{"id":2220,"date":"2022-05-18T10:05:01","date_gmt":"2022-05-18T08:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/?p=2220"},"modified":"2022-06-21T12:08:42","modified_gmt":"2022-06-21T10:08:42","slug":"rethinking-employee-engagement-in-times-of-the-great-resignation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/rethinking-employee-engagement-in-times-of-the-great-resignation","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking Employee Engagement in times of the “Great Resignation”"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is going on?<\/strong><\/p>\n

HR publications are full of articles and studies about the Great Resignation. According to Gartner[1]<\/a>, digital burn-out, discrepancies in perceptions between leaders and workers, and toxic cultures are the driving forces behind people\u2019s desire to quit. 41% of employees globally are considering to hand in their notice[2]<\/a>. 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]<\/a>.
\n<\/sup><\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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]<\/a> found that the more positively employees talked about innovation at their company, the more likely they were to quit. It doesn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

McKinsey[5]<\/a> 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. \u201cIt\u2019s important to keep in mind what makes employees tick,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat 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.<\/p>\n

The Future of Work is NOW<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the same time, the pandemic has accelerated many trends that previously had been described as \u201cThe Future of Work\u201d: trends of flexibilization of work where employment on a company\u2019s 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. \u2018Rethinking the workplace\u2019 and \u2018managing in a hybrid world\u2019 are key pillars according to Gartner. The \u201cFuture of Work\u201d requires us to implement new, innovative approaches to how \u201cwork gets done\u201d and how \u201cwork is led\u201d. With the rapid arrival of new technologies and digitalization, according to John Wiley & Sons leaders will have to deconstruct work assignments and \u201clead the work\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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]<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

Call to Action for HR<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to the HR Trend Institute, 2022 is the year for HR leaders to become \u201cactivists\u201d rather than advisors[11]<\/a>. 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 \u201cbigger problems\u201d. 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cEngagement\u201d in the world to come starts with a big \u201cE\u201d!<\/strong><\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And here are the 5 engagement levers explained in detail:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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 \u201cE\u201ds. The Great Resignation is the tipping point \u2013 the way we lead and collaborate has to change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s desire to quit. 41% of employees globally are considering to hand in their notice[2]. The pandemic has been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":2214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false},"categories":[551,58],"tags":[],"acf":{"excerpt":"

Recent research indicates that we are moving towards \u201cThe Great Resignation\u201d where more employees than ever are considering leaving their jobs or changing careers altogether. Fueled by the Corona crisis and the resulting consequences for workplace conditions, company leadership and the way it dealt with the pandemic, many employees are reconsidering their psychological engagement contract with their companies. There are indications that the scope of the challenge is far bigger than in the past. It is of structural, more fundamental nature and not bound to disappear any time soon. Companies and, in particular, HR practitioners will need to find answers to address this challenge in the light of a shrinking workforce and the war for talents. The risk of losing valued employees paired with the need to attract highly specialized talents in new areas (such as digitalization) presents companies with enormous challenges and threats.<\/p>\n","school":false},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}