About 27 percent of U.S. workers quit their jobs in 2023, costing employers nearly a trillion dollars to replace them, according to a common turnover calculation. And turnover is expected to climb as labor market experts are predicting a Great Resignation 2.0 in the near future.  

“The retention and engagement of employees has never been more important,” said Danny Nelms, the CEO of Work Institute, a research and consulting firm in Franklin, Tenn. “In historical terms we remain in an employee retention crisis,” he said, citing that the national quit rate has increased 37 percent since 2014.

Work Institute’s analysis of over 21,000 exit interviews across 175 companies from a range of industries in 2023 reveals workers’ preferences and expectations about work.

The top three reasons for leaving a job are lack of career opportunities or development, health and family issues, and a work/life imbalance.

“When you think about it from an employee’s perspective, if you’re in a role where you don’t feel like you’re growing, you feel like you can’t take a break when you need it, and work is taking up an outsized amount of your personal time, it makes sense that that would be the time to look for another job,” said Adam Weber, the chief evangelist at 15Five, a performance management platform based in San Francisco.

Meghan Stettler, director of the O.C. Tanner Institute in Salt Lake City, added that employees leave an organization because a critical need is not being met and a level of trust has been broken. “Are managers really listening to their people?” she asked. “Are they understanding their circumstances, and supporting and valuing people in actionable ways that will help them strive to do their best work?”

Nelms said what makes the current workforce so challenging to retain is the emergence of an expectation of personalization. Flexibility, benefits, and career pathways mean different things to different people, and organizationwide policies may not be the solution to turnover anymore.  

“Gone are the days when employers can seek to retain and engage their workforce with enterprise actions,” he said. “Today’s employee requires much more. They require to be treated as an individual, and they feel empowered to demand certain preferences and expectations based on their priorities.”

Stettler is encouraged by this personalized focus. “Creating a people-centric culture requires that we know, trust, and value our people as individual human beings and not just units of labor working under a blanket approach,” she said.

Weber noted that there is still a place for organizationwide strategies. “Companies need to equip managers with the skills and resources to manage and inspire each employee uniquely, but also align the individual’s goals to the company’s priorities,” he said. “That can be done by keeping a pulse on the employee’s personalized needs and preferences through continuous feedback and frequent engagement surveys to proactively get ahead of retention issues.”

‍

Read full article here