Will there really be a great resignation?

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4 million Americans quit their jobs in July this year and 4.3 million followed in August. Latest predictions indicate Australians will follow suit early next year.

Well….end the post, right? The answer’s yes. Possibly, but the semantics are important.

It’s been called the “Great Resignation” and the “Great Quit”, but I don’t think most of these people are retiring or becoming entrepreneurs - especially as the latest surveys indicate that many of those “resigning” are Millenials and Gen Z - so these labels might not tell the whole story. Perhaps it’s more appropriate to call this the “Great Migration”.

I believe the most effective way for companies to outperform their industry is simply (or maybe not so simply) by being the place people want to buy from and work for. It appears that dynamic is about to be turbocharged. The whole notion of Employee Value Proposition (and Customer Value Proposition for that matter), has come under the microscope in the last two years. No longer has it been enough to have an EVP carefully crafted and written down - in the adversity of the pandemic, companies have been judged on how they’ve lived up to it.

Employees are about to move from those that didn’t do a great job, to those who did - the Great Migration. And I do think it’s a great thing - it will force more companies to become truly people-focused or risk being left behind by their competition.