The Great Resignation in India

, as the trend has been hailed, resulted in more than 24 million American workers resigning from their jobs, in sectors as diverse as healthcare, transportation, retail, hospitality, education, and warehousing. Employees are not just quitting in the U.S.; closer home, the IT industry is witnessing rising attrition, as per an e-commerce major’s recent survey. A聽聽highlighted that the top 5 IT companies in the country hired as many as 1.7 lakh professionals in 2021 due to rising attrition and high demand for tech-skilled employees.聽

What might come as a surprise is that The Great Resignation trend is not completely attributable to the pandemic; if anything, the latter merely exacerbated a movement that was already gaining momentum among employees and workers of the Global North. What’s at stake is the future of work and business performance. For one, if companies fail to hire highly motivated candidates and retain their star performers, it could lead to further disruptions in productivity and growth in a market that has already seen dramatic lows from Covid-19.聽

Younger workforce driving change

In the backdrop of these cultural and organizational challenges, it is essential that hiring managers and companies bring their A-game to designing a better workplace culture. What is fueling the need for this change? In one word: GenZ! Often dubbed as the woke generation, the rising number of 18鈥�28-year-olds in the workforce is forcing recruitment managers and employers to think out of the box about incentives, workplace design, collaboration, and fostering a sense of belonging. This聽聽is looking for more involvement with their teams, flexibility in schedules and place of work (think, co-working spaces and hybrid or remote), and look to the organization鈥檚 mission and values to foster a sense of purpose at work.聽

Disengaged employees

Besides a poor work environment, employees are quitting the workforce in large numbers for other reasons. This includes searching for better pay, hunting for job opportunities in other industries, looking for profiles that better fit their values, and most critically, to recover from burnout brought on by years of dysfunctional work environments, competition straight out of college, and long working hours. According to a聽, only 36% of employees in the USA felt engaged at their current workplace. The situation in India is not likely to be better; rather, the chances are that it is far bleaker.

Here are the top 5 reasons why employees are disengaged at work:

1. Ambiguous career path

Uncertainty at work is the enemy of confidence and productivity. Include a clearly mapped growth path for an employee’s role and what kind of responsibilities they will handle in the future. The absence of a well-drawn profile map nudges many employees to quit.

2. Mismatched incentives and appraisals

We all want our talents and efforts to be appreciated and rewarded with tangible incentives (money, that’s obvious). But a younger workforce also expects benefits and perks that are non-monetary. This could be in the form of company-funded training, team outings, mental health coach, and appraisals that take place more frequently. When employees don’t get offered appropriate incentives in line with their efforts, it impacts productivity and leads to poor engagement.

3. Dysfunctional management

You know that adage, 鈥榚mployees don鈥檛 quit offices, they leave their managers鈥�? Never has it been more appropriate to describe the current trend of The Great Resignation than during the pandemic, when professionals continue to quit their jobs due to dysfunctional bosses. Unreasonable productivity demands, bosses compelling employees to stretch beyond regular work hours, use of foul or abusive language in the office, and lack of mentorship and support impact the morale of employees.

4. Negative work environment

Employees bring in their best selves to work when the environment is positive, optimistic, and supportive. HR policies and management practices need to align with industry best practices for workplace behaviors. This means discouraging negative chatter, unhealthy competition, avoiding favoritism, and being extremely mindful to avoid discrimination in hiring practices and during appraisals. The absence of such benchmarks has a direct impact on employee productivity and morale, leading to high quit rates.

5. Inappropriate cultural fit

An organization鈥檚 core values act as a signpost that guides beliefs, behaviors, communications protocol, and attitudes at work. Workplace culture needs to evolve with a predominantly younger generation sitting at the foundation of the organization. Not having a clearly defined value system can alienate employees and contribute to low engagement at work.

6. Positive impact on bottom line

If disengaged employees impact the performance of a company, then the flipside of the narrative should be true: happy employees have a positive impact on a company鈥檚 bottom line. The good news? There is a correlation! 93% of respondents in a聽聽agreed that organizational performance increases when employees feel a sense of belonging. That is why it is important for companies to lead with motivation, mission, and a management culture that is mindful while engaging with the younger workforce.

4 reasons why positive employee experience is critical for businesses:

1. Helps reduce attrition rates

Highly engaged employees are more likely to remain loyal to their organizations than disengaged ones. Money may be a motivating factor for employees to jump companies; however, businesses can overcome this problem by offering a positive work culture. Moreover, hiring and training new employees often come at a higher cost than retaining existing employees who are already familiar with work processes and are a cultural fit.

