Job Satisfaction — The Cultural Shift as the result of The Great Resignation

The COVID 19 ripped through countries around the world wreaking havoc and creating chaos. Families were broken, jobs were lost, and a global sentiment of pain and anguish was felt for the better half of the past two years. With that being said, in lieu of all the bad that has occurred, the pandemic helped cultivate change and growth in different sectors of society. From social movements to mental health awareness, the pandemic has been marked as a time of new beginnings and reconstruction of the old. One of the areas of life that saw the most change in the most dramatic of ways was the workplace. Whether you worked as a UPS driver or banker on Wallstreet, the COVID 19 pandemic altered the daily lives of virtually every American across the nation. As the country took a pause and watched thousands of innocent people die or become ill, many individuals were either laid off or decided to take time to re-evaluate their lives. Regardless of the reason, the resulting effect has been coined The Great Resignation, where employees have voluntarily resigned from their jobs in large masses. The reason? The majority of people asked said they realized that job satisfaction was more important than making money. While some believe that the shift towards pursuing job satisfaction as a result of the Great Resignation is temporary, I argue that a cultural shift has occurred in the workforce which has employers responding to the needs and wants of employees who seek more job satisfaction, thus marking the permanent change in the way work is approached in our society.

Accordingly, before the Great Resignation, the ways in which the majority of Americans worked was unsustainable and frankly unhealthy. In 2020, before the pandemic, 80% of Americans reported feeling that they had “too many things to do and not enough time to do them”. On average Americans work 47 hours with approximately 18% working over 60 hours a week to make ends meet. Furthermore, in 2019, staggering data found that 34% of Hispanics and 45% of Black US residents got less than seven hours of sleep per night due to the obscene work hours they were required to do. On top of it all, housing prices are at an all-time high, making it virtually impossible to work only one job at minimum wage. Historically in America has been an unspoken contract that companies had with workers that implicitly guaranteed lifetime employment. Meaning, if you put in enough grunt work, it would eventually pay off. So those long hours doing soulless work, theoretically would pay off in the end as you made your way up the corporate ladder. But the 2020 COVID 19 pandemic marked the beginning of a new era, remote work and lack of production helped produce what has been called, The Great Resignation.

The Great Resignation as it’s been called, refers to the large numbers of people who quit their jobs in 2021. From the initial outbreak of COVID 19 there was a national spike in the amount of jobs quit in 2021, roughly 2.8% of Americans quit their jobs or took time off. While some workers chose take time to reassess their life path, others were forced to quit, “more than 22 million people lost their jobs or were furloughed in the pandemics early states. On the other hand, those who willingly quit their jobs mostly attribute their decision to seeking a career that inspired them, one that made them feel more liberated and had more meaning. In 2022, Careershifters, a website that helps people find more satisfying work, surveyed more than 5,000 employees. The survey revealed that 56% changed career paths due to dissatisfaction with their role, 16% due to lack of satisfaction with company culture/management, and 12% about their work-balance life. In addition, it was found that 30% of American workers under the age of 40 have considered changing their occupation since the start of the pandemic. Looking at Americans of all ages, 22% of the entire workforce considered changing their career field.

As a result, a cultural shift was seen throughout America; Americans began prioritizing job satisfaction and thus employers were forced to listen to the new demands of employees. Younger workers are increasingly seeking out jobs that have meaning to them and not as willing to spend years on a corporate ladder. They are changing employers and career fields more rapidly than ever before to follow a passion or make a difference and are less willing to pay their dues in a job they feel … doesn’t offer them growth or challenge. In order for employers to keep their company and or businesses running efficiently, they’ve had to adjust the ways in which work is done. According to The Guardian, “CEOs are scrambling to create a “new normal” that mollifies workers’ desire for work-life balance while keeping existing power structures in play.” The vast majority of CEOs, 70% to be exact, expect that labor shortages in the months following the pandemic. The biggest way companies are meeting the culture shift of workers needs is creating more flexible hours, which studies have proven lead to an addition 2.5 hours of work a day. Another way employers have sought to keep employees engaged and interested is offering complete remote work. Giving a remote option gives parents more time to spend with family and more time for those who don’t have families to spend on themselves. Many companies, like Google, First Republic Bank, and Facebook, have given their employees the option of returning back to the office or staying at home indefinitely. In a world where the employees didn’t have much of a choice when it came to how to best do their job, due to the Great Resignation, employers are being forced to listen and as a result had to adapt to the changes brought on as the result of the cultural shift towards job satisfaction.

Admittedly, the frenzy to seek job satisfaction could be just another trend like so many that came out of the pandemic. As the world slowly begins to heal and return to “normal life” the lessons and revelations gleaned from the pandemic could fade with time as the harsh realities of the real world set in once more. Bills will always need to be paid and children will always need to be fed. With that being said, what happened as a result of the pandemic, according to Dorie Clark, a professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the Columbia Business School in New York, “COVID affected everyone in the sense of causing us to question our priorities in life and examine what we’re doing and whether we might want to make changes.” During the pandemic, thousands of Americans reflected on their lives and work life, enough that has big companies struggling to maintain enough employees to operate normally, as seen through Amazon more recently. The only way to try and combat this from happening is meeting the needs that employees are demanding to be changed; for companies to step up to the change already set in motion. For example, most recently, Amazon increased wages across the demographic board by 50 cents to $18.25. Additionally, more safety and diversity plans have been set into motion throughout all Amazon facilities. There are also more advancement opportunities for employees to reach higher.

In conclusion, the pandemic sparked thousands of Americans to quit their jobs, resulting in the Great Resignation. From the Great Resignation people began to view the workforce in a different manner, one in which inspiration, personal growth, balance, and well-being were incorporated together. Many people believe that with time, the trending job satisfaction clique will eradicate itself, but it will prevail as a culture shift has already occurred and companies have responded. The way in which work is approached has forever changed and where grueling hours and overtime were once the norm, time with family and flexible work hours are the new and improved “norms.”