#44 – The Greater Resignation

The numbers are in. The Great Resignation is on the way!

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, almost half of Australian workers have been updating their CVs and their letters of resignation, ready for a change.

But why are workers collectively (and respectfully) telling their employers exactly where to go?

Some cynically claim it’s a simple supply-demand in the job market, part of some ongoing economical cycle.

As a 27 year-old living through his 2nd ‘once in 100 years’ economic downturn, I find ‘cycles’ hard to believe.

Plenty of others ascribe it to work-from-home arrangements – that employees want to continue working from home while companies want to revert back to that nostalgic pre-pandemic normal.

I remember when I didn’t have to ask permission to bring a Woolies mudcake to work, or when Novak Djokovic was up against Rafael Nadal instead of the Australian Federal Police.

However, we’re not there right now. And I think we can dig deeper.

The employee-employer relationship is just that, a relationship. Traditionally it’s been very one-way: employer tells employee to perform task, employee does task, employer pays employee. If the employee misbehaves, the employer yells at employee.

It’s a basic, if not archaic, carrot-stick mindset. Hold the carrot in front of the donkey to lure it forward, hold the stick at its rear end just in case.

Workers aren’t donkeys. We aren’t lured by offices with windows and ping pong tables. We get angry and demotivated when threatened with the sack.

We’re complex people with commitments, pressures, families. For a long time we’ve had to put that aside when we step into the office, but then the office could call us on our mobile phones and in our homes after hours.

This was already happening, but when the pandemic hit, it just took off. The line between work and personal life got a little finer.

It was hard for me to prioritise work over home life while I was working from my house, listening to the case numbers grow higher every day. The health of us and our loved ones became so important – but had to take a backseat to work.

We couldn’t spend our hard-earned money on going out or holidays. We couldn’t get a plumber or a haircut. The whole thing felt like shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

Now there’s staff shortages, record amounts of sickness, and elected officials telling us to ‘just live with it’ from ivory towers. It’s not solved with a payrise and it’s no wonder workers everywhere are throwing their hands up in disbelief.

It’s a relationship after all. And in too many cases, the other side isn’t putting enough on the table. The Great Resignation is how many of us are ready to leave our employee-employer relationships for greener pastures.

The Greater Resignation is how few employers are trying to shake the carrot-stick mindset and offer work as a truly meaningful exercise, embracing flexibility with home life and a strong sense of self-actualisation.

In other words, it’s about allowing employees the chance to grow and improve their lifestyle, not just leave it at the door on the way in.

Next week: When Few Words Do Trick