The great resignation movement, as coined in the USA, is a situation where employees voluntarily leave their jobs, with significant numbers noted as early as spring 2021. The trend is not limited to the labour market in the United States but is also prevalent in other developed economies. The impacts are being felt majorly by the companies that have been able to replace these employees and are meeting their objectives internally due to the gaps created by the sudden quits at workplaces.
Some of the causes of this trend of resignations have been discussed in different articles and blogs with diverse theories and reasons to explain what is really causing the problem.
My observations were focused on making specific inferences and sharing some unique thoughts about what must have been the exact root cause of these kinds of workplace voluntarily resignations. Most of my perspectives on this trend are not different from the accounts of other people that have attempted to discuss this issue in different media and news outfits. Other aspects, though not exhaustive, surely represent unique opinions based on keen observation of what many social researchers are yet to discover.
While we expect more conversations on this topic as the issue continues to evolve, let’s take a few moments to read through some of the effects below.
The COVID-19 Impact
The pandemic changed a lot of things in the way people now live their lives. A lot has been revealed in the dramatic events following the existence of this pandemic. There is one significant impact on the psychology of ordinary men across the world due to the pandemic. Fear is the major effect of a pandemic on people across the world. The lockdowns, fear of what will be, fear of death, fear of scarcity, and so on. Fear was palpable as they grappled with the uncertainties, confusions, and unpredictable policies associated with the pandemic’s handlers, which has not changed to this day.
No one goes through torment and dread of fear to remain the same afterwards. As the pandemic continues to affect the way people live their lives, one thing has become common: people have become emboldened, more courageous, better informed, and more at risk of appetite.
Many were awakened to the rude shocks of the cause and effects of this crackdown on human freedom, loss of livelihood and freedom. The trajectory of this negative impact on mankind remains unabated, thus constituting a major push back against such a dreadful situation.
People become unafraid, bold, and resolute about their lives without fear of anything and are more ready to take critical decisions despite the risk. People have experienced dark times due to the pandemic, being afraid of the unknown and yet the worse happened. COVID-19 and events around it made many fearless and, therefore, they could take better decisions without considering what effects that would result in. Hence the great resignations.
Fear of unemployment has departed from many, and they seem comfortable doing a few things for themselves that guarantee their peace of mind and future personal goals. The opportunity gave many a chance to lose dependence on paid employment, or what is called 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. jobs.
There are two possibilities here if we have ever been afraid of something, if we dread a situation, praying and acting on our faith, hoping that the situation will improve. If the situation is amended, we will have peace and be filled with joy, and we will look forward to the future with expectations. But most importantly, if the situation never changed and the worst happened, something fundamental would take place to reshape us. Such experiences have a long-term impact on us; we lose most of our ability to fear, we become more daring, our risk aversion decreases, and we take on challenges while avoiding the consequences.
The above scenarios rightly pointed out my perspective on the COVID-19 pandemic. The fear of its continuous devasting effect has made many middle classes (employable populations) evolve, hence the quitting at workplaces.
Thank you for taking the time to read. Stay tuned as we progress on this narrative.
The second, from my perspective, though generally accepted as a major contributor to the great resignation, is that many had an opportunity to re-evaluate economic positions amid the lockdown and the arduous economic situation orchestrated by the pandemic. Many employees’ dependent on paid employment find that remote work possibilities offer great flexibility to care for their business and take care of their family, unlike the traditional 9 to 5 job. Many survived the hardship, not dependent on paid workplaces but on their personal capacities to create and align with available remote business opportunities, manage their time, and create work-life balance.
With the residual impact of the pandemic, everything has continued the same path and no relief seems practicable or suitable. There is now a boom and exponential growth in the online marketing approach to reaching and attending to customers. Digital marketing has exploded and made companies evolve in the way they attend to their customers and the behaviours of these prospective customers have since been changed thanks to the pandemic. The way we communicate, shop, learn, and interact before the pandemic and even much more during the
COVID-19 situation has continuously moved in the direction of the virtual, especially during this pandemic.
Many relied on such evolution and opportunities to reassess their economic positions, engage in some personal skills enhancement training, begin a remote job, freelance, etc., and quit their 9- 5pm jobs.
We have a bit to learn more. Please stay tuned!
Finally, many of the existing conversations have centred on what happened pre-pandemic at these workplaces. How managers and their employees relate, levels of engagement, empathy, and lack of adoption of emotional intelligence in those workplaces have contributed largely to the great resignation trend. Many employees have been pushed to the wall, lied to, used in the most cunning ways, and had their arms twisted with varying sentiments and indiscriminate poor and negative management tendencies at their workplaces.
Most workplaces were toxic, highly political, with poor integration of diversity and inclusion in their ethos
Again, as these employees became aware of the nuances of repressive and suppressive characteristics as well as an unpleasant workplace environment, they became unwilling to continue in their jobs, contributing to the growing apathy in the labour market in developed countries. In other words, people are resisting stereotypes in an environment devoid of empathy, employee-centred innovations, inclusions, diversity, trust, responsibility, and ownership.
There is no need to wonder why things are turning completely out of expectations at these firms because they have indulged in very bad personnel management practices and deviated from the core elements of better employee management for a while. Poor human resource management practices in the workplace, despite centuries of study and learning on the subject, low regard for human resource components in many organizations, and a complete lack of creative human capital management practices have allowed for all employee personal economic reconsiderations during the pandemic.
What has changed?
With all that is happening, it shows that people have found a way to be sustainable and flexible in their social spaces. Our energy should therefore be directed to finding out what our own true positions are and making plans to see what new paths can be created. While still on paid employment, these thoughts should come to our minds to re-evaluate what we are using our time to achieve on a personal level without any form of interruptions to our 9-5pm jobs, and for me, this is my primary objective in sharing some of these lessons.
Most of us who are reading this have probably learned or are already working on personal projects with our residual talents and are thus enriched by what I am sharing or am about to share. The truth is that we must sacrifice one thing for our joy, peace, and prosperity. We must surrender the projected entertainment in our social media spaces, TV’s and others, and channel our efforts to something that guarantees a better future so that we can always have enough to take out time for vacations.
Thanks for reading.