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Does the Great Resignation still pose a threat to companies’ employee retention figures?

The workplace is going through a lot of reshuffle and changes in priorities both on the employee and the employer front. Recession, layoffs, scaling back, quiet-quitting, is what we’ve been hearing in the news.

Also, what’s happened recently in the workforce is the ‘great resignation’. Since the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, the world has become accustomed to reports of ‘the Great Resignation’ – a movement where many workers have become more reflective about their jobs and ended up quitting them as a result.

However, there is evidence that the Great Resignation is far from just a COVID-induced phenomenon. As revealed in a series of statistics shared by the World Economic Forum (WEF), over four million people in the US quit their jobs even just in June – and, in the UK, the number of job vacancies has surpassed the number of unemployed people for the first time on record.

All of this begs the question: if you run your own company, is it currently at the mercy of the Great Resignation, even nearly three years after the pandemic began? The short answer is: you might be vulnerable to the Great Resignation’s effects, but you can still act to counter them.

The Great Resignation’s lingering threat to businesses

The WEF has also cited research by the US management consultancy McKinsey, which found 40% of surveyed people expressing dissatisfaction with their jobs and considering leaving them soon. However, insufficient remuneration was far from the only factor behind this trend.   

Other major factors mentioned by the survey respondents included unsustainable expectations, inadequate workplace flexibility and having to work under uncaring or uninspiring leaders.

These findings begin to explain how you, as an employer, could reduce the likelihood that employees of your company will feel increasingly tempted to leave. You could, for a start, demonstrate sensitivity to any concerns your workers raise in your presence.

One reliable method of doing this would be offering benefits bound to put your workers’ minds at rest even when they are not at work. For example, why not offer employee life insurance so that they can rest more easily about their dependents’ financial future?

Is the Great Resignation’s power fading?

You might have recently read a few articles casting doubt on whether the Great Resignation is quite as big a cause for concern for employers as what was once the case.

In September, the WEF reported that, though 2021 saw nearly 51 million Americans abandon their jobs in the hope of securing better pay, more benefits or improved career options, one in four workers in a recent survey have admitted to regretting their decision to leave.

Many of these regretful workers brought up their inability to find a new job, while others who had found one said that it fell short of their expectations.

You should also stop to consider the rise of ‘quiet quitting’, where workers are increasingly opting to avoid doing more than the bare minimum when it comes to their work responsibilities.

“You are still performing your duties, but you are no longer subscribing to the hustle culture mentality that work has to be your life,” New York engineer Zaid Khan has said in a viral TikTok video about quiet quitting, which could actually be the biggest threat to your company’s productivity.

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