How to Fortify a Diverse Workforce to Battle the Great Resignation

1. Agenda The Impact of The Great Resignation Building Resilience Re-Igniting Your Corporate Superpower Reclaiming The Talent Market Building Community Question and Answer
2. Poll
3. What Is The Great Resignation? The Great Resignation is an ongoing economic trend in which employees have voluntarily resigned in mass numbers from their jobs beginning in early 2021.
4. What Has Caused The Great Resignation? Possible causes include: • Wage stagnation and the rising cost of living • Long-lasting job dissatisfaction • Safety concerns from the pandemic • Remote working policies
5. The Great Resignation By The Numbers
6. Let’s Break This Down • While 42% of employees were already experiencing burnout before the pandemic, that number skyrocketed to 72%. • When COVID-19 sent so many people home, employees realized how powerful (and possible) it is to be able to decide where, how, and when they work. • Too many organizations have dismissed this shift, and expect people to quietly return to the office.
7. Let’s Break This Down • Managers have the most influence on an employee’s job satisfaction, wellbeing, and likelihood to stay at a company. In fact, 57% of employees have left at least one company because of their boss. But being a manager isn’t intuitive • Managers themselves are frustrated by the lack of support from their employers. The employee retention numbers reflect the frustration: as of December 2020, the resignation rate for managers was nearly 12% higher than the previous year.
8. Let’s Break This Down • Inflation reaches highest level since 1982 as consumer prices jump 7% in 2021 • Living in areas with a higher cost of living usually means workers have less disposable income, or money in their bank accounts, after paying for the basics and need higher incomes to live. • 5.4 million new business applications were filed in 2021, surpassing the record set in 2020 of 4.4 million. • Individuals are finding other ways that align with their passions to supplement incomes and way of living and leaning less on corporations to support them
9. Let’s Break This Down • People who have been historically marginalized, on the other hand, are being vocal about how much safer they feel working from home, where they can escape (to some extent) the stress and burnout of constant microaggressions and the sense of not belonging. • An October survey of more than 10,000 workers from Future Forum, found that 66% of Black respondents want a flexible schedule, compared to 59% of White employees. • The survey concluded that Black workers are happier in their jobs, and have a more favorable view of their employer, when working remotely.
10. How Do We Build Retention Resilience
11. How Do We Build Resilience? • When it comes to building resilience during this time, you first need to understand that times have changed. • Old ways of working or looking or engaging at workforce is not going to work if we wan to be competitive and have a good work environment for our staff.
12. Building Resilience 1. Turnover is going to happen; ensure you are establishing recruitment pipelines early in the career stages 2. Create employee-centered development programs 3. Listen to your staff and lean in 4. Provide community
13. Identifying Your Employer Brand’s Secret Sauce
14. Re-igniting Your Superpower • Your superpower comes down to your company's purpose – what purpose and value is your organization fulfilling? What is its mission? • Aligning your organization to that purpose. • Strategizing your purpose for activation
15. Re-igniting Your Superpower • When you are able to connect your organization to its purpose and align those principals that is your secret sauce to creating true engagement. • Engagement comes from wanting to be a part of something that you believe in, that you connect with and that is meaningful in some shape or form. • From that single point, your superpower becomes the key theme and thread of your engagement strategy for your organization.
16. How To Reclaim The Talent Market
17. Reclaiming The Talent Market • With your secret sauce you will be able to retain internal talent but what about attracting new talent? • Employees have different motivators, flexibility, salary, the list goes on. • Regardless of their key factor, one critical element of reclaiming the market is providing community.
18. What Is Community? What does community mean in the workplace? A community allows employees to feel a sense of belonging, that they're part of something larger than themselves, which gives meaning to their work, and their lives.
19. How Does Community Attract Talent? • When you build a workplace community, word will spread, and your employee will be your advertisement. • The engagement your current staff have it will be a testimony to others who are looking for similar environments and work opportunities. • Through community, employees will share their skills, experiences and connect with others.
20. How To Build Community 1. Define company values collaboratively. 2. Establish expected behaviors. 3. Adopt radical responsibility. 4. Make onboarding employee-centric. 5. Transform managers into coaches.
21. Key Takeaways The great resignation trend is not over, we need to continue to be strategic in our approaches Focus on how to create inclusivity and diversity Learn to trust your employees Use the company’s vision and mission to bring and align everyone Create opportunity for connection and to build authentic community Your employees are your biggest asset; treat them as such