GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - Economist are calling it "The Great Resignation," and its in large part a result of employees being able to work remotely during the pandemic, and are now struggling to find the ambition to go back to the office.
Economics professor at Grand Valley State University says the quit culture was happening well before the COVID pandemic, and the 2020 shutdown pushed the trend even further.
"Certainly a lot of recent surveys have suggested that employees want more flexibility," Professor Isley says. "Another part of the story is a large percentage of Americans have substantially more savings now, and we know that people who are willing to switch jobs will have a high increase in pay than people who are unwilling to quit their jobs."
Experts say to keep employees committed, companies will need to come up with a hybrid work structure.
West Michigan based life coach Anne Hamming suggests that employees first try asking their employers for the flexibility they crave, before they jump ship.
"They're going to lose good people if they're not willing to change," Anne says. "It's definitely to the employee's advantage to be able to say, yeah, I'm open to this, and then have a really robust conversation about what are the parameters, like what defines "what remote is" or "hybrid."
Professor Isley says what's happening shouldn't surprise anyone, as so many people had the opportunity to reevaluate their lives while they were stuck at home in a pandemic.
"Feeling like you have control is really important to people now, they've had an entire of not feeling like they had no control," Isley says. I've dealt with some employees that have left, and thy left because, because of the pandemic what was important to them changed. So as we've gone through this last year, a lot of people had time to reflect on what's most important, what's important about their job, what's important about their life, and now is the time to take advantage of that."
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