The Great Resignation

We keep hearing so much about The Great Resignation. All these people quitting their jobs, generally cited with an implication that people are actually quitting work. But when you double click on the data, you generally find that the hire rate exceeds the quit rate. That the unemployment rate is relatively low. And that the greatest proportion of individuals taking part in The Great Resignation are in lower end, lower paid jobs. Plenty of opportunities for them to say 'I quit' and go out and find a new job that pays a bit more.

And let's face it, the two most beautiful words in the English language are I and QUIT. (In one of the f'd up little companies I spent my career in, one of my colleagues told me that his fantasy was that every last one of us would give notice on the same day. Now that would have been a Great Resignation!)

I'm sure there's plenty of anecdotal evidence of pandemic-related resignations, great and not so great: the parent who couldn't work from home with their two-year-old underfoot, so kissed their job goodbye for the duration; the near-retirement Baby Boomer who took the "pandemic pause" to decide that enough is enough; teachers who've had it with parents screaming in their faces about masks and CRT; healthcare workers, restaurant workers, delivery people and other front-liners who got just plain burnt out. 

Of course, just as anecdotally, the "Help Wanted" signs all over the place suggest that some workers have decided to step away from the work force, at least for the time being. There is a solution to this. Let's see if I can remember it. Oh, yeah. Higher wages and better working conditions.

There's also plenty of anecdotal evidence that "corporate America", employers of the broad swaths of white collar, knowledge workers (or whatever they're called these days) who can work from home, are having a harder time attracting and retaining employees. (Or, as those employees are often and abstractedly referred to as, the talent.) They're paying bounties worth thousands of dollars to employees who help them recruit. They're sweetening the pot with more benefits. (Sure, they're still gouging employees for more and more of their health insurance costs, but now they're offering pet insurance.) And they're become more and more flexible when it comes to hybrid working. I don't know many who've been working from home who are going back to the office full time. Most of the places I've heard of are doing 3-2 or 2-3. Or offering employees their choice: WFH, back to the office, or a combo of in and out. Your choice.

(Me, I would have opted for 3 days in, 2 days at home. This would have satisfied my need for the social aspects of work, while eliminating some of the drag of commuting.)

"Corporate America" is also angling to satisfy the demands of the rising generations (younger millennials, Gen Z) that their organization, and thus their work, has a higher purpose that goes beyond profit making/shareholder return, and thus their paycheck.

Baby Boomers weren't so bothered by purpose. Work paid the bills, and yay! if you found (as I did) interesting work with good colleagues. I did occasionally think about the purpose of the organizations where I worked. They were primarily tech companies, selling software and/or services to corporations, often to the techies who worked in those corporations.

Is there purpose in the making of portfolio management software? Of a quality assurance tool? An application hosting platform?

Well, not so much that I could see, other than making work life marginally easier for the folks using our software and/or services.

But I found purpose in thinking that the work I did helped keep my company going, so that it could give people jobs so that they could support their families and live good lives. And that was enough for me. (Good thing.)

Younger people are more demanding. But they're also experiencing a different world that us olds did coming up.

There's more consciousness of racism, of other "isms" that have excluded folks from opportunity. 

There's a colossal and widening gap between those at the top and those at the bottom. And those in the middle. Those younger workers are fully aware of this and I'm sure they're figuring that, if they can't get ahead by working, they might as well have some purpose to their work.

There's awareness that denial of our increasingly fragile environment is finally coming back to haunt us. 

I view corporations suddenly glomming on to the idea of providing purpose with a somewhat jaundiced eye. I picture the powers that be giving lip service to the earnest HR folks telling them the younger employees are clamoring for purpose. They'll let HR set up the committees, send out the email blasts, put up the signs. But most of their commitment to purpose is the purpose of making sure that executive compensation is maximized. 

But there is something to it, this purpose thing. And that's because the isms and the "equity gap" and climate change are both existential threats to the corporation itself. With their existence on dead reckoning, corporations will eventually have to come to grips with what to do about it. Of course, they can always put their money on authoritarianism, as "they" have been known to do throughout history. Fuck the peons, I've got mine, we've got the power, so do as I say. (But make sure the peons have just enough bread, just enough circus that they won't revolt.) Or they can define their purpose to include taking better care of their employees, their communities, and the environment.

Geez, how did The Great Resignation turn into workingman's search for meaning?

Guess it just happens. 

Anyway, if there really is a Great Resignation, and if there is a real labor shortage (which the signs in the windows and the corporate panic about finding and keeping "talent" suggest there is), the answer is likely at the intersection of better compensation and treatment, and work that has some purpose to it.

The End.