HRM Assignment

Submitted by: Kunal Kataria

20111
BMS 2A

Define the term "Great resignation"? What methods would you take as an HR
manager to help your companies in retaining competent workforces?

The Great Resignation is an informal name for the widespread trend of a significant number
of workers leaving their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s sometimes also called the Big
Quit.

The Great Resignation is typically discussed in relation to the US workforce but the
phenomenon is international. It is thought to be the result of many different factors, notably
workers’ dissatisfaction with current working conditions and personal reassessments of
career and lifestyle due to the changes and hardships of the pandemic.

In Great Resignation, the word resignation refers to the act of resigning—formally leaving a
job. The name is modelled on similar names for historically significant economic events, such
as the Great Depression and the Great Recession, in which the word Great is used to indicate
significant length and impact. The same thing is indicated by the word Big in the synonymous
term Big Quit, in which quit is a more informal word for resign. The name echoes similar
terms, such as the big bang, and titles of books and movies, such as The Big Short.

The first known use of the term Great Resignation is credited to business and management
professor Anthony Klotz, who used the term in interviews and opinion pieces about the
phenomenon in May 2021.
Millions of workers in the US left their jobs during the summer and fall of 2021, and surveys
revealed that many more were considering it. Reports revealed that, in addition to personal
reasons, the majority of workers were motivated to leave their jobs due to unsatisfactory
treatment by their employers during the pandemic.

Why is the Great Resignation Happening?

The popular trend started when the American administration refused to provide employee
benefits in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. So, a shift to work-from-home culture, desire
to move into a more suitable profession, and long-term goals fuelled this whole new trend.
During this, a strike wave known as 'Striketober' began, with employees participating in a
general strike against poor working conditions and low wages.
In light of the ongoing wave, remote working has made it possible for corporates and
employees to have flexible work models. Hence, Many employers started offering better
benefits and higher salaries to employees, leading employees to re-evaluate their options. In
India, due to this, the jobs are moving towards people in tier II and tier III cities. Accordingly,
making a shift in India’s spatial economy.

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Scenario in India
The fundamental shift in the labour market that is occurring in developed economies may not
have an impact on India. This is due to the differences in social protection and citizen per
capita income between developed and developing economies.

Although India appears to be relatively immune to this global wave, the country is witnessing
a different kind of labour phenomenon. The employee attrition rates in some companies,
particularly in the technology sector, are skyrocketing. So, with the fading of the Covid
epidemic, India's labour population is seeing significant churn across a wide range of
businesses.

Although some employees are quitting their jobs permanently and joining the expanding
startup ecosystem, the percentage of people leaving their jobs permanently is miniscule.

According to experts, while in the US and European nations, the factors like burnout at the
workplace, low wage, sound social security protection and unfair treatment by employers are
driving this trend, the rising employee churn in India is mostly limited to well paying, white-
collar jobs to a large extent.

Not all sectors are seeing a wave of quitting

Workers also aren’t quitting in droves across all sectors of the economy. While quits are
higher than usual in most industries, a few sectors are responsible for most of the turnover,
with some lower than their recent peaks.

The highest quit rate is in accommodation and food services. About 6.9% of people working
in hotels, motels, restaurants and bars gave notice in November. While that’s the highest
since 2000, voluntary turnover in this sector is usually on the high side – given the nature of
the work – and has been above 5% many times over the past two decades.

November’s second-highest quit rate, at 4.4%, was retail trade, which includes workers in
stores and shops. Combined, these two relatively low-wage industries accounted for one third
of all people who quit that month.

On the other hand, the quit rates for construction, information, finance and
insurance and real estate are relatively low and have been higher in the past 21 years.

Quit rates by industry

A few major sectors, especially service industries like leisure and hospitality, are responsible
for most of the high rate of quitting. Most sectors had quit rates in November that were below
the average of 3%.

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Apart from the above stated reasons, there are multiple things that mattered to the
employees

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There are multiple you can do to keep your competent key players in place:

• Identify your competent employees. Imagine you've got a task you can't do yourself but that
MUST get done. You need to assign it to somebody. Who's the first person or persons who
come to mind?
• Pay them significantly more than their peers. Competent employees are seldom competent
at salary negotiations, which is why they're constantly underpaid. Don't wait for them to ask
(or leave).
• Give them a big raise immediately; repeat every year.
• Resist the temptation to load them down. Even when they're unhappy, the competent
seldom complain about their work and often feel as if they can't say "no" to an assignment.
Therefore, you must moderate their workload for them.
• Praise them lavishly but privately. Competent employees know that if they're singled out it
creates resentment, making it even harder for them to get the job done. Express your
gratitude frequently but one-on-one.
• Winnow out the truly incompetent. Nothing is more demoralizing to the competent than
employees who don't pull their weight. So dump the deadwood. Especially if the deadwood is
your brother-in-law.
• Tally the possible aftermath: Quantify the scope of the problem and its impact on key
business metrics first. This will allow HRs to understand the gravity of the situation and the
urgency of the same. Tabulate the effects the resignations will have on major areas of the
business and whether these can be reversed without the intervention of additional resources.
• Understand the cost of the resignations: Every employee is worth a lot for the company. Not
just in terms of revenue but also in brand image, reputation, performance, culture and more.
Understand the cost of letting go of an employee and whether this cost is bearable by the
company. If it isn’t, think about the cost you can pay to stop the employee from leaving. If this
is less than what you would have to lose without them, you know what choice to make.
• Make way for informed decisions, not heated arguments: Breaking head over the chain of
events that lured the employee to submit the resignation letter isn’t going to help if you are
planning to stick to the causes only and bombard the employee by jolting them to blurt out
the reason. Chances are, they might not verbally say the actual reason for their resignation.
Don’t force them to. There is only that much information you can extract from them. Instead,
plan ways to help get the internal buy-in vital to address the problems, and make informed
decisions around what kind of retention interventions would be most effective.
• Identify the blind spots within your organization: Rather than attempting to read between
the lines to find the reason, realize that the problem could be lying within your company.
Explore metrics like compensation, time between promotions, location, function, size of pay
increases, tenure, performance, and training opportunities to identify trends and figure out
the solutions.
• Look beyond the evident issues: Pay, flexibility, WFH might be very predictable reasons as
they can also be backed by data and surveys. Understand what triggers retention apart from
quantifiable metrics- Burnout, teammate fallouts and more. Many-a-times, a petty argument
between teammates can persuade employees to make extreme decisions. Look for the
loopholes and fill them before the workers use it as an exit.

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 • Strategize actionable plans: Understanding the challenge and its complexity is the first step
towards finding its solution. Create customized retention programs aimed at solving the
underlined problems. Conduct ‘Stay Interviews’ instead of ‘exit interviews’ to know how close
employees have been pushed towards their saturation point. Work on these. Talking to an
employee after they have left the organization doesn’t really make a great difference. If you
want them to stay, talk to them; listen to them, more importantly, while they are still in your
company and solve their issues.

References: - https://www.dictionary.com/e/historical-current-events/great-resignation/
https://theconversation.com/the-great-resignation-historical-data-and-a-deeper-analysis-show-its-
not-as-great-as-screaming-headlines-suggest-174454

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