2. Leads to more productive employees

Happy employees will show better engagement and productivity at the workplace. Their enthusiasm will also rub onto other people who are likely to be motivated to perform better. Sparking engagement among employees is thus crucial to attain team cohesion and attain the desired business results.

3. Helps attract the best talent

The shortage of skills in the global job market is making it tough for employees to attract and retain the right talent. Businesses that offer聽, offer employees learning opportunities, better incentives, and positively encourage employees to prioritize self-care are more likely to attract top talents in the job market.

4. Enables improved customer experience

Customer service can make or break the reputation and repeat value of a business. Happy employees, especially those who deal and interact with your customers directly, are responsible for setting a positive first impression. Such employees are likely to go the extra mile to offer the best experiences and solutions to their customers.

Redefining the employee experience

As businesses shift their focus from survival mode to recovery and short-term growth during the third wave of the pandemic, there is a need to redefine the employee experience. This is applicable not just for seasoned professionals, but for the millions of freshers for whom 2022 might well be their debut foray at work. According to a PWC聽, 63% of CFOs want to redesign their products and services to generate revenue. However, this change will happen only when the organizational culture keeps pace with the zeitgeist of its employees.聽

Here are聽9 ways聽to foster employee engagement:

1. Incorporate values and purpose-led work

Every company needs to craft core values that define its internal culture, purpose and larger mission. There are benchmarks that define organizations that earn the 鈥榞reat place to work鈥� title. Organizations thus need to create a work culture that is positive and friendly for the employees. Management is the best place, to begin with, as leaders can help build that desired culture.

2. Create an inclusive environment

In a聽聽individuals from 35 organizations, Culture Amp and Paradigm found that 鈥渁 single metric that was consistently and universally tied to a person鈥檚 workplace commitment, motivation, pride and recommendation was feeling a sense of belonging.鈥� Some of the ways that managers can foster a sense of belonging in their teams is by asking for their inputs and ideas during project planning phase, appreciating their efforts consistently, and demonstrating your faith in them by giving them the opportunity to lead a project, event, client pitch, or activity.

3. Make work-life balance a priority

Work-life harmony has become a priority not just for younger professionals, but a majority of the global workforce. A PWC survey says that 52% of聽聽plan to shift their employees to remote working permanently. Remote work has led to the blurring of lines between personal and professional lives;聽聽and burnout from being available on-call throughout the day for multiple meetings has eaten into employee morale and productivity. Managers need to design strategies and schedules that help improve work-life balance.

4. Maintain honesty and transparency

Maintain transparency while communicating with your employees in order to build trust and loyalty within your teams. This helps eliminate an environment of mistrust and shows that you genuinely care about your employees. For example, if an employee feedback survey had specific areas of concern pertaining to news about your company鈥檚 performance, ensure you address this in an open forum with facts and explanations. Your employees will appreciate your honesty and emulate the same form of communication with their teams.

5. Improve collaborative measures

Team cohesion helps improve trust, fosters a sense of shared values, creates a positive work environment, encourages productivity, and ultimately impacts a company鈥檚 bottom line. Organizations should encourage collaboration among employees, both, within the same department and amongst other teams across the company. Team building activities allow employees the opportunity to develop empathy, earn respect, and build morale as a unit. This in turn encourages employees to work as a well-oiled unit to achieve larger organizational goals.

6. Multi-faceted incentives

Understand what truly benefits your employees, which you can best do through surveys and feedback forms. This could range from on-job training and upskilling, insurance and mental health services, food coupons and weekly team outings, to gym memberships, performance-linked incentives every quarter, and opportunities to lead. Whatever option you choose, ensure it fits with the aspirations and needs of your employees. Companies also offer flexi-time work, unlimited medical leaves, and no questions asked casual holidays demonstrate to employees that they are valued.

7. Create development opportunities

Mentoring and training are critical factors that can help employees stay connected. Help your employees in their professional development by giving them the chance to advance their skills. This can take the form of regular workshops and courses related to their profile and areas of interest. Offering training and upskilling options during work hours can help employees understand their career path and opportunities better.

8. Reward your employees

The best time to reward an employee is not when they decide to leave so that you can retain them. Performance appraisals need to be timely and provide both monetary and non-monetary incentives to all employees. Keep an eye on your top performers and design reward programs that are based on their contributions, skill sets, and attitude. Grooming your top performers for future leadership roles is also an important aspect of keeping them motivated.

