Described for the first time in the US, the phenomenon of the great resignation is characterised by mass layoffs. Leveraging development, promoting internal mobility in organisations and preventing someone from being left behind are some of the strategies recommended by experts.
There were millions. Described for the first time in the US, at the end of last year, the phenomenon that Anthony Klotz called “great resignation” led many millions of people to abandon their jobs, in search of more recognition, better adaptation of their needs and ambitions, and in an attempt to bridge the lack of sense of belonging they sometimes felt in the organisations they worked for.
Empathy, purpose, mission, flexibility, recognition or appreciation are part of the list of conditions pointed out by many people as a consistent formula for the sense of belonging to their institutions.
For this reason, Isabel Viegas, Coordinator of the "Leading HR into the Future" Program at the Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics, describes the great resignation as an expected process - the result of the profound changes in the labour market in recent years - and she also recognises its unavoidable existence in Portugal, albeit on a smaller scale.
"Portugal is no different from other countries, even if we don't have the market dynamics that others have. One thing is our reality, and another one is accessing all the information. This allows us to be very aware of what is happening", says the teacher, at ReFLEXions by Coverflex "From great resignation to great retention", organised by Coverflex.
"Portugal is no different from other countries, even if we don't have the market dynamics that others have. One thing is our reality, and another one is accessing all the information. This allows us to be very aware of what is happening", says the teacher, at ReFLEXions by Coverflex "From great resignation to great retention", organised by Coverflex.
For Sara Quina, Culture and People Experience at Deloitte, the process is a challenge. "It's interesting to try to understand that sometimes people leave because they don't feel challenged, they often want to use their organisation to evolve and make that transition. We can use internal mobility to meet people, because we want them to be happy in the present while thinking about the path they are taking and that every day gives them a sense of purpose with everything they desire inside".
"We are still on the way", points out Francisca Matos, Head of Employee Experience & Talent Acquisition at NOS SGPS. And not everyone is the same. "Several companies that were in different stages of digitisation took different paths. Leaving no one behind was our concern, and that brings challenges when talking about a team of 3.000 people: there were too many to bring on this journey", she says. The pandemic has also brought about the acceleration of many trends for the future of work, namely the need to delegate and also "autonomy". Now, at NOS SGPS, the people management team is focused "on thinking about how it can start developing from where we were before, what we want in the future and bring everyone on the same journey. This is the concern of the people who work in People teams when you do scalable things.
New way of life, new way of management
"People are starting to question the time they dedicate and the return they get, and we are not just talking about the financial return", describes Isabel Viegas, about the transformation. "We are talking about what they retain when they give themselves to a company, from the point of view of satisfaction, development, motivation, a number of factors that have made employees ask whether it is time to leave. The pandemic has aggravated all of this".
Therefore, for the professor, "what we see in the US, at this moment of #Quit, is that most of the people who left their jobs work in sectors that had a significant impact during the pandemic. Restaurants, hotels, hospitals, technology. For different reasons: some because they feel that they have a lot of value in the market and, at any time, they can leave and come back; others because they started to think about the effort they were making and that the return they were getting was not great. To health, this excessive tiredness made them think: I'm going to stop and I know that, when I want to go back, I can do it". This is expected and aligned with the perception of workers in the sense of putting "work on the same level as other spheres of their lives".
"When we're involved in the HR communities, I'm always worried that we talk a lot about people but forget that business is full of challenges. HR will have to be closer and closer to the business and bring the people component into the business. What has changed a lot in recent years is qualification, so I cannot continue to manage people today as I did 20 years ago, moving from more instrumental models to more responsible and trusting models. Whenever I ask an employee for a result and not a process, I trust that he will deliver a result".
"When we're in the HR communities, I'm always worried that we talk a lot about people but forget that business is full of challenges. HR will have to be closer and closer to the business and bring the people component into the business. What has changed a lot in recent years is qualification, so I cannot continue to manage people today as I did 20 years ago, moving from more instrumental models to more responsible and trusting models. Whenever I ask an employee for a result and not a process, I trust that he will deliver a result".
The pandemic was even more striking in this transformation process. "It was a period of unprecedented deprivation for everyone, and there was a lot of time for us to be in touch with our emotions. All of this led to higher than normal levels of stress and pressure, and a realisation of the kind of leadership we had. And those who were not lucky enough to have more inclusive leadership felt it even more", Sara points out. That is why, she emphasises, "companies that were able to comply with and work at the level of engagement, with teams that celebrate each other and know what it is like for people to be at their best version" came out winning from the process. "Whenever there is this concern and this space to be who we are, being allowed to not leave the 'Sara person' aside... [This] has accelerated the need to change paradigms of flexibility and realise that it works. We are more productive, our performance is not affected and, deep down, we feel that our company can give us more and better integrate our personal and professional lives with balance, sustainability and empathy".
Sara Quina also advocates personalisation at the scale of each company. "Each organisation has to understand what the challenges are, and co-create solutions to these challenges at the level of priorities, of style. We need to converge on a style that allows all of this: respect, trust, and guiding our work towards results and outputs and not towards the time or place where we carry out this work".
So how do we avoid the great resignation?
For Isabel Viegas, the answer to "great resignation" will not be a "great attraction" but rather a reflection. "Companies have to create the conditions for employees to decide to be with them, and for this to be a conscious decision. The feeling of 'I want to be here because there is a team spirit, a successful environment, openness for me to express myself, because there are those who listen to me', points out the teacher, adding that the best way to combat layoffs is to "prevent the risks of people leaving". "We are almost at full employment, we know how difficult it is to find good people to get involved in projects. But the question is not about thinking 'how am I going to retain?' but rather 'what am I creating for people to feel that they are contributing?'", she pointed out, adding an example: "We have to think about everything: in the working setups we are going to offer, how we are going to assess them. A young man told me that he 'liked to have "likes" every day'. The value given to some things over others has changed: it has nothing to do with the pandemic, it has to do with qualification, people have more to give. We need to take advantage of all this instead of neutering it”.
Regarding the strategies used to make employees think "I want to be here", Isabel Viegas underlines a trend. "It seems that there is a lever that takes precedence over the others, that of development. I would say that if we had to choose one, it would be this one. But with this individualised component, and with time frames of development", she points out. Sara Quina adds that it is necessary to create "conditions for our people to feel that they can have a rhythm, a sustainable workload for their life and context at each moment". Francisca Matos concludes: "The solution is not just one thing. Let's take the opportunity to think about this cultural transformation through these winds of change so that we can have a year of demanding execution but always doing collaborative work, so that it is not top down. So we can all land on our feet and make it. (...) Today we are very far from having a job for life, and we can have an idea of what is the positive time for a person to leave. This resignation, while having a great impact in terms of business, does not always have to be a negative thing".
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