The Great Resignation: Overture to a workplace revolution

The Great Resignation, the Big Quit, the Great Reshuffle. Whatever you want to call it, it’s well known by now that this summer record numbers of people — over 12 million in the US alone — quit their jobs, leaving managers scrambling to find the talent required to keep their businesses thriving.

The trend excites me personally because I too am a part of it.

This time last year I was working for a mainstream newspaper, frustrated that management was more concerned with clickbait articles for profit and following the mainstream narrative than journalistic integrity. I read the comments from readers under our articles and what I was seeing didn’t sit well with me.

From there, hungry for a job with meaning, I went to a non-profit whose mission I believed — and still do believe — in, only to find myself again frustrated. A founder-dominated, top-heavy structure, and close to no communication within the organization was stymying innovation, leaving me unable to make the difference I craved.

Apparently I’m not alone. This week MSN Money ran an article in which the author arguing that lack of purpose at work is the driving factor behind the Great Resignation.

“Purpose is one of the four keys to happiness at work, and the best way to find purpose is through work that shows staff the impact their role has on others,” Kelly Main wrote.

Main argued that managers can retain their staff during the Great Resignation by offering them more meaning, writing: “The most effective strategy to retain staff is getting them to work more. But, more specifically, work more closely to the company’s stakeholders. In doing so, staff will get closer to the customers and clients that their employer impacts. In return, they will not only see the value of their role in relation to others but see that they do in fact have a purpose.”

While I agree that giving employees more purpose is likely the only card an HR manager can play — provided they support the employee in that role rather than simply expecting them to take on more responsibility and put in longer hours, of course — I disagree that it’s likely to retain staff in the numbers HR managers would like to see.

This is because the last 18 months appears to have given employees an important gift: the time and space to think through their options, and to reassess what they really want from life. For many, the answer is turning out not to be a 9–5 job in a formal business structure.

As LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky explained to Time recently, employees “are rethinking not just how they work, but why they work and what they most want to do with their careers and lives.”

Author and leadership strategist Dan Pontefract, writing in Forbes, went further. In a rather gloomy piece from a manager’s point of view, Pontefract relabeled the Great Resignation “The Great Contemplation.”

“Now more than ever before, people are doing the mental and emotional legwork wondering:

• Is my boss a jerk? Are they kind?
• Do my teammates care about me?
• Does my organization stand for something?
• Am I paid fairly, respected & valued?
• Is the culture something I can work in?
• Is hybrid or flexible work allowable?
• Am I unfulfilled or fulfilled in my role?

“That’s what is different. People are swimming in a cocoon of questions,” Pontefract wrote, going on to warn managers: “The responsibility lies with preventing the Great Contemplation from turning into the talent apocalypse. And that itself starts with an audit of your organizational culture, employee experience, and leadership practices.”

But what Pontefract views as an apocalypse, former employees are seeing as a revolution. “A cocoon of questions” is the perfect metaphor as many former employees, asking those questions, are finding the answers are giving them wings.

Far from a temporary trend, or a mere headache for HR managers, in the Great Resignation I believe we are witnessing the overture to a full-scale workplace revolution, as former employees realize that they can make a decent living and gain far more meaning from work by stepping outside of the traditional employee role.

If I am correct, the economy is on the cusp of transforming entirely, becoming far wider and flatter as the traditional hierarchical landscape of vast corporate structures falls away, replaced by grand interconnecting networks of freelancers and contractors all working independently.

I’m not alone in suspecting that something may be up on a grand scale.

“What happened is a lot of people lost their jobs early in the pandemic and a lot of them have not come back, especially when they haven’t had the opportunity to come back to their previous jobs,” Harvard economist Laurence Katz told The Harvard Review. “What’s puzzling, relative to the historical data, is the slow movement of people who have been unemployed for a while back into employment, given how many job openings there are.

“I think a lot of employers are surprised at how many workers have balked at coming back to the office, the restaurant, or other workplaces. … Maybe workers can hold out for six months and then the world will go back to the way it was before the pandemic. Or maybe the current moment reflects a permanent change in people’s values and a change in their willingness to withhold labor supply, individually and collectively.”

The pandemic was a wake up call for many people. Struggling on wages that have remained stagnant for nearly five decades, and with four in ten Americans already running a ‘side hustle’ to make ends meet, many looked at that side hustle and realized they can do just as well on their own — without the stress of uncaring bosses or long commutes.

Personally, I’m thrilled that more people have woken up to the possibilities afforded by the modern world to become independent workers. So much so that I’m not returning to the formal workplace either.

In the next few weeks, I’m joining forces with fellow freelancers to create a co-operative to test out this new wider, flatter, networking structure ourselves.

Working independently, with the option to set our own rates, working hours, and conditions, we see the benefit in carving out our own highly specialized niches but joining forces with others who offer related services to offer a comprehensive service to entrepreneurs and small, flexible companies.

I’ll let you know how we get on in blogs to come, as well as exploring in greater depth this trend, where it came from, why Millennials are driving it, and how you can adapt to it too. Head to my website to sign up to my newsletter if you’re intrigued — I promise not to spam you with daily emails. It’s donnaracheledmunds.com.