“It’s important to always look where you’re headed

rather than where you were.”

The Lion King (Disney 2019)

With the new year less than two months away, it is natural that people’s minds will start to think about work options, now and in the new year. This may be the time to think about flexible work arrangements, to check out the possibility of working from home a couple of days a week and even the possibility of quitting for good or to transition to another employer. The transitional nature of November and December wreaks of change.

One departure point regarding change, is the Quit Rate over the last four years. “On 30 January 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID19 to be a ‘Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC)’ by 11 March 2020 WHO declared COVID19 to be a worldwide pandemic. On 5 May 2023, the WHO Director-General announced that WHO no longer considered COVID-19 to be a PHEIC. However, the COVID-19 pandemic declaration is still active” (Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care. (23 October 2023). About Coronavirus (COVID-19)).

The statistics from the era of COVID19 restrictions is interesting. As the COVID19 virus was surfacing in January 2020, the United States Quit Rate was 2.3%, falling to 2.2% in February. When the WHO announced that COVID19 was a global pandemic in March 2020, the Quit Rate fell to 1.9% reaching its lowest point in April 2020, when it fell to 1.6%. It is assumed that people were getting concerned about the impact that the new pandemic would have on their work life. The median average Quit Rate for 2020 was 2.25%. As the pandemic unfolded and the new year began the Quite Rate was at 2.3%, climbing throughout the year to finish in November and December at 3.0%. The median average Quit Rate in 2021 was 2.8%. In 2022 the rate moved around the 2.8% mark, with the median average Quit Rate for 2022 finding itself at 2.75%, close to the average of the previous year. In May 2023, when the WHO declared that COVID19 was no longer a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern”, the Quit Rate was 2.6%, the highest for 2023 to date. The following month the Quit Rate fell to 2.4% in June and in the months of July through to September, it has remained stable at 2.3%, the same Quit Rate as in January 2020 when COVID19 was just starting to surface. By September 2023, the median average had reached 2.4% (US Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2023). Job Openings and Labor Turnover Archived News Releases.)

All of this data reminds us of several things. Firstly, the Quit Rate seems to be stabilizing to the levels seen at the start of the pandemic. Secondly, it could be construed that the COVID19 pandemic caused people to prioritize key aspects of their life. Initially, their work life and more broadly job security, was a key priority but as restrictions started to take hold, the priority appears to have shifted to family and close friends. The rise of people seeing the benefits of ‘working from home’ cemented the notion that family and work could be more harmonious, if ‘working from home’ remained a serious option. For organizations that took the time to invest in their people pre-pandemic, these changes during the era of COVID19 restrictions were ‘doable’. Such organizations were willing to pivot to make everything that was needed, happen. These organizations created ‘good will’ building ‘social capital’ with their people as a result. Anecdotally, the organizations that didn’t invest in their people pre-pandemic, were more likely to struggle to change through the period of the COVID19 restrictions. Those same organizations may well now be looking at ways to return to ‘Business as Usual’, to the pre-pandemic ways of operating. These organizations demonstrate a reluctance to change and a reluctance to prioritize people as being at the heart of almost all business activity. What COVID19 highlighted is that change is always with us. What organizations do about that is the critical question.

Often the question people ask themselves when they are thinking of quitting is “why don’t I just pack up and leave?” It’s a reasonable question when someone has had enough and frustrations have reached their limits. It is also a question that may well see you regretting the haste of the decision that was made. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. In the Disney movie, ‘The Lion King’ Simba mistakenly believes that he has done something wrong and so leaves his family, friends and the kingdom he is heir to. After years of gaining a new perspective on things, he realizes his haste and returns to reclaim his throne and his place in the ‘Circle of Life’. Rephrasing the question is one way to reshape and even clarify your thinking about the matter of leaving. Instead of asking “why don’t I leave?”, ask, “why do I stay?” Looking for the reasons that keep you coming to work, is likely to highlight the positives, as opposed to the negatives that the original question asks. It keeps the situation in balance and moves you towards identifying what competing commitments might be at work in this scenario. The caveat of course is that there are good reasons as to why you might want to move on: professional and personal growth, your health and wellbeing being amongst them. The question that could be asked by the Leadership Team could be, “why would our employees want to stay?” Straight away the question would go to the heart of retention issues that the organization might be facing. More often than not, retention issues can reveal issues of culture, especially a toxic culture, within the organization.

