Anthony Klotz on Defining the Great Resignation

Anthony Klotz

Associate Professor, Mays Business School, Texas A&M University

“The Great Resignation ended up being a pretty good prediction, but I also think talking about quitting is taboo and that taboo benefits organizations. So it has helped to surface this conversation that a lot of employees are not doing well right now—and they want to talk about it. They want a forum to say, this is what really worked for me during the pandemic, but this is what I really missed. How can we craft a job that gives me both of those things, if possible?

Believe me, with the number of emails I get, employees want to talk about this. I've seen a lot of people say, we're going back to 2019. And workers from across the spectrum are saying: This pandemic has been horrible, but could one silver lining be that we make the world of work better coming out of it? So let’s talk about people who’ve traditionally had systematic disadvantages in the workplace, and how we create a space to cut those systematic disadvantages away coming out of this pandemic. As opposed to just saying, ‘Let's go back to the way it was, or, fine, remote must be good, so everybody go remote and let's hope for the best.’”

Resigning ourselves to a new normal.

When we decided to tackle “The Great Resignation,” we dared to dream of scoring an interview with the one who coined the concept. Through the magic of LinkedIn and Anthony’s generous spirit, we got the get. Here’s more from our interview with this exodus expert. 

We’re always impressed by someone who in the midst of big, dynamic change can see around corners and say, ‘Yeah, this could be big.’ What made you think this would be a Great Resignation? Was COVID just an accelerant of something years in the making, or is the trend entirely of this pandemic?

One of my areas of research is how employees quit their jobs, and what happens after they make the decision to quit. Because for most of your time as an employee, the corporation has the power. When you decide to leave, that power shifts, and I'm interested in what employees do with that power when they get it. I talk to people about how they resign from their jobs, and I keep an eye on resignation statistics. So my short answer is that COVID was an accelerant.

Over the past decade, especially as the economy really strengthened in 2018/2019, the rate of resignations has been rising. The old contract between companies and employees no longer exists; as Reid Hoffman says, it’s a ‘tours of duty’ mentality. We are resigning more frequently, with more careers within our overall career. I watched those numbers during the pandemic, and noticed that resignations dropped precipitously in 2020. I thought plenty of employees still wanted to quit their jobs, but few would quit voluntarily during the pandemic because there was so much uncertainty. I figured if we got a vaccine and the economy improved, there could be a backlog of people who’d enact their plans to quit for any number of reasons.

Another factor was burnout; people are emotionally exhausted. It’s a strong predictor of quitting, which makes sense, because the only cure for it is taking a break and replenishing who you are. Working from home also shifted people's identities. We very much identify ourselves with who we are as an employee, as a worker. During the pandemic, a lot of us have spent time doing different things, whether with family or hobbies. And I think a lot of people now realize, 'I'm more than just my job.’ There was this forced minimalism where we weren't socializing, and we realized we were good without a lot of things we thought we couldn’t live without. Household debt went down. All these things came together into pandemic epiphanies where people decided they wanted to pivot—they didn’t miss their old life and wanted to do something different. And in many cases, jobs are intertwined with that. 

We have a fundamental need for autonomy. When you work in a new arrangement for 12 or 18 months, you completely adjust, and during the pandemic people adjusted to having far more freedom in how they arranged their lives and work. There's research coming out that says people are spending longer days working from home, but they’re taking breaks during those days—getting errands done, going to coffee. Productivity is either flat or up in almost everything that I've seen when it comes to working from home. And once you give people this flexibility and autonomy and we adjust to it, we're not going to give it back easily.

Since you study how people resign, any tips for how people should leave well?

First and foremost, I think you should be really clear on why you’re leaving and what you may be leaving behind. If you like most of your job, but a small thing bothers you, you might want to work with your employer to craft something that works better. Don’t discount the trust and social capital you’ve built in a place. If you must leave, I suggest you communicate it in person or at least on Zoom. Right now, using electronic communication might be tempting, but that lacks nuance or tone. Be specific about why you’re leaving, but be professional. If your job lacks meaning or your boss is terrible, that is probably something that doesn’t need to be said. Go above and beyond during your notice period—offer to train a replacement or get a project over the finish line. Even before the pandemic, ‘boomerang employment,’ returning to a place you used to work, was on the rise. So leave the door open to return, even if it doesn’t seem likely. 

For our readers managing teams, what can they do given that people might make COVID choices than boomerang? How can employers think about a longer timeframe? 

