Employees have had it.
According to IBM’s recent survey, twenty-five percent of employees plan to leave their current employer in 2021.1 Information provided by the Society for Human Resource Management, raises that figure to more fifty percent.2 The HR consulting firm Elements Global Services’ recent survey revealed that more than one-third of employees would be willing to switch jobs for a ten percent raise.1
The reasons?
Many.
The pandemic had a psychological effect on employees. Employees, in droves, are rethinking their careers and recalibrating the importance of work.
Many employees want to do something different with their lives than they did prior to the pandemic. Front-line workers, in particular, are seeking new career paths, believing they won’t make enough money at their prior jobs to return to difficult, often thankless jobs.
COVID-19 forced employers and employees to stare at each other across a deep divide. Business owners and senior managers struggled to maintain viable organizations despite declining revenues and unexpected COVID-related expenses. Employees stressed by the hassles of working from home found themselves frustrated by how their company’s leaders handled the pandemic.
Further, according to a November 2020 survey of one thousand employees, more than one out of every two employees suffer from burnout brought on by their workloads and pandemic-related anxiety.3According to the Washington, D.C. based management consulting firm Eagle Hills Consulting, these employees are four times more likely to leave their current employers than those not experiencing burnout.3
What is enough?
As employees glimpse the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, they’re re-evaluating their priorities and asking for work life balance along with raises and career advancement. The IBM Institute for Business Value survey reports that twenty-eight percent of the employees that intend changing jobs in 2021 cited the desire for a more flexible work schedule and employer strategies aimed at employee well-being as key reasons for seeking new jobs.1
What do employers need to realize?
Employers, lulled by the fact that employees hung on to their jobs during the pandemic, need to focus on retaining key employees if they want to bounce forward as the pandemic wanes. Unhappy, disengaged, burnt-out employees often view finding a new job as their best option.
Two strategies
Don’t let COVID-19 claim your best employees as collateral damage.
Find out how to keep employees motivated and productive by conducting “stay interviews” in which you ask employees questions such as “What is it you value in your job, that keeps you engaged and satisfied?”5 Stay interviews give you an opportunity to find out what will keep your employees working their hardest, and what might lead them to leave. You can’t fix problems you don’t know exist, but those problems can cost you if your employee already cruises job search platforms looking for new opportunities.
Stay interviews uncover what matters for each employee—is it a raise, decision-making autonomy, challenging work, or another factor? You don’t want to guess at your employee’s motivations and reward your employee with a raise when what s/he craves is work/life balance or the chance to learn something new. Stay interviews show your employee you care.
Continue to retool your organization, business operations, and company culture. Are you trying to do too much with too few employees? Do you have the right employees? What technology changes do you need to make? What can you further streamline? Instead of bringing all employees back to their former worksites, do you need to consider a hybrid work model? According to Envoy’s April 13th survey, 47% of employees stated they would likely leave their employers unless offered a hybrid work-from-home, in-office model.6
Accountability is key. For your organization to succeed, you need every employee on board and invested. Employee accountability requires an organization’s leaders to step up to the plate in all areas, starting with outlining a powerful vision of their organization’s future and showing that they value employees. When leaders communicate “here’s where we’re going and why” and understand and act to resolve their employee’s concerns, it shows employees that their best job option might be staying.
Have your employees “had it”? Act now—before they head for the doors.
1https://www.benefitnews.com/list/empoyees-are-turning-their-backs-on-employers?; Employees are turning their backs on employers
3https://www.benefitnews.com/news/employees-are-planning-to-quit-post-covid
5https://workplacecoachblog.com/2019/11/how-to-conduct-a-stay-interview-to-retain-valued-employees/
6https://hrexecutive.com/why-nearly-half-of-workers-might-leave-their-jobs-post-pandemic/
Subscribing to the blog is easy
If you’d like to get 3 to 5 posts a week delivered to your inbox (and NO spam), just add your email address below. (I’ll never sell it.) I’m glad you’ve joined this vibrant blog. Thank you!
From what I’ve observed and what people are telling me, the biggest factor is going to be money. There’s been a sharp rise in wages in many sectors recently for new hires. There hasn’t been a corresponding sharp rise in wages for existing employees. Employees are going to start jumping ship if they can be hired on to another company for significantly more money than if they stay at their old company. Inflation will follow, as employers can’t increase wages that much and not pass it through as price hikes, and so employees that don’t receive corresponding increases in pay will see their current pay buying less as prices rise. They’re going to leave and find places that will pay them more. I expect a lot of movement in some market segments as employees do just that. Employers that are happy with a current employee should start reviewing what the market is paying and consider making pay adjustments.
Absolutely true.
Stay interviews and finding ways to really offer meaningful work-life balance are the key takeaways here. Thanks for your always-on-point advice and observations!