3 ways you can turn the tide of the 'Great Resignation'

The Great Resignation is changing. In fact, the more it's analyzed, the worse it gets. Piling on the stat from August that 51% of all employees were seeking a new job, a new LinkedIn survey shows that job changes among women in its network have jumped 54% compared with a year ago, a record. Men's career transitions have increased about 46%. It's also being accepted by what could be termed the "traditional" establishment.

These aren't just hotshot social scientists or academics that are tracking "the great quit." When hedge fund legend and billionaire Ray Dalio admits that work will never be the same, as he did last week, it might be time to take this phenomenon seriously instead of seeing it as a COVID-driven passing phase.

Now back to the social scientists. Now that they've had time to analyze this sea change in the way people work and where they work from, they're finding deeper reasons for "the great reshuffle." When it was first identified earlier this year The Great Resignation was conveniently laid at the feet of COVID, it's a psychological unsettling of the general population and the staying power of hybrid work. But now the reasoning for it ranges from vaccine mandates, frustration with wages, inflation and even an aspirational angle. As a recent article in The Atlantic suggests, the "quits" are quitting because of a reset in the work-life balance. They're quitting because they can do better.

There's no single reason for "the great quit" and there's no silver bullet to fix it. The latest dynamic is the aforementioned vaccine mandates. There have been well-publicized firings for a lack of compliance at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit (400 workers), 23 police officers in Chicago and then there's the case of one very rich and famous NBA athlete named Kyrie Irving. He's not playing until his employer, the Brooklyn Nets, gives him an exemption from the vaccine mandate. None was forthcoming as of this writing.

Reactions to vaccine mandates have put the spotlight on an interesting set of values regarding workplace rights among a small population. It is not a factor in The Great Resignation. But it does indicate the changing expectations of the workforce and the continuing acceleration of the trend toward loosely held employee loyalty. For HR and benefits professionals, the retention problem continues to create an unstable environment in which employers need to think differently.

HR, employee success and benefits administrators need to see their jobs and their roles within their own employers as ripe for disruption. The old ways of customer retention aren't working. Disruption is defined as a business dynamic that lacks balance, relies on outdated technology and is stuck in static business practices. That's where a lot of employers find themselves. The best way to deal with the great resignation is to disrupt the old school approaches to employee engagement and retention. Take a hard look at the benefits your company offers, assess how they align with current workforce preferences and more importantly what they will want in the future.

We see three ways to disrupt the current acceleration of employee discontent using employee benefits as a center:

1. Stop defining benefits as non-cash compensation. Benefits are more than a health care plan. Define benefits as the way your company finds a unique way to improve the culture in a hybrid work environment. Make them create an experience rather than a transaction. This has already happened in the health care space.

It wasn't too many years ago that a paycheck stub stated the deductions for health care costs and that was the end of it. Now it's an experience filled with rewards for gym memberships, online workshops and on-demand care access. It can also happen with that paycheck. Make it worth the employee's time to experience payday. Did they need to access any part of it before payday? Did they get a spot bonus? Can they shift some money toward a savings account? That's how you create an experience instead of a transaction.

2. Embrace aspiration. If one of the reasons people are quitting is because they think they can do better, reflect that in your benefits package. Your workforce will always aspire to higher wages, but they also aspire to better ways to manage their compensation, which tracks back to our first "pay, save, reward" point. One study has shown that this kind of approach can increase retention by 72%.

3. Disrupt your technology. Are you sending pay statements that provide information beyond the simple transaction? Do you have an interactive dashboard? A predictive dashboard that presents financial scenarios? Is your IT department involved in making HR and payroll work together? APIs and SaaS applications can make sure HR and payroll technology is a positive factor, and some of them seamlessly integrate with existing HCM systems.

Legacy technology and analog benefits thinking won't guarantee your company will be part of the great resignation. But it will certainly make it vulnerable. Be the disruptor rather than the disrupted. And how do you know your company's benefits, payroll and IT functions are being disrupted? Check your employee retention rate. You can provide a better benefits experience, maybe even one that the "quits" are searching for.

 

This article was written by Emily Payne from BenefitsPro and was legally licensed through the Industry Dive publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.