The Great Resignation – why people are quitting

Are you one of the many who has started 2022 either having just quit your job, or intending to quit very soon?

I wondered if this trend was happening within my own network and after putting out a poll on my LinkedIn I found that 71% of the people who answered know someone who has recently resigned or quit their job.

You could say logically that part of the reason is that we’ve all been waiting for the pandemic to be over before making a planned-for move, and I think that’s part of it, but only a small part of the bigger trend. Now things are starting to ease up in some ways, and we are accepting that we won’t simply being going back to the old normal, plus the start of a new calendar year, many people are reaching breaking point – something has to change.

I read this brilliant article by McKinsey which looks as the similarities between the process of going into and coming out of lockdown to deployment and coming home from military service. The change in routine and expectations, the coming back to realise that things have changed – feeling odd and out of place, feeling awkward in bigger groups and unknown social norms….I can definitely resonate with that!

“All the patterns and routines are broken. You’ve lost your tribe. Your sense of community and belonging at work depended on cohesive social networks, and so many of those have been disrupted during the pandemic. You feel left behind, somehow, and it’s very hard to process emotionally.”

Ultimately we are dealing with a HUGE mental and emotional load that we have never had to deal with before so we can expect there to be a big fallout and some big trends coming out as a result of this. If we take a Human-First approach and recognise that we cannot simply flick a switch and process the last 2 years, we can deal with this more effectively.

I think this quote sums it up well-

People ultimately need to set themselves free. The emotional ties that may have bound people together during the pandemic work period has waned, and now they will seek opportunities not only to unpin their clipped wings but to fully expand them in ways they wouldn’t have let themselves do previously.

After having had Covid myself for the last week and before that my son had it for 10 days, I’ve certainly felt like freedom is a distant dream. I think in all life, things always find a way of balancing themselves out and having had this level of restriction in our lives, we all need more freedom in the coming years.

“This Great Resignation is actually a normal response that most people have never gone through, I’ve experienced this kind of thing after every return from deployment.”

How we can find our groove again…

I have always been passionate about flexible working and finding ways of working that work for you and your unique personality and energy patterns. Before lockdown from 2018 to 2020, I was running a coworking club and learnt so much about what I want from my own work and what does and doesn’t work, so I feel like I’ve had a chance to unlearn a lot of the beliefs and habits I picked up from my 15 years in the corporate world.

Having been on this entrepreneurial journey for 3.5 years I can say that the grass isn’t necessarily greener on the other side, but it is grown how you choose to grow it, and this greater sense of ownership and choice is going to be essential for companies wanting to retain valuable talent, as well as those who have chosen to step into the entrepreneurial world in recognising that their business needs to work for THEM and not be held to account for the way things *used* to work back in the pre-pandemic and even pre-internet world.

Something that has really helped me in the last 2 years is understanding myself better- digging into my personality, astrology and Human Design and stepping away from any pre-defined template of the way a business ‘should’ be run or how my working week ‘should’ look.

That’s why I now work with clients and in my group courses and membership to help people step away from the old way of doing things and redefine what ‘work’ and ‘success’ truly means for them. Often we think it’s tied to our bank account or to a job title, but the last 2 years have enabled us to broaden our definition and appreciate the things that actually make us feel good and enjoy life. Otherwise what’s the point?!

I am offering the tools that I have found most effective over on my free downloads page– there is a Values Workbook so you can get to know yourself better and what truly matters to you to help make aligned decisions. There is also a weekly intuitive planning guide to start tapping into how you truly want your working week to look like.