While the economy is starting to rebound after the pandemic, some experts are forecasting yet another potential disruption: an employee turnover tsunami. Surveys show that nearly 50% of employees say they plan to look for a new job this year. As a manager, what can YOU do to make sure your employees feel valued and appreciated? In her June 1 ”Your Best Next Move” video, Bobbie LaPorte shares a simple way to start the dialogue:
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT OF “YOUR BEST NEXT MOVE: SURVIVING THE TURNOVER TSUNAMI”
Hi, everyone. Bobbie LaPorte here again with my weekly tips for “Your Best Next Move,” where I help you have more agency in your work, acknowledge your capacity to act, and see what you can do right now.
If you’ve been looking at the news lately, you’ve probably seen a number of articles that talk about as the economic recovery continues, how companies are starting to craft their return-to-work plans. And experts and surveys are showing that businesses also need to be prepared for what’s being called yet another potential disruption after the pandemic. And that’s a potential surge in turnover called the “Turnover Tsunami” or “The Great Resignation Wave.”
Some surveys state that as many as 50% of employees plan to look for a new job with a different employer now that the threat of the pandemic is clearly lessening after a year-plus of dealing with uncertainty, not knowing what the future will look like either personally or professionally.
This is probably not entirely surprising, but I don’t think that many leaders who now have increasing demands to catch up on missed or deferred projects from last year are really focusing on this potential catastrophic impact on their organization.
Here’s a few other data points. Recent surveys have shown that one of the most important benefits to employees is career mobility, and a Gallup workplace poll showed that more than 50% of people don’t feel that they’re appreciated or valued, something that obviously can be challenging to provide in a virtual work environment. And many of you will continue to be in that environment for a while.
Look, there are many things employers can do across the enterprise to retain employees, but you have a lot of power and influence as a manager.
So here’s my tip (and we’ve talked to this a little bit before):
Be sure to take time to reach out to your team members to see how they’re doing, let them know you appreciate them. And now that we’re coming out of the pandemic, acknowledge that we can finally start to think about the future. Ask them what they’re looking forward to and what would they like to do next in their career. And then, how can you best support them?
At the very least, this will establish an important connection in case you don’t have it already. And it might just be the start of a dialogue that could help retain a key employee.
I want 2021 to be a year momentum for you…one of possibility thinking, where you take advantage of the agency we sometimes forget we have. That’s my tip for this week. (Sorry about Nilla barking in the background!) Have a good week and take care of yourself.
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