A quick guide to avoid voluntary resignation
The great resignation phenome, often occurred without any notification, it’s a current problem that interest many companies besides Italy.
It spreads like wildfire and does not remain confined to a specific context and/or territory.
In our country, 85% more people resigned in the second quarter of 2021 than in the previous year. Surveys refers that 40% of people want to leave their job without having another work in hands: they basically ran away from off their work.
The situation isn’t different in the rest of the world. According to a Microsoft’s analysis, Work Trend Index 2021, the 40% of manpower of the world are about to resign to give resignation into the current year and the other 46% want to move in a different country, thanks to remote working policies.
What are the reasons behind voluntary resignation without notice?
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- Increased workload. Smart working increases the workload. The time passed into online meeting has raise up. Now, meetings lasts 45 minutes instead of 35 minutes and each worker send 45% more messages.
- Change-resistant managers. The article: “Great resignations: more mental health to holding talents” deals with“the laziness of manager”: most of them pretend to return into old working standards and don’t accept the organizational development.
- Psychophysical illness. The article reported another inclination: 17% of people in the last year had cried in front of a colleague.
Those 3 point are confirmed, in a recent survey made by Oxford Economics: 49% of the respondents have declared that would leave their actual working position for a company with a better organizational culture, even if their retribution will be lower.
Several studies have questioned what is the ideal salary to be happy. The University of San Diego carried out a research study that verified how happiness increases, more or less proportionally to salary, until it peaks at around $75,000 per year (about 65,000 €), a figure after which it stops growing.
For us, the phenomenon of voluntary resignation without notice is not a surprise. We have been telling people for years through events, trainings, consultations and articles that employees have a low involvement rate within their company. According to a 2015 article by Aon Hewitt, 62% of people do not feel involved within their organisation. In 2021, however, these percentages have not improved, in fact, data collected by Kincentric tells us that the percentage has increased to 69%.
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Workers who do not feel involved
Gary Hamel, professor at the London Business School, academic and writer of numerous books on management, calls this phenomenon ‘the shame of management’, i.e. the shame of managers for never being able to motivate their employees, despite having tried salary increases, company benefits (such as company car etc.) or end-of-year bonuses. For years, managers have believed they can buy motivation with money, but they have not succeeded. Here’s why:
- The salary increase has a motivational boost that lasts, however, for only a few months. Just like a rubber band that is stretched by an exogenous force, once the push is over, it readjusts to return to its initial state
- Benefits certainly give the worker prestige but do not motivate him as much
- Financial bonuses are very often not given transparently and this lack of clarity generates little trust in one’s managers.
So how do employees get motivated? How can they be persuaded to stay in the company?
Satisfying their needs.
According to Maslow, needs are divided into a hierarchy. People have to satisfy the needs placed at the lower levels of a hypothetical pyramid, before moving on to the next step. Whenever we satisfy the needs of one step, we immediately wish to reach the next, higher one. From a business perspective, Maslow’s pyramid follows this sequence:
Physiological Needs
Covered by companies thanks to bathrooms, heating and canteen.
Security Needs
Covered by companies with salary and government living in a state of peace.
Needs of Affection
Many companies struggle to create an environment of trust where people respect each other and feel part of a community.
Estimate Needs
Many companies find it difficult to give proper recognition to the abilities of their employees (there is a lack of a culture of sincere and authentic feedback).
Need for Self-realization
Helping employees achieve personal fulfilment as well.
Taking it for granted that the primary needs of security, affection and esteem are satisfied, I prefer to dwell on the last need on the hierarchical scale because I consider it to be a need that is now widespread among young people and, above all, not very well satisfied. Less than 1% of companies allow their employees to self-fulfil themselves.
For us, self-fulfilment means having the opportunity to realise one’s talents in one’s own workplace. It therefore means first of all knowing one’s own aptitude, having the possibility to self-define one’s responsibilities and finally aligning them to organisational needs.
