Great Resignation or Big Quit
What is the relationship between Zoomers and Big Quit? Let’s try to understand if and what relationships exist between under-30s and the voluntary resignation phenomenon in the U.S. and the role of HR in all this.
The term “Great Resignation” (later also called Big Quit) was first used by Professor Anthony Klotz, of Mays Business School in Texas in relation to the record increase in voluntary resignations in the U.S. during 2021. Recent research by Microsoft, the 2021 Work Trend Index, showed that 41 percent of the workforce in the U.S. is planning to leave their employer this year! Big Quit is spreading to Europe, especially the Netherlands, UK and Germany.
Big Quit two key trends
According to the Harward Business Review’s September 2021 “Who is Driving the Great Resignation” research of 9 million resignations from 400 companies in a wide variety of industries, two key trends can be identified:
- Resignation rates are highest among mid-career employees. Employees between the ages of 30 and 45 had the largest increase in resignation rates, with an average increase of more than 20 percent between 2020 and 2021, while turnover is typically higher among younger employees.
- Resignations are concentrated in the technology and healthcare sectors. In general, resignations involve people who have experienced extreme increases in work commitment due to the pandemic, likely leading to increased workloads and burnout.
Resignations are also growing in Italy
In the second quarter of 2021, the voluntary termination rate exceeded 2 percent of total employment for the first time in years.
The Ministry of Labor and Social Policy released the document on labor relations in the 3rd quarter of 2021.
It states that: “Worker-requested terminations, accounting for 19.4 percent of the total, were 569,000, of which 524,000 (17.9 percent of the total) consisted of resignations, with an upward trend of 26.7 percent, following the high increase in Q2 2021 (+85.45 percent).”
Zoomers first in intentions in Big Quit
According to Forbes, “Generation Z has had enough. A recent Adobe survey of 5,500 workers found that 56 percent of those aged 18-24 say they plan to change jobs in the next year. Research by Microsoft and Bankrate confirms this, reporting that 54% and 77% of Generation Z, respectively, are thinking of quitting their jobs.”
QuitTok! Celebrating quitting on social media
QuitTok is the new trend of young people celebrating their resignation on social media… And it seems that on TikTok everyone likes people who quit (and put like)!
The Zoomers’ job farewells are going viral, with the hashtag #iquitmyjob garnering nearly 200 million views on TikTok.
Going beyond the folklore these public demonstrations there is an opportunity for companies to understand more deeply the reasons of the young resigners, those reasons that are perhaps not openly stated in exit interviews.
QuitTok! Yay I resigned!
In the U.S., Generation Z seems fascinated by the so-called Yolo Economy , the “You-only-live-once” economy.
The Italian and U.S. labor markets are evidently very different. In Italy the issue concerns, according to N. Giangrande of the Giuseppe di Vittorio Foundation, “above all the search for opportunities and possibilities to design one’s own future rather than for greater lightness.”
Big Quit: what are the causes?
There are several causes that could contribute to Big Quit. Among others include: fears of contagion to oneself or others, low wages, poor working conditions, and lack of schedule flexibility.
On the other hand, there are those who think that the pandemic has “opened the eyes” of many and prompted them to rethink their life goals. Among other things, this means being less likely to settle for unsatisfactory situations. Thus, there would be both “work-related” and psychological and social causes.
According to recent research by the IBV (IBM Institute for Business Value) people are quite dissatisfied with how their company “behaves.” The following are taken into consideration: ethics and values, work-life balance, opportunities and salaries, and banefit. The percentage of people rating their company as “very good” or “excellent” on the various issues yielded these results:
- 55% Ethics and Values
- 51% Work-life balance
- 48% career opportunities/advancement
- 47% salary and benefits
Google Trends 2021: “How to move forward”?
Google search trends “How to move forward”
Covid 19 and the measures to counter it have been a major pressure for many, sometimes even a trauma. More importantly, many people have lost relatives and friends. One of the confirmations of the hardship is the growth in 2021 of the Google search “how to move forward” (which we could translate as “how to get by?” of which we show the graph above.
Keywords for dealing with the Big Quit
According to Microsoft’s “Work Trend Index” research, the key words for coping with the Big Quit are these 5:
- Flexibility – People want to maintain flexibility in work but have the opportunity for personal meetings. Companies should redesign hybrid work environments.
- Empathy – People expect more empathy: more one-on-one meetings and informal conversations are needed, especially for “remote” workers.
- Burn-Out – High productivity hides burn-out: meetings have increased in number and duration, along with chat use (even after hours).
- Sense (of Purpose and Connection) – For Zoomers, feeling a sense of purpose and connection is essential to feeling satisfied at work.
- Authenticity – To retain and attract new talent, leaders must foster team collaboration, improve authentic relationships.
The Role of Human Resources.
After this long excursus we can say that it is probably still early to draw conclusions about the Big Quit. In the meantime, as HRIs we want to contribute some thoughts on the role of HR in regard to the phenomena described:
- The employment contract can no longer be the only relationship between employee and company. What is needed is analliance involving a meeting (somewhere in the middle) between organization and person.
- The company is not just a “workplace.” It is an area of fulfillment of the individual and therefore work experiences are in effect life experiences.
- These experiences can be consequently positive or negative: to HR the not easy task of first making them “personalized” experiences.
- If the company fails to make the characteristics of the professional relationship fit the needs of the personal”momentum ”, the possibility of having excessive turnover of people or a climate of strong demotivation grows.
- We believe it is essential to have a strategic and systemic HR approach to progressively shift to a Human Centered Designed Organization ( experience, environment, relationships, communication, tools, organization – time – space, opportunities, future, purpose, values, impact, welfare, etc. )
Finally, as HR managers, there are some questions that we believe it is important to ask ourselves: are we also riceonognizing the phenomenon of Big Resignation? Are we facing difficulties in attracting and retaining Zoomers? What are we doing and more importantly, is what we are doing working?
It’s a long and difficult path: all the more reason for us to team up among ourselves and tackle it together in our Thinking Spaces