demands and to seek out win-win solutions for both management and labor.

    1. I also played Candy Crush. I’m embarrassed to admit my level. So there’s that.

  3. That last bit: “treat those who leave kindly” is going to be very important. Even if employers do everything right, we’re still all going to see higher-than-normal turnover. After a year and a half of turmoil it would be strange if people WEREN’T re-evaluating what they wanted and where they wanted to be. But getting mad about it and being a jerk to people will come back to bite you, and may make others want to leave as well.

  4. Wonderful article. The “you’re just lucky you have a job” years are over, for now at least, and managers need to keep that in mind.

  5. The biggest thing I got from this article was the –listen to your employees’ needs/requests about returning back to in-person workplace jobs. True, there will be some who prefer the flexibility of remote work, but there’s also going to be a need for in-person-at-work jobs. Each employee should be able to have (if needed) a serious discussion about returning to the job, because obviously we, all, had a prolonged period to really think out what we want to have in a job to fit our needs besides providing a paycheck. The question is whether the business, especially the large companies, is really listening or more concerned with getting that all-important profit for the shareholders versus the also important need to have employees who enjoy doing the job.
    Several issues were mentioned in the discussion, which I found interesting. One was the fact that employees had not really felt that they could take a vacation last year, despite having the paid time to use. My only comment to that argument was I didn’t realize that traveling away from home was necessary for classifying time as a vacation, as I consider time not spent working job duties a vacation and if I didn’t travel, I had less cleanup and re-adaptation back into a work schedule. How hard was it for the person or family unit to declare a specific week or two, last year as a no-work week and just be lazy and do fun stuff like non-stop Candy-gram, etc. As for that non-public transportation travel rule, I would highly expect the company to be providing a means of transportation for those employees who don’t live within walking distance because public transportation is the cheapest method and also less environmentally detrimental (but we all know how “efficient” is California public transport or any public transportation. You can’t assume that all employees have environmentally efficient means of transportation, especially coming from a distance of more than walking distance. I know that for myself, I would not like to bike or walk or scooter 5 miles to work in on a daily basis, plus Uber/Lyft are way above my budget, especially while paying rent that 40% of my monthly income. (I don’t know who came up with the statement that rent should only be 30% of your income, while real rents-market value-are twice the average monthly income-which assumes that everyone is earning high income)

    1. The people who came up with the premise that housing costs should only be 30% of your income are the economic experts who determined that other essential needs require the remaining 70%. The current — and worsening — affordable housing crisis is not the result of our incomes not being high enough (in most cases), but, rather, that housing costs have disproportionately risen, especially since the Federal Government radically decreased its commitment to housing affordability, and private-sector developers have concentrated on providing so-called high-end housing. The COVID-19 pandemic has blown that situation out of the water. As eviction moratoria expire and relief funds run out, there will be increasing hordes of homeless people needing housing, and a massive Government response will be required.

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