The Great Resignation of 2021 is now the Great Remorse of 2022
There was The Great Plague, The Great War, The Great Depression, and then there was what 2021 became known as, The Great Resignation – as workers sought new opportunities in business landscapes radically changed forever by The Virus.
But because research is showing one in four employees who resigned in the past 12 months to head for pastures new are wishing they hadn’t and would return to former workplaces given the chance, 2022 is already being referred to as The Great Remorse.
But should employers -- many of whom felt the resignations were downright disloyal -- care at all whether some of their former employees might welcome an opportunity to return to the fold?
The answer of course depends largely on how much these employees were valued, and how difficult they would be to replace in industries that now lack skilled and unskilled workers.
Unemployment rates in certain states and in specific sectors of the economy are historically low, and Macks Advisory suggests there are employers who may therefore care to consider, in their own best financial interests, the following moves to retrieve absconded staff.
Capitalise on “buyers’ remorse
Buyers’ remorse is common in the car business and in real estate. It can occur immediately, or frequently 48 to 72 hours after a purchase -- which is why many contracts have “cooling off” provisions. But it tends to occur most frequently long after that, as a phenomenon becoming increasingly common in the jobs market.
However, if employers are confident there are economic and other benefits in hiring people who are more talented than those who’ve resigned – and hiring the right people isn’t too difficult -- then they can happily leave defectors who may be remorseful, to stew in their own juice.
But if employers believe the lost talent will be difficult, perhaps even impossible to replace, there’s no point in simply wailing and gnashing teeth about this. They should act, and the sooner the better, to capitalise on a newly resigned employee’s possible remorse.
Don’t hesitate to make the first move to reach out to a valued employee who has quit suddenly and has perhaps done so in such a way that you’ve been unable to determine precisely why. That first move post resignation can be a win/win – a win for you, and for the employee who having left, decides to return.
Macks Advisory’s contacts among HR experts and recruiters, assure us this is so. They also tell us that many people who have resigned from their jobs, who subsequently feel niggles of remorse, but assume their former employer would have no further interest in them, are in fact delighted when they discover otherwise – and that all sorts of good things can flow from that.
In fact, if you’re able to discover what really triggered an employee’s decision to resign, you may well determine it in no way had anything to do with disloyalty.
Furthermore, you may be able to establish the reason for the resignation no longer exists, that your firm’s circumstances have changed since the employee resigned or were about to change so significantly at that time, that the former employee would now be wise to consider the new career being offered.
And concurrently you could realise how unwise it would have been not to have sought reconnection and made the offer.
Make sure the first contact after the resignation has a light hearted aspect to it, and that in the process you manage to understand how the defector is feeling about quitting your business. You may decide you’d like to meet again for coffee next month, even the month after that, always being sure the person who has resigned has no doubt what you feel about the resignation, that you are genuinely concerned, and have always been genuinely concerned about their job satisfaction, and what mutual benefits you believe could flow from a return to the fold.
Prevention better than cure
But of course, prevention is always better than cure, and retention of highly valued staff is often achieved by little more than consistent, basic communication. Monthly conversations with key staff are recommended by some HR specialists as a means of identifying and rectifying problems that could push staff to quit.
If you sense that an offer of more money might fix a problem, be careful what you do about this, because research shows generally that money doesn’t fix it. Statistics reveal that an employer who offers a salary increase to keep an employee -- especially when it’s a counteroffer to what the employer understands a rival employer has offered the employee -- can only expect to retain that employee’s services for another six to 18 months.
Having accepted the offer of a salary increase, an employee will often use it to further increase an original offer from a rival business and leave anyway.
Recruiters talk about push and pull reasons for people changing jobs. While a pull reason may indeed have much to do with more money, what often pushes an employee out the door is stronger than the pull of money. For example, it can be dissatisfaction with their role in a company, no visible career path, or other negative perceptions that can be turned around by an employer’s regular communication.
Employers who understand and resolve push issues are most likely to retain their most valued employees by getting answers to questions like……Where do you want to go in your career? .... How can I help you get there? .....What would you like to do differently here?.....How can I help you achieve that?
Of course, you can do everything we’ve suggested and still lose a valued employee impatient for a job change, too eager for a new workplace environment to listen to you. But if you’ve followed through on tips outlined in this article then at least you can take consolation in knowing, as they say in the classics, that you’ve put your shoulder to the wheel, have left no stone unturned, and have explored every avenue.
Retaining the newly employed
We assume that given you may have had to replace people who’ve resigned, you are now aware these new employees could also be afflicted by “buyers’ remorse”, and you’ll therefore want to do your utmost to ensure they don’t also wish they hadn’t changed jobs, by:
- Having kept in touch with them from acceptance of the job offer to starting date, and during this time having reinforced positives in their move to your business.
- Putting them straight to work from day one. (Don’t swamp them with paperwork or waste precious days on “training” – although it’s good to make sure they mix with other staff you’re certain are enthusiastic about the work environment. (New employees want to feel productive immediately as part of a team.)
- Making time to chat with them after their first fortnight to discuss what’s working well for them and what’s not, so that any early signs of frustration can be addressed – and repeating this process monthly throughout their probation.