In this definition and alignment phase, motivation plays an indispensable role, which basically can be:
- Intrinsic, i.e. the one that makes us happy while performing a specific activity (e.g. while practising our favourite sport, singing, dancing…)
- Extrinsic, i.e. the weaker one because it drives us to achieve a result for an external benefit (e.g. working for a salary or doing an activity because others impose it on us).
The vast majority of companies try to motivate their employees with an external benefit (e.g. salary or bonus) not realising that they are using the wrong lever.
To satisfy the need for self-fulfilment, it is therefore necessary to work on intrinsic motivation. An interesting solution could be to create shared governance because distributing responsibilities, which are usually concentrated at the top of the hierarchical ladder, can lead to more effective work management, as well as greater staff involvement.
Defining a corporate purpose aligned with that of one’s employees: mission impossible?
Nothing is impossible and we have already defined this in many companies. It is no coincidence that Foxwin’s aim is to help people realise themselves.
We only feel fulfilled when we realise that our talents serve to help others, our community or the environment.
For years we have been in the business of helping companies by defining a corporate purpose. When we hold workshops one of the first questions we ask is “what is your life purpose?”. At first people want to run away because they feel uncomfortable about not having a ready answer to such a deep and important question. No worries, it is all perfectly natural. In fact, after some individual work all people will find their answer and we often hear that their purpose in life is to be happy by helping others!
Wonderful!
So, if we want to enable people to be self-fulfilling, we have to define a purpose that is not too broad. The example I always give is to set a goal of wanting to improve the world, which is certainly very nice but not very inspiring. However, it should also not be too narrow as that of achieving a single economic goal. We must find a purpose that allows individuals to feel part of a larger project in which they believe, knowing that their talents serve to help others in some way.
Here are some examples:
- Pratika, security consulting firm:
Protect to achieve well-being
- BCC Primacassa, a Friuli-based bank:
Enabling people to realise their dreams by growing together with the territory
- BRC, firm of accountants:
To create economic, relational, organisational and social value appreciated by the market
Having a corporate purpose is beautiful and motivating, but it is not enough to make the company profitable over time. It is therefore also necessary to define strategic goals that are concrete and achievable. For example, objectives can be set for economic results (increase in turnover), productivity, or goals can be set for change projects to be realised within the year.
The important thing is that these objectives are aligned with the goal and that they enable the profitability of the company in the long term.
OKRs to increase engagement and avoid voluntary resignations without notice
At Foxwin we have adopted the OKR method: Objectives & Key Results. This method was invented by Intel and made famous worldwide by Google.
The first step is to define goals (Objectives) that are ambitious and motivating, for example: to become the best company in the industry or to enter a new market. To each one of them, key results should be associated that make them concrete and measurable, such as increasing market share from 30 per cent to 35 per cent, or to generate 500,000€ in turnover in France. In this way, objectives motivate people and key results measure their success.
After defining corporate objectives, it is crucial to allow all employees to define their own goals and align them with those of their colleagues.
Concretely, if the employee proposes as an objective “to create an effective sales network in France” and associates as a key result “to conclude reseller contracts with 10 companies in France by the end of 2022”, then in this way the employee has the opportunity to define his own objectives himself without feeling an imposition from above, as is often the case.
Key Results
It is not enough for the company to set annual company goals, it is crucial to keep track of progress and to communicate the results periodically to all employees. A very common practice is to disseminate monthly turnover results or even, as we do at Foxwin, the accounting situation directly. In this way, employees realise that their work is an asset for the company.
Once the goal has been reached, like any self-respecting victory, there comes a time for rewards. Similarly, if the organisation succeeds in achieving its corporate goals, it becomes appropriate to reward employees, for example with welfare rewards. It would be better to choose collective rewards because they stimulate collaboration, as opposed to individual rewards that increase competition. We also recommend preferring a welfare bonus over a pay rise because it is tax-free and above all allows the employee to buy services to improve his or her own or his or her family’s well-being.
If the collaborator books holidays thanks to the bonus in welfare, he/she will remind him/herself and his/her loved ones that this is a well-deserved holiday for the efforts and good work done during the year.
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