Reducing the Risk of Unwanted Employee Resignations

The CEO of a national REIT recently described the residential real estate market to me as ‘having a moment’.

That’s because in many states more homes are selling with multiple offers above their asking price. It has become a hyper-seller’s market, enabling your neighbors to dictate their own sale terms like keeping refrigerators since many appliances are still out of stock.

Talent acquisition and retention are also having a moment.

Just as in the housing market, current demand for quality employees (sellers) is outpacing supply. And key assets — talented personnel — are seeking greener pastures, leaving businesses to navigate through the ripple effects of The Great Resignation.

So if you feel like everyone around you is giving their two-weeks’ notice, you are not alone.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a whopping 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs in August alone. These resignations, which began en masse in April, have remained abnormally high. And despite a modest uptick in our October jobs report, we are still heading into the holiday season with over a record-breaking 9 million open jobs.

It used to be that nothing sucked more than work, except being out of work. Now that seems to be not necessarily the case.

Among the reasons that workers are citing for joining this Great Resignation include Covid fatigue, unwanted return-to-workplace requirements and feeling disengaged at the office (Gallup, 2021).

What can leaders and managers do?

Invest in building a culture that is as compelling internally as it is externally.

And the most effective way to accomplish this is through an internal communications program that amplifies connection and nurtures inclusion and community.

Here’s why: when CEOs and managers partner with human resources, communications and marketing to align staff roles with a company’s mission, they can transform an exodus of employees into an influx of talent.

In effect, you are fostering a corporate culture that inspires employees not just to stay in their jobs, but become motivated to dedicate their entire professional selves to your company’s mission. By delivering such meaning and agency to your people, you can reap an ROI that includes better performance throughout your organization, and ultimately, positive impact on your bottom-line.

1) Connection

Apply Customer Design Experience to Employee Engagement

Employees who appreciate the companies they work for are often motivated by the mission and values that their company delivers (Glassdoor, 2021). That is, they feel a strong connection with their company, especially if the internal culture reflects the career development values that companies externally promote.

A recent example of this is our work with the HR department of a Fintech firm, where we helped reposition its employment brand offering. Our goal was to reframe a career with the company in a completely different way for existing staff, while motivating a much wider pool of prospective recruits to apply.

We accomplished this by applying a customer experience design to employee engagement, demonstrating to staff that they are as important as the firm’s customers, the people they work hard to win and retain.

Informed by data from employees, we created an omnichannel campaign to help transform perceptions and make the firm a place where more people could feel they belong. A key part of this approach was getting existing employees to participate in the campaign. Who better to explain career benefits than those experiencing it every day? These employees contributed personalized social content, providing testimony to the professional benefits of belonging to the firm.

2) Nurturing Inclusion & Community

Diversity dominates the corporate conversation these days, but what about inclusion?

Specifically, being mindful to implement internal communications programs that work to eliminate negative interactions in employee experiences and elevate the whole person.

Call it inclusion or even psychological safety, but at its core, this is about a company’s ability to communicate to every employee that they matter and they are part of a special community.

For example, we recently assisted an investment firm to expand the focus of their national sales group to help clients with problems across different departments.

Through a targeted internal communications program, we demonstrated the importance of aligning customer relationships across all of the firm’s services with its core mission and values, and then identified the digital tools to help streamline the process.

This approach proved effective because it strengthened the sense of inclusion and community among employees by demonstrating how their work at the company has purpose, how it’s aligned with the firm’s mission, and where everyone from the CEO on down amplified it in order to ensure employees feel that mission personally. We helped message across the entire firm a compelling reason for employees to stay.

The Takeaway: the pandemic experience and subsequent move to remote work have put power in the hands of the talent, and they are beginning to vote with their feet.

No longer are employees willing to endure the things that are broken at work, whether it is a toxic environment or being ignored. Employees want to work for leaders who help them to deliver their best.

Every crisis offers an opportunity. And The Great Resignation is no different. It offers CEOs and managers a chance to reframe unwanted employee defections from short-term inconvenience, to a long-term opportunity to build competitive advantage by attracting and retaining top talent.

Remember, even those happy employees you see on your Zoom calls have other voices in their ears, and those voices belong to your competition. Give your staff a voice, act on their input and create a sense of belonging.

In other words, don’t wait for the exit interview to find out what’s wrong.

If you do, refrigerators won’t be your only asset out of stock.