Is the “Post-Pandemic” Great Resignation Just a Regular, Passing, Pendulum Swing?

No. 

First of all, if you want the plain numbers, we can direct you to data on engagement, trust, turnover, and you can find more from any credible researcher you like. You’ll see that the numbers in 2020, 2021, and now, are as concerning as they sound. Engagement hasn’t dropped this low in a decade, and that was before the influx of people feeling confident enough to work in non-traditional ways (remote freelancing, self-employment, etc.). 

The Great Resignation, even if you do want to call it a predictable pendulum swing, is set up to never swing back because employees have more tools than ever to ditch traditional 9-to-5s – and with stats on mental health at work, they also have more reason than ever. 

But beyond that, the assumption that a business will be unaffected in the long term by these concerning numbers banks on another assumption:

That if a given business isn’t in pain, then it’s not dying. So here’s a look at all the businesses that weren’t in pain for very long or at all before they died, you pendulum-tracking history-buff: 

• The buggy (before Henry Ford) 
• Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, or even RedBox (before streaming) 
• Polaroid (before digital cameras; bankrupt in 2001) 
• And more. 88% of the Fortune 500s that were leading markets in 1955 are now gone. 

Lucky for businesses today, there are ways to gather data not only on why people tend to leave jobs, but how to solve it. By looking at factors including productivity, profitability, and general mental health, massive researchers like Gallup and ADPRI have concluded that a main driver of losing people to turnover comes down to employee engagement, which comes down to (not pay and benefits, but) love, trust, care, and discretionary time. 

1. Love: Employees need to love about 20% of what they do every day. 
2. Trust: Employees need to feel that their leaders trust them to do the job well (their way, not always with standardized KPIs) 
   • Employees need to trust in their leaders’ competence to give them what they need to succeed (both in the job and in self-development). 
3. Care: Employees need to feel that their leaders care about them not just as a team member, but as a whole human outside of work. 
4. Discretionary time: Discretionary time is life. Employees value nothing more than getting some of their life back. 
   • Even the most loyal, productive, trusted, happy employee is tempted to leave for another company where they’d have more time for the things they love (family, travel, personal development, hobbies, etc.). 

In list form, it’s easier to see how it’s all connected. When people find love in what they do, trust their leaders to make their days better both within work and without, and actually have the time to live their lives in all the other hours of the day, businesses flourish. 

So then there are two key things still left missing: 

1. The ability to measure how your business is doing in these areas 
2. The exact action steps to take to improve those numbers 

You need to know not just what the studies say about why people are leaving—but why your people tend to leave your business. 

To get straight to the point, that’s exactly what we’ve built. After decades working with businesses across industries, we found a way to build a system that measures the previously immeasurable.  

MashTank gives leaders the power to derive insights where they couldn’t before, make previously intangible issues clear, and know what to do to make next year better than the last, starting now. 

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For more insights, visit our other articles. To get started, instead of banking on the pendulum swinging back, contact us. OUR day-to-day is making sure you have all the tools you need to drive and measure success in your day-to-day.