By now, you’ve heard the phrases. “The Big Quit.” “The Great Resignation.” “The Great Reassessment.” Around these parts, we’ve typically referred to the massive, massive numbers of workers voluntarily leaving their jobs as a “talent revolution” unlike anything businesses have ever experienced before. Calling this a “revolution” rather than attributing the volatile labor market solely to a continuously-raging pandemic is selling short so many aspects of what today’s workforce truly wants, needs, and, most importantly, deserves.
In December alone, 4.5 million workers resigned from their positions. In September of last year, it was 4.4 million. October and November’s stats were just as eye-opening. For nearly the past year, the Department of Labor has constantly been breaking its own records for the “highest number of resignations in a single month,” with May 2021 serving as the first solid month of The Great Resignation.
Halfway through the first month of 2022, the expectation is that January will topple those December 2021 figures, adding to an already-volatile labor market that is consistently disrupted by yet another coronavirus variant, uncertainty regarding vaccine mandates, and other market-shifting dynamics that are proving to turn 2022 into yet another transformational year for the world of talent and work.
While I’m a bigger fan of the phrase “talent revolution” in lieu of “The Great Resignation,” the facts don’t lie: tens of millions of workers have left their roles over the past nine months and there are too many reasons why to list out in a single article on the Future of Work Exchange. The focus should be on solving this, not merely talking about how disruptive it is (although this is certainly a gigantic pain to hiring managers, HR execs, and talent acquisition leaders that are absolutely struggling to fill positions, especially in certain industries).
That being said, here are three things that could determine the future of The Great Resignation:
- The Omicron variant’s peak hitting rural America, the South, and pieces of both the Midwest and the West Coast. There are optimistic signs that Omicron is peaking in the Northeast (where I call home in Boston), New York, Washington D.C., etc. Many of the jobs quit over the past year have been in industries that have shouldered the brunt of the pandemic’s worst, whether it’s in retail, healthcare, hospitality, etc. These are positions that are not, unfortunately, prone to flexibility, safer worker conditions, and competitive compensation. The constant rollercoaster effect of the pandemic’s surges and waves have meant that workers cannot appropriately support remote learning when it was the only option, cannot work due to a lack of daycare, and are often forced into working conditions that aren’t equipped with the best PPE or vaccine and mask mandates. If Omicron is truly as mild as scientists indicate, and if this is the last stop on the road to endemicity, then the regions that aren’t peaking with Omicron will soon, and that could mean (given the speed at which this variant’s cases cause and respectively fall) that, by the spring months, the country will be in a much, much better place than it is now for public health and safety.
- Business leaders finally realizing that aspects such as empathy, culture, and flexibility aren’t just “nice-to-have” elements. We’ve covered it here before on the Future of Work Exchange; some well-known business leaders touting their dismissal of remote and hybrid work, and only revealing that they have no clue that, of course, business culture evolves. Major labor market shifts (in pre-pandemic times) were because of economical and financial reasons; although huge increases in unemployment would certainly cause personal distress, the major difference over the past two years is that workers were faced with uncertainty, anxiety, and stress at both the professional and personal levels. Thus, workers require some level of emotional support as well as an optimistic, positive, and inclusive workplace culture. The “flexibility” problem is simple: bake remote and hybrid work into the very fabric of every position that can support it (and make these flexibility-driven changes permanent!).
- Inflation becoming too much of a financial burden. The inflation problem is real. Everything from cars to diapers to produce are several percentage points more expensive now than there were just a couple of years ago. For some individuals, this may not be an issue, however, for many more, it’s incredibly disruptive. Many workers hit “pause” on their careers in the spirit of finding happiness, satisfaction, and prosperity. Those dreams are squashed very quickly when household necessities cost 5% or 10% more than they did a year or two ago. Look for more workers to find positions that may check several (but not all) of their ideal workplace boxes until the economy is less inflated than it is today.
- Businesses that lead with innovative talent acquisition models, including direct sourcing and AI-driven talent analytics, will fare better than other organizations. Artificial intelligence-led decision-making. Hiring managers with access to vast data oceans. Automated referral campaigns and digital recruitment marketing. The power of “Direct Sourcing 2.0” strategies. These are all innovative approaches towards finding the best-fit candidates; as businesses begin to harness the power of advanced talent acquisition solutions, combined with the benefits of AI-fueled data and predictive analytics, they will create the ideal environment in which to find, engage, and source the best-fit talent when, where, and how it is needed most. Too, the value of the remote and hybrid work models and their impact on talent acquisition cannot be understated; there is an increase in the availability of remote positions, and with business leaders expanding roles to those across the globe (instead of just their backyard), they are opening new channels of talent that can work from anywhere.
