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My Thoughts on the Great Resignation | Weekbook #10

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January 29th, 2023

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Since the COVID-19 pandemic, work trends have shifted dramatically and none more so than the rate at which workers are leaving their jobs. In one study conducted by McKinsey and Co in 2022, 48% of people were considering quitting their jobs in the next 3–6 months [1]. The question is, why?

The most obvious answer to this is money. As resignation rates rose, the demand for workers did too and to this day many industries are still struggling to hire, leading to fierce competition. With little to bargain with and compete on, companies turn to the one thing they can rely on to motivate prospective employees, an improved salary. Naturally, as the trend grew, people decided to take advantage of the higher pay packages on offer, fuelling the fire further. However, the story goes much deeper and the biggest challenge the professional world has faced in decades is just beginning — generation z.

The newest generation entering the workforce presents a challenge that companies haven’t seen before, a collision of culture and expectations. Large, slow-moving corporate entities are now reliant on hiring a generation raised with technology at their finger tips, increased mental health struggles [2] and attention spans of just 1.3 seconds [3]. It’s no wonder that the average generation z employee stays in a job little more than two years [4] — and the problem is only going to get worse.

For those who don’t spend time scrolling social media, particularly TikTok, there are growing echo chambers that are pushing people to leave jobs and in the extreme, not work at all. In fact, it is rare that you can scroll more than a few videos without finding a video that demands workplace change or one that advocates for a world where people don’t work.

The former is reasonable. The second is obviously not. Since the dawn of humanity, working has been an essential part of human life. Homo sapiens worked by gathering, hunting and nurturing their children. Medieval civilisations worked by farming the land. Modern society works, for the most part, to innovate and push society forward. In fact, working has always enabled human survival, one of our only biological purposes in life.

It is evident that the environment humanity works in has changed throughout history, evolving alongside our society. To that end, advocating for change is as old as the concept of work itself.

So what is the solution to this modern problem and the great resignation? Change.

Technology is evolving at a rapid pace, enabling us to work in ways that previous generations could have only dreamed of, yet few take advantage of this. Work place policies and decisions by committee often mean that improvements can’t be made quickly enough to persuade disgruntled employees to stick around. Employers have to take responsibility for improving the environments they create. Remote work, internal mobility and career development are now a minimum requirement for most.

There is responsibility on the individual too. Like our ancestors, work must align to our purpose. Only then can fulfilment be found and until such a time, the cycle of job hopping and being disgruntled at employers is unlikely to change.

It is no longer a question of if change will come. It is a question of how quickly.

Book Notes

I am currently reading Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life.

  • Chaos is where we are when we don’t know where are, and what we are doing when we don’t know what we are doing. It is, in short, all of those things and situations we neither know nor understand.

  • Order is the Shire of Tolkien’s hobbits: peaceful, productive and safely inhabitable, even by the naive. Chaos is the underground kingdom of the dwarves, usurped by Smaug, the treasure-hoarding serpent.

  • Beauty shames the ugly. Strength shames the weak. Death shames the living — the ideal shames us all.

  • Order is not enough. You can’t just be stable, and secure, and unchanging, because there are still vital and important new things to be learned.

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Ending Quote

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” — Viktor Frankl

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