How to Stay Immune to the Great Resignation

Even though the media tends to simplify this issue, naming low pay as the number one cause of higher turnover, there are numerous other underlying reasons that can drive employees to leave their jobs.

Here, you’ll find 4 ways to stay immune to the Great Resignation that don’t involve a pay raise.

1. Foster people-first company culture

Many businesses have a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion boasted in their mission statement. However, many of these don’t practice what they preach, letting down their employees’ expectations.

MIT Sloan Management research found that toxic company culture is ten times more important to employees than low pay when it comes to higher turnover rates. Employees will be walking out the door if they feel disrespected or when their achievements aren’t recognized.

If you want to build a strong company culture focusing on employees and their needs, encourage open and honest communication. You need to sync in constantly with your employees' needs and plans to figure out how to help them achieve their personal goals.

Furthermore, if you claim diversity and inclusion are your company’s core values, make sure to offer equal opportunities for all and lead by example.

In this way, you may lower turnover rates, increase employee satisfaction and retain top performers.

2. Clear out uncertainties about the company’s future

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives irrevocably, making health and safety concerns top priorities. At the same time, numerous businesses have been forced to lay off employees or shut down completely due to the pandemic restrictions, raising serious concerns about job safety.

If employees assume that the future of a business isn’t bright enough, they will most likely leave, looking for more stable positions. To prevent this from happening, you need to find out what is your employees' perception of your company’s future.

By building relationships based on trust, you can discuss the future of your company with your team members openly and honestly.

Rely on the marketing part of your HR department to help you establish internal strategic communication and shed employees' fears about job security.

In this way you can engage your employees and discuss potential challenges your company can face in the future, finding the ways to overcome them effectively.

3. Recognizing and battling burnout

Burnout is a health condition with a significant impact on employees' health and productivity alike. Research on mortality and costs related to work-induced stress shows that it causes nearly 120,000 deaths accompanied by 190 billion in spending a year.

When you add the fact that 75% of employees have experienced burnout, especially during the pandemic, and only 21% of them said that they could talk openly about this issue with their HR department, you’ll get a clearer picture of the devastating consequences of burnout can have on your employees' health and productivity.

But identifying burnout in a workplace is a tricky issue. Handling challenging tasks can motivate some employees to learn new skills and perform better, while it can overwhelm others driving them to overwork and burnout.

While setting challenging goals and inciting your teams to reach for innovative ways to do their jobs may lead to outstanding results, you need to make a much-needed balance between hard work and employee wellbeing, defining specific time needed for physical and mental recovery.

You can follow the lead of Future 500 companies that introduced no-meeting Fridays, allowing teams to commit to focused work, without being interrupted. You can also try ‘Friday lights out’, where employees can log out at 1pm on Fridays without any explanation needed.

Whatever effort you take to battle potential overworking or burnout, rest assured that your employees will appreciate it, realizing that you put their health and satisfaction before income.

4. Acknowledging and rewarding top performers

Everybody likes to hear that they’re doing a great job, contributing immensely to major company growth. When management fails to recognize success regularly, employees start to leave. The lack of recognition is among the top three reasons for higher turnover rates along with toxic company culture and the lack of career development opportunities.

But sometimes it can be hard to set apart overachievers from those employees who tend to fall behind, especially when you manage remote or hybrid teams. Luckily, you can rely on advanced solutions like employee monitoring software to create fair, detailed performance reviews in real-time. Tracking data will help you recognize stellar work and reward it. But it can also show you the pain points some of your employees are struggling with so that you can offer them support and guidance.

By using data analytics for employee performance evaluation, you’ll avoid giving employees biased and vague feedback, showing them their strong sides and work aspects that need improvement alike.