4 ways to limit the great resignation for your team

What is the great resignation and how can I reduce its effect on my team?

The great resignation is a large scale movement of employees away from teams that have not yet adapted to the changing social and cultural desires of their team members. This movement is so pronounced that 48% of American workers are actively searching for new job opportunities, according to a recent article from Gallop.

The Gallop research found employees weren’t leaving for money, but rather for lack of engagement and personal and career development opportunities.

So how can I help my team?

1. Empathise with burnout, encourage wellness programs

A recent Microsoft survey has shown that 44% of employees are more burnt out today than a year ago. Compounding this is a forfeiture of usual sick days taken given a new remote working environment that has created a pseudo “always-on” culture in our home offices. Encourage a culture of allowing for dedicated days off, but match this by ensuring work load is reduced for these days off. Without this, days off will be ineffective, and emplyees will often work on weekends or nights to catch up instead.

2. Promote flexibility in how and where your team connects

Ensuring your team is equipped with a comfortable home office environment shows you empathise with your team members. Simple gestures including home office equipment such as a standing desk, ergonmic chair, and noise cancelling headphones show an understanding that their home office situation may be very different to how they are able to operate in their traditional office surroundings.

Another important piece of flexibility is understanding how some employees want to communicate. Granted, this choice is not always available, but given 44% of employees are more burnt out today than a year ago, the advent of an always on Zoom or Microsoft Teams meetings culture brings with it significant deteriation in your team members energy over time. Ensure they have the ability to at least feel comfortable with no cameras on, or even to remove every second weeks scheduled meetings in lieu of an asynchronous set of notes in a chat channel. This allows for collaboration whilst reducing the pressure of constant face-time for employees.

3. Social change is important and leading from the front publicly is important to the team

Showing empathic leadership on social issues has become more important over the last 24 months of Covid as employees re-evaluate what happiness means to them. Accepting traditional approaches of “not getting political” by leadership is now seen as tacit compliance with whatever it is that is no longer socially or culturally acceptable. Having a stance, and a public one at that, be in within internal speeches, or even on company social media, allows your team members to feel as though leaders truly care about the world we all live in and is becoming increasingly important for the tenure and engagement of team members.

4. Give team members an understanding of their career development

It’s often the last item on a busy schedule for a company to address, career development. But giving your team members a plan as early as possible helps them know they are valued and desired to be a part of your company long term. The difficulty in applying these development plans often stems from lack of training and ability to create these plans from managers. Tools are needed allowing managers who are not yet experienced to allow them to shine, with little effort and ongoing management.

Onboardind and ongoing development tools are available to guide managers in how they should be approaching their team members career development. Ensuring they have adequate feedback sessions and mentoring with them to promote this longer term in your company is also vital. SuperPath is one such tool allowing your managers to build on top of pre-made career focussed pathways, ensuring your team stays engaged.

Conclusion

Remote work is here to stay and it brings with it it’s own challenges for engagement of employees. The great resignation spurred on in large part because of existential realisations from your team members over the past 2 years of Covid, have heightened the bar for what acceptable social and cultural norms are, and in large part, are what keeps them energised and engaged in your team. Through listening and  promoting the types of attributes that make your team a great place to work, you can stay above the pack when it comes to retaining your best and thriving as a team.

Are you looking to ensure your team is engaged and has access to pre-made career development pathways?

If you’re interested in providing your team with learning and onboarding pathways allowing them to be guided with minimal initial setup, then try SuperPath.

SuperPath is a new style of learning platform, allowing managers to copy and edit from existing position-based pathways and assign them easily to their team.

You’re welcome to try out SuperPath for free with no credit card needed today. Go to superpath.io to make strengthen your teams engagement as well as provide streamline learning and onboarding pathways with little to no setup.

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Artwork credit Javier Allegue Barros, Unsplash