“Find joy in everything you choose to do. Every job, relationship, home… it’s your responsibility to love it, or change it.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Best-Selling Author
For months now, “The Great Resignation” has been dominating headlines, thought leadership, workforce news, and all of the appropriate responses to the transformation of talent and work. By now, we know the stakes: millions of workers are voluntarily leaving their jobs for a variety of reasons, all of which prove that there’s more to life (and work!) than just cold, hard cash.
The Future of Work Exchange has been covering this topic for months, encouraging business leaders to think about The Great Resignation from a different perspective, that of a “Talent Revolution.” So it goes, the foundational elements of what’s also being called “The Big Quit” revolve around the concepts of purpose, career journeys, and alignment between a human and his/her/their work. Too, aspects like better working conditions, inclusive workplace culture, and, yes, of course, compensation, are all driving factors of the revolution happening right in front of us.
So, given all of this, when does The Great Resignation end? Well, it seems we’re heading in the opposite direction. Let’s just call it The Greatest Resignation, because:
- Last Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that nearly 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs in February.
- Better than January? Oh, gosh no. This was 100,000 more resignations than the U.S. experienced in January, and…
- …it’s also perilously close to The Great Resignation’s prestigious world record, set with 4.5 million resignations in November 2021.
“Great” has become “Greatest” as this phenomenon marches on. We’re supposed to be living in a “let’s just deal with it” phase of the pandemic, so shouldn’t that mean all of those aspects of business disruption, including staffing shortages and massive resignations, start to curtail as we move towards our so-called “new normal”?
In an article on CNBC, Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor, said that “These quits are still extremely high, and that shows the Great Resignation is still in full swing,” and that “It wouldn’t be a surprise to see that cool down in 2022,” Zhao said. “But that’s not to say we should expect the Great Resignation to disappear overnight.”
So, in essence, it’s a hiring purgatory, isn’t it? For now, it certainly seems like it. However, just perceiving all of this with a different mindset is the first, and most crucial, step in moving out of this unique period in business (and staffing) history.
Here’s the wake-up call: no matter the level of benefits nor the amount of compensation, a business cannot effectively fulfill a worker’s ultimate aspirations without purposeful and meaningful work. There must be a catalyst that drives that realm of joy within a professional’s heart and mind. The Great Resignation is not a fight over money, nor is it a sign that workers have become greedier and are asking for the moon.
This all simply means one thing: the pandemic has shaped our lives in such a way that the personal and professional dichotomy has become intertwined. Workers are people and people are workers. They want purpose. They want joy. They want to earn a living (a nice living) while doing something they love.
There’s a critical reason why we should be looking at The Greatest Resignation much differently. It’s not a war of attrition nor a battle for higher wages, but rather a revolution in which humans are doing everything they can to align their purpose, culture, and journey with the many, many hours they spend at work.
