What Is the Resignation Boom – and How Can Your Company Avoid It?

The Employee Exodus. The Turnover Tsunami. The Great Resignation.

Anytime experts give monikers like these to employment trends, you know something important is happening. In today’s post, we provide tips to get ahead of the looming mass exodus of talent – and keep more of your top employees happy and working for you.

What is the Resignation Boom?

Multiple factors have converged, which are expected to push turnover rates sky-high in the near future. Here are a few of the biggest drivers of all this job-hopping:

• Pent up demand in the marketplace: more employers are hiring.
• A smaller labor force participation rate is further skewing the employment supply-and-demand balance in employees’ favor.
• Virtual work has eroded company culture. It’s led many employees to feel less connected – and loyal – to their current employer.
• Pandemic-induced job burnout is driving higher job dissatisfaction rates.
• Many people are retiring early after cashing in on the stock market and real estate market booms.
• Historic career-related reasons for turnover (e.g., higher pay, career growth, or change) are also still at play.

Just how bad will the Resignation Boom get?

Consider these statistics:

• In April of 2021, nearly 4 million people voluntarily quit their jobs – the highest monthly number ever reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• Microsoft’s Work Trend Index found that 40% of people want to change jobs this year.
• A recent survey conducted by Harris Poll found that 52% of U.S. workers are considering a job change this year – and 44% have plans in place to leave their current employer.

The best defense against employee turnover is a good offense.

Don’t wait for employees to quit in droves; act now. Here are a few smart employee retention tactics to help you prevent turnover at every stage of the employee lifecycle:

Hiring.

Nip turnover in the bud by presenting realistic job descriptions. The more honest and transparent you are when hiring, the more likely you are to bring on people who actually want to do the work long-term.

Onboarding.

Begin your employee retention efforts on each new hire’s first day – by developing a robust onboarding program (i.e., it should extend well beyond the first week) that makes employees feel welcome and equipped to do a great job for you. If you’re operating a hybrid or virtual workforce model, make sure you’re well-equipped for virtual onboarding.

Ongoing management.

Every day, you have opportunities to reengage your employees and drive loyalty:

• • Encourage feedback – and act on great suggestions.
  • Create three-to-five-year career paths that keep employees growing with you.
  • Provide perks and benefits that today’s employees value most.
  • Identify your company’s top performers and conduct “stay interviews” with them to find out who’s at risk of leaving you.

Exit interviews.

Ask a neutral party to speak with employees who quit to determine their reasons for leaving. Look for patterns and improve aspects you can control.

More on preventing turnover:

Three Ways to Reduce Your Employee Turnover

PrideStaff can help you mitigate turnover.

As a leading national employment and staffing agency, we provide flexible staffing services to:

• prevent burnout
• facilitate greater employee work/life satisfaction
• cost-effectively staff roles with inherently high turnover
• free your core team to work on their most important – and rewarding – work
  

Stop the Resignation Boom before it begins. Contact your local PrideStaff office today to get started.