The Great Resignation: Nine ways to make sure your staff don’t leave

The Great Resignation is sweeping the globe and barreling towards Australia. What employers do between now and Christmas will determine how many of their staff stick around through to next January.

Microsoft’s Workforce Trend Index made headlines in March this year with its jaw dropping findings that over 40% of the global workforce was considering leaving their employer this year.

The US has just reported 6 consecutive months of a record number of people voluntarily quitting their jobs — 4.3 million in August alone. Some without another job to go to.

And the Australian numbers seem to be tracking with global statistics.

PwC, Hays Recruitment and Employment Hero have all found in recent studies that 40% or more of Aussies surveyed are already actively searching for a new role or are going to start looking within the next 6 months, and Limeade reports one third of the Aussies who have already quit don’t have another job lined up.

So why are Aussies quitting? Here’s where things get interesting. The reasons, as well as the geographic and demographic breakdowns, vary wildly depending on the study.

But that’s kind of the point: one size fits all actually fits none in the post-COVID workforce.

The war for talent is over, and talent has won because The Great Resignation is occurring simultaneously with a great skills shortage — one that will not be solved even when the borders reopen, due to Australia’s ageing workforce and the disparity of skills required versus the skills on offer.

The power balance has shifted from employer to employee, and workers are demanding to be seen as individuals.

Smart managers must take the time to get to know what drives each of their team and then to meet or manage their individual expectations; it’s a daunting task for time poor managers and a paradigm shift for organisations who are used to developing and implementing broad based policies.

Luckily, a simple model — originally developed in 2010 after reverse engineering over 5000 exit interviews and recently updated for the post-pandemic workforce — provides significant clues as to what workers really want.

Over the last 11 years this model has proven to be wildly successful in increasing employee retention, motivation, productivity, and profitability, which is why it can help employers now understand what they need to deliver to hold onto their team through The Great Resignation and beyond.

It is called the 9 Currencies of Choice® because it does not address pay and benefits. Instead, it affects employee wellbeing and happiness along with productivity and the desire to do great work.

People want to:

1. Work for a company with a compelling purpose and values aligned to their own

2. Work for a manager they trust, respect and whom they know cares about them

3. Feel like they belong

4. Be appreciated in the appropriate way

5. Have a voice

6. Know how to be successful and how that success is measured

7. Learn, grow, and develop in their career

8. Have agency, control, and choice

9. Be able to spend most of their day doing work they love and do well

The model in action

The 9 Currencies of Choice® model is easy to use. Simply sit down with each of your direct reports (and have your direct reports sit down with theirs) to have honest conversations with them around each of these nine keys.

Initially you want to get a feel for their individual priorities. Between now and Christmas, it’s important to understand if any of these keys are not being met and if that’s a particular source of frustration.

Many taking part in The Great Resignation are doing so suddenly over nothing more than unresolved frustrations. So, if possible, address these frustrations immediately or develop and communicate an action plan to address them in the short to mid-term.

Once you’ve made it through the summer it’s time to take a deeper dive into each of these factors to ask not only if these keys are being met, but why your employees feel they aren’t being met, how they can be improved, and what the improvement would mean to the employee. This should be achieved by scheduling regular, monthly one-on-one conversations with your direct reports to cycle through these nine keys over the course of the next year.

You may be met with skepticism at first, but by March or April employees will begin to drive these conversations themselves, having found them to be useful and valuable.

If you use this model effectively you can down tools in December and rest easy knowing your team is enjoying the beach with friends and family instead of surfing the net for open jobs.