One place for the Leadership Team to start with, is how they lead by example. The emphasis in this ‘lead by example’ approach is on people and quality relationships. At the heart of quality relationships is trust. In his excellent book, ‘Smart Trust’, Stephen M. R. Covey succinctly highlights the importance of trust.

“The reason there is such a direct connection between trust and prosperity is that trust always affects two key inputs to prosperity: speed and cost. When trust goes down in a relationship, on a team, in an organization, or in a country, speed goes down and cost goes up. Why? Because of the many steps that have to be taken to compensate for the lack of trust. This is a   tax—a low-trust tax. Everything takes more time, and miscommunication, redundancy, and rework create costly delays.”

Covey, Stephen. M. R., Link, Greg., Merrill, Rebecca, R. (2012). Smart trust: Creating prosperity, energy and joy in a low-trust world (eBook). London: Simon & Schuster. p77.

In organizations that value trust, they most likely value the importance of creating a community of professionals, one in which they claim a legitimate stake or interest in the business. One in which they feel, they really do belong. The sense of belonging that employees have is critical. If a person feels that they don’t belong, they are more likely to be unhappy at work, they are more likely to see the job as a series of chores, they are more likely to disengage, possibly even leading to them doing the ‘Quiet Quitting’ routine or just quitting for good. Organizations that don’t foster this sense of belonging, this sense of purposeful connection and community may well be perceived as an organization that doesn’t care about its staff. The rub here is fairly straightforward. If the people you are paying to be there aren’t cared for, why would customers turn up and pay for an uncaring experience from the agents of that company? They wouldn’t! It becomes a vicious cycle of self-destruction, one which can take a long time to turn around, the greater the toxicity of the culture, the greater the challenge to turn it around. Jennifer Moss writing in the Harvard Business Review, notes that the Leadership Team should start by: “(Re)Imagine Flexibility, (Re)Build Belonging, (Re)Store Purpose”. Jennifer Moss explains in the same article, just how intrinsically powerful this sense of purpose and belonging can be.

“Being happy at work isn’t just a win for employees; it’s also a win for employers. Research shows a causal link between happy workers and a 13% increase in productivity…Obviously, the current state of workforce unhappiness is a big problem to solve. Happiness at work has to come from a deeper, more intrinsic connection to why we’re there. A culture of autonomy, belonging, and purpose comes from a shared vision, and right now, it’s fair to say that many companies and their employees are simply not seeing eye-to-eye.”

Moss, Jennifer. (2023). Creating a Happier Workplace Is Possible — and Worth It (20 October 2023) in Harvard Business Review. Brighton, MA: Harvard Business Publishing.

In July 2023, Tiffani Bova writing in the Harvard Business Review, also looked at this notion of trust and belonging, being an important driver of change and transformation within an organization. According to Tiffani Bova’s research, there are five things employers can do, to build a positive culture of purpose and belonging.

1. Mutual trust

Mutual trust results in employee empowerment. It demonstrates management’s confidence in its workforce, which fuels employees’ trust in leadership and each other.

2. C-suite accountability

Closely related to trust, C-suite accountability means ensuring company leadership is committed and responsive to both the business and its workers.

3. Alignment of employee values and company vision

Clear goals with well-defined milestones and success metrics connect employees to their company’s mission and help them understand their role in advancing it.  

4. Recognizing success.

Workers who believe their success will be recognized are 2.7 times more likely to be highly engaged than peers who don’t, according to the employee engagement firm Quantum Workplace. 

5. Seamless technology to reduce employees’ day-to-day friction

Technology is not an end in itself but a tool for increasing productivity and reducing effort.

Bova, Tiffani. (2023). 5 Factors That Make for a Great Employee Experience (July 11, 2023) in Harvard Business Review. Brighton, MA: Harvard Business Publishing.