Organizations spend tons of resources onboarding employees, then completely ignore the off-boarding process. That's problematic in a number of ways. Right now, we may see greener grass elsewhere because it's been a tough time. Of course, if you resign to seek that greener grass, you may realize you didn't like 30% of the prior job, but this new job or calling just has a different 30% of problems that creep up. You'll have the honeymoon period, then a hangover period where you realize, ‘Did I really upgrade?’

So this is a great opportunity for organizations to make sure they’re checking in with former employees to see how it’s going. Some organizations have even started to say, ‘You know what? We're going to automatically give you a one-year leave of absence.’ So all your benefits, they're still there; you're still on the books, whether you want it or not. Then imagine six months later, the employee has gone through their honeymoon period and now they're in a hangover period, and you reach out to that employee and say, ‘Hey, just so you know, your leave of absence is still there. We miss you. We hope you're doing well in your new role.’ That's a great way to both improve your brand on the market as an employer, and to leave the door open. It’s a shift in thinking, from ‘a person who's leaving is disloyal’ to ‘a person who’s leaving is exploring something else.’ It doesn't mean anything about who they are; we're all trying to create a good life for ourselves.

In general, people want to do the right thing when they resign. Companies can also look at the way employees are resigning, and say, ‘Are we a good place to work or not?’ Because if people are burning bridges on the way out, there’s less chance they’re all bad people than there's something wrong in your organization.

You mentioned that people have gotten used to greater freedom and flexibility. How should we view remote work?

I think leaders are struggling with the idea that employees need to be back in the office. And as a researcher, I can tell you we have really no evidence that being in the office—physically, together—contributes to higher innovation. I am all about evidence-based leadership, so if you want people back in the office, you need to give them an explanation of why it's important or needed. Often organizations will say, ‘Well, it's so hard to quantify what we want these people to do.’ And I just think they must have a horrible performance management system if they can't even quantify in some way what these individuals contribute to the overall organization. 

This whole thing about guessing what happens when people are in the workplace is silly. I think it’s a great time for experimentation: Bring some people back. Leave other people remote. Compare the groups to evaluate any differences in productivity. Try rearranging your workplace in different formations to try to get this innovation going. Leaders should roll up their sleeves, think about organizational culture, talk to employees about the challenges they face coming to the office. You have to collect evidence and come up with a solution that no other company is doing, because it's right for your business. 

Where are we in the overall talent marketplace?

I'm sure you've seen the phrase, ‘The Great Reshuffling,’ to describe the huge uptick in people changing jobs. Resignations are back on the rise. The executives I talk to are making changes to try to retain people, to be a great place to work, because they genuinely want to. You see Target and Walmart offering free education for all employees. Restaurants are finally above $15 an hour, on average. We're going to go through this period where companies are experimenting with work arrangements and employees are experimenting with what work arrangements they like. A healthy outcome would be that within one industry, let's say finance, you have companies that are completely remote, companies that are hybrid and those fully in-person with a different set of benefits. To go back to your first point about how we structure our lives and careers for each verse of life, we could choose the work arrangement within an industry that we want. The idea would be we have these industries that have all these different work arrangements and employees over the course of their careers can choose the ones they want.

Last, what have you learned about why people resign? 

We could have a whole class on the many theories of why people quit. In general, at some point when you start working for an organization you like it, and you're not thinking about quitting. Usually, there's an event, what we call a turnover shock, that gets you to start having cognitions about what life would be like after leaving. I find that useful to think about in a context of the pandemic. You see these surveys that say 95% of people are thinking about leaving. I don't think it's that high, but it makes sense that the pandemic has been a turnover shock for all of us because we've reflected on our lives. So those cognitions are in people's heads. Of course, there’s pay and benefits, and companies need to do the right thing there. When they invest in their employees, employees invest back in them.

Right now, people are searching for meaning and purpose. In some cases, people have the answers, but in others, they don't. Organizations can help remind people of how their job contributes to the wellbeing of the world. I think purpose-driven leadership does work. Over the last 18 months, a lot of organizations have been firefighting—rightfully so—but they've gotten away from reminding employees of how their jobs create meaning and purpose in other people’s lives and their own lives—the pro-social piece. I tell leaders, it’s time to take purpose-driven leadership seriously, because you can help employees make sense of ‘What am I doing for eight hours a day?’ 

This is also the time to talk about inclusivity. Employees want to bring their whole selves to work. A lot of the reason we don't want to go back into the office is because we have to hide part of ourselves there; we have to fake who we are. It's draining to engage in these antics, where we're pretending we're someone we're not. So really thinking seriously about inclusivity means making sure employees can bring their whole selves to work—while also recognizing that you don't want employees for whom work is the only thing in their lives.