Want to keep your employees through the Great Attrition? Help them build resilience.
In a recent McKinsey article about the turmoil of returning to work post-Covid, army veteran Adria Horn makes a case for why the Great Attrition is happening – blaming it on the return to work, which she says is psychologically similar and just as unnerving as returning from war.
“Coming back from deployment is hard. You’re expecting it to be great. You’re home again, this should be great! But the biggest feeling is that things are different. The kids are different. Your favourite restaurant closed, your pet died, and your softball team broke up. The couch your partner bought while you were away is great—but it’s not the couch you knew. Home isn’t normal, it isn’t as it was. Things don’t meet your expectations, and you seem to have lost control, so your return experience doesn’t feel good at all,” says Horn, who served five tours of duty overseas.
For many people in the U.S. and the U.K. who have been asked to return to the office, this is how they’re also feeling, and according to Horn, this is the reason millions of people are leaving their jobs in droves. The big issue, however, is that many of them don’t know why they’re leaving and more than that, many employers don’t know either. As we all know, we can’t manage what we don’t understand.
“People’s hopes and expectations are going unmet in ways that many don’t realize and can’t articulate. Being off balance that way puts people on edge; it throws them off-kilter,” said Horn.
Addressing inequity
Before we go into what employers can do to avoid losing all their best talent (if it’s not too late already), it’s worth mentioning that any return-to-work plan needs to be flexible and cater to unique employee needs – yes, we’re talking equity.
Everyone’s experience of working from home was different. While some people enjoyed the quiet and convenience of working from a home office and not having to commute, others struggled with the distractions of overcrowded homes and uncomfortable multi-purpose workspaces (and everything in between).
Covid shone a light on systemic inequity throughout society, both pre-Covid and during Covid. Women in particular have suffered burnout at increasing rates as they have tried to juggle family and work commitments. Not only that, but research shows that at work, “women senior leaders do more to help their employees navigate work–life challenges, relative to their male peers. Similarly, they spend that additional time helping manage workloads, and they’re 60 percent more likely to be focusing on emotional support.”
But it’s not only women who experience inequity in their careers and work life, there’s also people of colour, people with disabilities, people who identify as LGBTQ+, and many more. These groups have historically faced discrimination and lower levels of representation in senior management. All of these groups also experienced similar, yet unique, challenges during Covid.
If employers want to both retain and attract the best talent, they need to start by understanding that individuals have different needs. Some people are clamouring to come back into the office five days a week, while others will quit if they’re forced to return for even one day a week. Thankfully, we know from hundreds of employee surveys around the world that most employees sit somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, so it is possible to find an operating rhythm and standard, even while catering to individual needs.
Covid has shepherded in a new age of work reform – one where employees have the power and expect more from their employers. Return to work policies and conversation must be employee centred, and companies that care only for profit or that don’t ‘walk the talk’ of their stated values will quickly lose the war for talent, if they haven’t already.
Simply, this means asking individual employees “what would you prefer?” or “what do you need to perform at your best?” Without this approach, and as we have seen in the U.S. and U.K, employees will leave to find other companies which are willing to meet their needs. Period.
Flexible return to work policies are the first step. The second steps is ensuring employees’ return to work meets their expectations. This takes effort and understanding from managers.
Read on to uncover three essential return-to-work resilience building activities to help your team reconnect and build resilience.
Three essential return-to-work resilience building activities
If there is one lesson the rest of the world can learn from the U.S. and U.K., it’s that we can’t wait to see what will happen when everyone returns to the office. To retain employees, we need to be proactive about building our office culture and manageing people’s expetations.
As Horn pointed out, the problem is that people see ‘coming’back’ to work as a known thing. They feel it will be a return to normal, a known quantity, comfortable, safe. Yet employees will not be coming back to the same team, the same office and the same work as when they left. Everything has changed, and this disconnect will leave people feeling unease and off kilter, without knowing why.
The reality is that employees will actually experience significant change, and we know that some will even be grieving what they’ve lost during her return to work (see the Kubler-Ross change curve). Good leaders will retain employees by putting in place interventions to negate the negative impacts of this change and help build employees’ resilience and wellbeing through this time.
Here’s how…
- Reconnect employees with meaning and purpose
Reconnect your team members with their jobs by helping them connect with the meaning and purpose they get from their work. Help employees gain a renewed sense of passion for their work and the company. A simple way to do this is to focus on aligning character strengths with role tasks. Employees who know and apply their top character strengths in their work have better job satisfaction and wellbeing (Peterson & Seligman, 2004).
Research also shows that using character strengths can help:
- Improve relationships
- Enhance health and overall wellbeing
- Buffer against, manage and overcome problems
Additionally, research shows that employees who use four or more of their signature strengths have more positive work experiences and report their work is a calling in their life.
ACTIVITY:
- STEP 1: Before the team comes back into the office, ask them to complete the free VIA Character Strengths survey.
- STEP 2: Once back in the office, book a ‘real-life’ meeting with the team and ask each team member to share their top character strengths and how they apply these in their job.
- STEP 3: Follow up with one-on-one meetings with your team members and if needed, explore opportunities for growth or stretch work that uses their top strengths.
- Reconnect with the team
The biggest employee benefit of a real office environment is being able to interact with people face-to-face. Yet as Adria Horn mentioned, for a while this will feel strange. The first step to building up that team environment and comradery is to acknowledge the weirdness. Let’s call a spade a spade. Some people will wear masks, some won’t. Some will still dial in to meetings from their desks, while others will find conference rooms to share. Some will want to hug colleagues, while others will bump elbows… it’s all going to be different, and that’s OK.
Next, teams need to reconnect. Set aside dedicated time to get to know each other better and deeper over the first few months. Plan a variety of team activities for the whole team (don’t forget to make sure the activities are accessible to all – afterwork drinks might not work for parents, be mindful of food allergies when booking lunch, ensure any physical activities take into account everyone’s physical limitations, etc…). Make sure there is time for meaningful interaction.
ACTIVITIES:
- Try learning something new as a team. You could watch and discuss a Ted Talk or take a LinkedIn Learning course and share notes.
- Check out these 5 Easy Resilience Activities for the Workplace or Google some team building activities.
- At the beginning of your team meetings, do a ‘round the grounds’ and ask your team to share their thoughts on various topics. You can pick anything, but here are some suggestions: What are you most proud of in the past year? What are you most looking forward to this year? In one word, how are you feeling today? Where is your favourite place to travel and why? What excites you the most about your work goals in the next year? What’s the one thing people don’t know about you?
- Role model healthy mind and body habits
Change can be stressful, but people who prioritise healthy mind and body habits tend to cope better with change and stress than those who don’t. During times of change it’s especially important to support employees to find work-life balance. Yet ironically, when things get busy and life feels stressful, the first thing many people do is stop exercising, stop cooking healthy meals, stop sleeping enough hours each night… yet that is when these healthy habits are most important.
Thankfully, all that’s needed here is some proactive and visible role modelling from leaders. To build an office culture where work-life balance is valued, role-modelling work-life balance and healthy mind and body habits is critical, particularly in front of younger workers who often take the lead from their bosses. If you’re leaving work early on a Friday to see your kids’ school play, let your team know. If you start early on a Thursday so you can leave early for soccer league or go to the gym, tell the team. If you are feeling burnout lapping at your heels, tell your team, and then find a way to take a mental health day – this is being vulnerable and it’s good leadership. Most importantly, don’t just head out the door on these days, make sure you say something, otherwise it may go unnoticed.
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