Rethinking Employee Engagement in times of the “Great Resignation”

What is going on?

HR publications are full of articles and studies about the Great Resignation. According to Gartner[1], digital burn-out, discrepancies in perceptions between leaders and workers, and toxic cultures are the driving forces behind people’s desire to quit. 41% of employees globally are considering to hand in their notice[2]. The pandemic has been a time for people to be more introspective and to reconsider their priorities in life. Working in isolation from home as part of more and more siloed teams has fueled the dissatisfaction with current employers. Many in the professional services sector who have been allowed to work remotely do not want to return to the office and are seeking more-flexible jobs, whereas those in logistics, health care and hospitality have been burned out working longer hours over the last 20 months and are rethinking what they want to do[3].

It’s not surprising that workers leave companies with toxic cultures or frequent layoffs. But it is surprising that employees are more likely to exit from innovative companies. In the Culture 500 sample, an MIT study[4] found that the more positively employees talked about innovation at their company, the more likely they were to quit. It doesn’t seem to be sufficient anymore to be intellectually convinced about the strategy of the company. Employees expect a deeper connection with the purpose of the company and they want to be seen as a whole person, with emotional needs and a need for physical and mental wellbeing.

McKinsey[5] recently spoke with Amit Sood, MD, a leading expert on psychological resilience, about how people can tap into that mindset, strategies for maintaining well-being, and what companies can do to support their workers. He believes that employers have to view mental and behavioural health holistically, emphasizing prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation. Instead of focusing on productivity, he says, focus on purpose, cultivate compassion, and give employees the agency to make decisions. “It’s important to keep in mind what makes employees tick,” he said. “What really keeps them going is a sense of control and a sense of purpose. And if you give them both, it can help combat the cognitive overload that we may all be feeling.

The Future of Work is NOW

At the same time, the pandemic has accelerated many trends that previously had been described as “The Future of Work”: trends of flexibilization of work where employment on a company’s payroll is just one of many possible forms to work for a company; an increase in remote and hybrid working; collaboration facilitated by technology; and new behaviours and demands from a workforce requesting to be positioned as active co-creators and no longer submissive employees. ‘Rethinking the workplace’ and ‘managing in a hybrid world’ are key pillars according to Gartner. The “Future of Work” requires us to implement new, innovative approaches to how “work gets done” and how “work is led”. With the rapid arrival of new technologies and digitalization, according to John Wiley & Sons leaders will have to deconstruct work assignments and “lead the work” rather than manage employees. The world beyond employment can provide free agents with satisfying work and allows firms to remain flexible. Besides, there are areas where humans are better than machines: empathy, ethics, and creativity or emotional bonding and human judgment as written in Harper Business. Research of the Harvard Business Review tell, that thanks to automation, some human work skills are now more valuable than ever, like creative services and personal care.

Technology will not only impact which kind of tasks humans will perform, but also how they work. Organizationally, there is a trend to more autonomy and accountability that comes with digitalization[9]. Inspired by modern trends of customer excellence, the future of work requires a more data and evidence-driven and personalized approach of interacting with employees. Employees become part of an eco-system and the structural support of digitalization will lead to decentralization and break up autocratic structures. This allows for a flattened, egalitarian, widely distributed organizational model as an Article of Palgrave McMillan shows.

Call to Action for HR

According to the HR Trend Institute, 2022 is the year for HR leaders to become “activists” rather than advisors[11]. The credible activist is described by Dave Ulrich as a successful and effective HR professional who drives results, has trust with the business leaders and uses their impact to solve “bigger problems”. It requires courage from HR to address leadership challenges in toxic environments and to reinforce the need to drive diversity, equity, and inclusion. In times of the Great Resignation, HR leaders need to put on their activist hat and proactively address issues.

“Engagement” in the world to come starts with a big “E”!

Based on the recent findings about root causes for the Great Resignation as well as research about The Future of Work, we urge HR professionals to re-think engagement in the new context. HR should set up engagement strategies and provide guidance to leaders based on the following 5 engagement levers:

And here are the 5 engagement levers explained in detail:

As the Great Resignation indicates that we are facing a profound change in the way employees engage with their companies, it will take new and maybe even unconventional answers. Traditional ways of looking at engagement drivers might fall short. It is the role of HR to come up with these answers, not just with slogans, but with tangible actions linked to these 5 “E”s. The Great Resignation is the tipping point – the way we lead and collaborate has to change.