The future of the workforce is dramatically changing for 2022. According to an article of McKinsey&Company, an increasing number of employees are quitting or thinking about doing so.
Organizations need to understand the factors influencing this trend so that they can cope and be able to keep attracting and retaining talent.
Let me share below key highlights of the article from McKinsey&Company.
The top three factors employees cited as reasons for quitting were that they didn’t feel valued by their managers (54 percent) or their organizations (52 percent) or because they didn’t feel a sense of belonging at thier workplace (51 percent).
Employers do not fully understand why employees are leaving.
Above is Mckinsey.com image.
The Great Employee Attrition is happening and accelerated by the COVID 19 Pandemic. Furthermore, it will likely to continue as the environment changes with new COVID 19 variants and we move into an Endemic.
In the US, more than 15 million workers—and counting—have quit their jobs since April 2021, a record pace disrupting businesses everywhere. Companies are struggling to address the problem, and many will continue to struggle for one simple reason: they don’t really understand why their employees are leaving in the first place.
Rather than take the time to investigate the root causes of attrition, many companies are jumping to well-intentioned quick fixes that fall flat: for example,they’re bumping up pay or financial perks, like offering “thank you” bonuses without making any effort to strengthen the relational ties people have with their colleagues and their employers. The result? Rather than sensing appreciation, employees sense a transaction. This transactional relationship reminds them that their real needs aren’t being met.
If the past 18 months have taught us anything, it’s that employees crave investment in the human aspects of work. Employees are tired, and many are grieving. They want a renewed and revised sense of purpose in their work. They want social and interpersonal connections with their colleagues and managers. They want to feel a sense of shared identity. Yes, they want pay, benefits, and perks, but more than that they want to feel valued by their organizations and managers. They want meaningful—though not necessarily in-person — interactions, not just transactions.
By not understanding what their employees are running from, and what they might gravitate to, company leaders are putting their very businesses at risk.
The bottom line: the Great Attrition is happening, it’s widespread and likely to persist—if not accelerate—and many companies don’t understand what’s really going on, despite their best efforts. These companies are making ineffective moves based on faulty assumptions.
It doesn’t have to be this way. If companies make a concerted effort to better understand why employees are leaving and take meaningful action to retain them, the Great Attrition could become the Great Attraction. By seizing this unique moment, companies could gain an edge in the race to attract, develop, and retain the talent they need to create a thriving post pandemic organization.
The key take away is to create an Amazing Workplace where people thrive, feel valued and recognized, and feel a deep sense of belonging.
But this won’t be easy, because it requires companies and their leaders to truly understand their employees. It requires leaders to develop a much deeper empathy for what employees are going through and to pair that empathy with the compassion—and determination—to act and change. Only then can employers properly reexamine the wants and needs of their employees—together with those employees—and begin to provide the flexibility, connectivity, and sense of unity and purpose that people crave.
About 40% of respondents across multiple industries have said they will likely leave their jobs in the next 3-6months.
Above is a Mckinsey.com image.
Attrition could get worse, since employees are willing to quit without a job lined up.
Among the employees in our survey, 36 percent who had quit in the past six months did so without having a new job in hand. This is yet another way the Great Attrition differs fundamentally from previous downturn-and-recovery cycles—and another sign that employers may be out of touch with just how hard the past 18 months have been for their workers.
According to a Yahoo.com article, the pandemic has forced many to re-evaluate what they want out of life, and for some, that has meant leaving their jobs.
For businesses looking to retain those workers, it will probably take more than simply raising wages to prevent a rush to the exits, according to a study released by management consulting firm McKinsey & Co.
After basically a 15-month isolation, we are seeing workers saying, 'This just has to matter more,'" said Bill Schaninger, a senior partner at McKinsey in Philadelphia and coauthor of the report.
The report found that 40% of the more than 5,770 employees surveyed said they were "at least somewhat likely" to quit in the next three to six months. More than half of employees who already left their jobs said they did so because they didn't feel valued by their bosses or organizations or because they didn't feel "a sense of belonging at work."
The findings were based on two surveys of employers and employees across multiple industries in the U.S., Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and Singapore. The employer survey included 250 talent managers from a variety of companies.
Companies can use simple and effective employee engagement tools to stay connected with employees. Enabling managers to effectively stay connected and pro-actively know how their staff are doing will go along way in retaining and motivating employees.
If you want to know more how other companies are coping with employee turnover and options to address them, please drop us a note.