The “Great Resignation” seems to be getting greater and greater. Record numbers of employees are quitting in almost every industry, in a trend that has taken businesses by surprise. After all, shouldn’t most people be in a rush to find whatever work they can, considering the havoc of life during a pandemic?
Guess not. The Great Resignation shows no signs of diminishing anytime soon. And even when it does, many of the reasons cited by “quits” (an unofficial US government term) will still be there – unless businesses figure out better solutions.
Understanding the main drivers
All kinds of things motivate people to quit; but here are two of the top reasons underlying this mass employee exodus:
Career Development
Over the past decade, a lack of career development has been cited as the number one reason for leaving a job. According to Beamery’s Talent Index, a whopping 83% of employees feel their companies should help with career progression, yet 44% say their employers don’t offer them professional development programs.
Some of the contributing factors are beyond the control of the HR department, such as a lack of general business stability and the desire to take up a new profession. However, in many cases, former employees name reasons that HR definitely could influence, such as a lack of training and succession opportunities.
These people are not imagining their lack of advancement. According to Gartner, it was the financial crisis of 2008 that caused many organizations to eliminate numerous middle management positions. As a result, even employees with good track records are now moved across the organization, but not up. In fact, employees spend 50% more time in the same role as they did before 2008.
Manager Behavior
Unlike career development, every single factor connected to unsatisfactory manager behavior can be addressed by HR, which 12% of quits see as the main motivation for leaving. Within this category, quits mention poor manager performance in areas such as their treatment of employees, professionalism, and communication. All of these weaknesses could be remedied with proper L&D programs that focus on coaching and mentoring to identify and resolve specific soft skill deficiencies.
Why it’s happening now
The reasons behind the crisis are not new. Issues with career development and management behavior have always existed. What we are seeing, in fact, is a unique combination of events: Covid-19, the growth of the Millennial workforce, a change in attitude towards work-life balance, among others – that have simply brought the situation to the forefront of the economy.
We at GrowthSpace have been aware of these organizational challenges for years; and this is largely what drove us to build our platform in the first place.
How GrowthSpace solves it differently
Career Development
When it comes to improving career development (and beating the Great Resignation), businesses must take two steps. First, they must enable more upward movement. Second, they need to implement effective L&D programs.
For many years, the challenge for HR departments was how to deploy such programs on a large scale. Because if you’re trying to develop a single employee, you could easily build a custom L&D program for them. But what about hundreds of employees? Through a proprietary technology and process, GrowthSpace allows an organization to duplicate the quality and focus of developing a single worker on a mass scale.
Manager Behavior
Treatment of employees, professionalism, and communication are the major reasons why quits don’t like their bosses. Yet HR departments don’t seem able to correct these longstanding issues.
This is partly because it is difficult to break them down into elements. For instance, ‘communications’ is a soft skill with various dimensions, including clarity, personal attitude, confidence, and body language. Most people are proficient in some of these dimensions, and not in others. But managers usually receive general coaching in communications that might not focus on the area that they specifically need to develop.
GrowthSpace’s learning and development platform can parse development issues into separate elements and then locate experts who specialize in their resolution. Moreover, GrowthSpace works according to an evaluation system that identifies and sources the top experts in that field, from around the world.
Facing a Changing World of Work
That’s just an example, and of course the possibilities are endless. What matters most is that the organization accurately matches the employee with the type of expert they need, whether that’s a mentor, coach, trainer, or other – to reach their personal goals. That’s going to make the difference at the end of the day, and that difference will show up in the company’s “quits” statistics.
There is a reason why billions are spent every year by businesses on employee development. And, unfortunately, there is also a reason why employees still don’t feel as though they are receiving sufficient L&D programs. With GrowthSpace’s novel solution, businesses from across the spectrum are discovering how effective investment in employees translates into benefits across the organization.
