What Is Great Resignation

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Finding a good employee has always been a challenging task, but something more startling has come to notice in recent years. To be precise, it’s 2021 that has observed the record-breaking employee turnover in the United States.

Great Resignation

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the share of employees who voluntarily left their jobs rose to a record 3% in September 2021. The employee turnover rate was highest in the leisure and hospitality sector, where almost 6.4% of employees resigned from their positions. In total, over 33.2 million workers in the United States quit their jobs from May 2021 to December 2021.

This phenomenon of large-scale resignation is aptly termed the “Great Resignation,” and the companies across the globe are keenly interested to know the reasons behind it. But the question is why and how they will find and prevent it from happening?

Well, the answer to the ‘why’ part is simple – to avoid losing their valuable and talented employees. However, to find out ‘how’ a company would know why an employee leaves an organization, you need to read this article ahead. So, let’s understand the leading causes of the great resignation and the methods to retain the top talents of your company.

What’s Great Resignation?

Great Resignation (or Big Quit) is an underway economic trend in which a wide-ranging number of employees voluntarily resign from their job roles. It primarily began in mid-2021, when millions of employees (primarily in the United States) started quitting their jobs.

According to a report by PBS NewsHour, the reporters believe there are many reasons for this massive employee turnover, starting from the COVID-19 outbreak and going beyond meager wages and benefits offered by the companies. The fear of the Coronavirus pandemic is reasonable as people didn’t want to come in contact with their co-employees. However, if the people resign due to salary or benefits issues, the company has to worry about this cause.

Every organization needs to understand the issues its employees face and know their expectations from the company. Many analysts believe that to determine the exact reasons, it is essential to focus on continuous performance management of the employees to identify where they stand and what should be rewarded for their efforts.

Who’s at Risk of Leaving an Organization?

According to an insight report from a research firm, Visier, tenured and experienced professionals showed a considerable rise in resignations compared to temporary employees and freshers. Moreover, more women than men have resigned from their job roles. Apart from this, many working people in the United States are actively looking for better opportunities and payscale. As per Gallup, over 48% of employees in the US are actively searching for a new job option.

The reason is that a significant portion of the working population feels that their endeavors are not recognized, and they are not paid appropriately for their performance. Due to this, it has become highly crucial for organizations to have a performance management system to monitor their working output and potential. If the results show that they are genuinely working hard, their efforts must be significantly acknowledged and remunerated.

Why Are Employees Quitting Their Jobs?

As already mentioned, one of the top reasons why employees quit their jobs in the past was the Coronavirus outbreak. However, other than that, there are some other major causes that a company must focus on.

According to the Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM), the primary reasons why employees leave their existing jobs are pay, recognition, work culture, and work-life balance.

  • Recognition: When the employees desire to get more appreciation and compensation for their efforts.
  • According to a Hubspot survey report on employee engagement, 69% of employees would work harder if their employers recognized their efforts and work better.
  • Burnout: When the company asks employees to take on more work or work faster, that leads to a lack of work-life balance.
  • Workplace Culture: The entire employee experience and issues at their workplace influence their job satisfaction and engagement level.
  • Desire to Learn or Get Better Opportunities: Finding new ways to learn advanced skills in order to get better job opportunities.

How to Avoid Unnecessary Employee Turnover?

The reasons why employees think about leaving a company can be reasonable. However, being a sincere employer, it becomes your responsibility to understand those causes and try to resolve them in order to prevent or reduce the resignation levels. Here are a few things companies can do to avoid unnecessary employee turnover:

Look for the employees’ data related to their performance and engagement.

Earlier, relying on performance reviews and engagement surveys was enough to get an idea about the employees’ performance. However, now the time has changed. Today, it becomes essential to see beneath the surface and look for the outliers in the potential data for getting better insights into employees’ mindsets.

For this purpose, companies can install employee performance tracking software that can quickly assess the employees’ performance and engagement level. Having a central system that can review the skills and productivity level of the employees will help you track their real-time performance. Based on this data, you can easily identify the top talents of your company and acknowledge them with compensation or promotion, preventing them from quitting your organization.

Check-in with employees and staff regularly

The HR department of your company should actively make time to collect as much employee data as possible to know where they stand in terms of their job roles and responsibilities. To gather this information, they can regularly check for their performance reviews and conduct surveys about their experience in the company. In fact, one of the most effective ways is to try personal one-on-one interaction sessions with the staff members to know what is working, where the issues are, and what can be done to resolve them.

If some employees face challenges with their tasks or find it challenging to manage their workload, their managers or team leads can provide training and skill enhancement sessions to cope with them. The continuous performance management of your employees will help you get insights into your employees’ performance and offer you opportunities to enhance their skills for better productivity.

Key Takeaways

Let’s face it: Employees will leave their current employers for better opportunities and growth, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, what if their existing organizations can offer them the same benefits and compensation they expect with a new job?

Although some people can still leave their jobs even after this, a significant portion will think twice before quitting if their current employers are willing to resolve their issues. All it needs is improved employee engagement so that the employees can feel their respective organizations appreciate their presence.

Therefore, it is necessary to engage your employees and regularly track their performance to understand the loopholes and what can be done to fix them. For that purpose, employee performance tracking software can be beneficial to streamline the performance management process and save your time that you can use for managing other tasks. 

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