9. Virtual team bonding

A happy workplace is all about enthusiastic people who can help others grow along with them. Having regular office outings can help improve the bonding between the team and make them feel more connected with each other. Secondly, with remote work becoming the norm in metros and Tier 1 cities, HR needs to design virtual activities that help employees feel connected with their colleagues remotely and nudges them to be productive.

Course correction: Workplace of the future

Though the pandemic is a disruptor of things, it has also given organizations a chance to course correct. There cannot be a better opportunity to revamp the workplace and reassess what aspects of the culture works and what needs to be redefined or let go. Besides, the change in status quo also affords us the possibility to remove ambiguity from various aspects of the workplace and reinforce our values.

Most organizations may have done well till this stage of the pandemic. The key is to build on that by taking your team into confidence and building on their ideas and vision for the company鈥檚 growth. Their satisfaction is critical to helping companies achieve their organizational goals.

If you are looking for HRIS software to streamline core HR processes,聽SuccessFactors Employee Central聽can help.聽SF employee central聽also supports employee self-services for the entire organization. Get more details on聽Employee Central Success Factors聽.

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What is Business Resilience?

Business resilience is an organization’s ability to adapt its operations, absorb stress and ensure business continuity in the face of adverse situations or change. It is about having the foresight to recognize risk factors and causes of disruption and plan for them. Of course, many businesses currently practice risk management in some manner 鈥� mostly to better understand and mitigate exposure to specific, well-known hazards. Resilience must also encompass unidentified threats, as well as the adaptations and transformations that a corporation must do to absorb and even leverage environmental stress.

Contrary to popular perception, contingency plans for business resilience do not mean having largescale organizational resources and ample cash reserves to weather disruption. It is more about adapting than just response. And as old business ways collapse, technology has helped give a head start to organizations invested in building business resilience. Adopting lean, digital-first agile processes has helped them transform legacy business models, reinvent the way they work and reset their business strategy. One way to do so is by leveraging聽, which delivers pre-built processes for everything from finance and sales to product management and purchasing on a single, unified solution.

However, while crafting business resilience plans, aspects like data recovery, securing IT systems, alternative modes of working, etc occupy a prime place in the minds of most leaders. The critical importance of employees to business continuity is often overlooked. Resilient businesses with loyal and productive employees have a higher chance of bouncing back after a crisis or unforeseen incident. Clearly, a business is only as resilient as its people 鈥� and this calls for outstanding employee experiences.

What is Employee Experience?

Employee experience can be defined as the continuing relationship between an employee and an organization. It begins right from the interview and onboarding process and continues to be shaped with every interaction that happens after that along the employee life cycle. It encompasses all that defines and influences an employee鈥檚 role in the company 鈥� such as the workspace, the role of managers, benefits offered, rewards and recognition, health and well-being and much more.聽

Positive employee experiences lead to the employee delivering positive customer experiences, thus creating a virtuous cycle that feeds back into employees鈥� sense of achievement and purpose.

Businesses with robust employee engagement practices have a workforce that is invested in achieving organizational goals; one that is more likely to identify with the 鈥榦ne team鈥� vision driving business goals. This alignment between the employees鈥� identity and that of the company leads to improved productivity and profits and lower employee turnover.

Employee experience 鈥� the unseen factor in business resilience

A black swan event such as the pandemic has thrown the definition of employee experience out of the window, to be replaced with one that fits the new normal.聽

As businesses shifted from survival to recovery and resilience mode, it became clear that redesigning employee experience is of paramount importance. Most businesses are either planning to or already replacing or refreshing services and product mixes to ride out the challenges of the chaotic past two years. To do that, it is essential to create conducive internal conditions, which translates to redesigning the employee experience to nurture creativity, a sense of purpose and fulfillment.聽

This prioritization of the human factor at the workplace is evident in a聽聽conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Elastic. The survey of CIOs and IT leaders in 10 countries聽revealed that 60% of IT organizations are investing in improving employee experience to support remote workforce productivity and performance. To amplify the impact on employee experience, 57% of IT leaders are collaborating more closely with their HR counterparts.

How can a business create better experiences for employees?

At the end of the day, companies that don’t develop new and existing personnel at the same rate as their technology are unlikely to have the capabilities they need to advance digital transformation. This will result in their competitive advantage dwindling.聽

Here’s how organizations can make the most of their talent and establish truly resilient companies.

• Provide flexible work arrangements

After an extended live experiment in working remotely, the craving for flexibility will be greater once employees return to physical office environments. Organizations that offer flexible working models 鈥� whether remote, in-person or hybrid 鈥� and the necessary support to make the transition easier have a better chance of retaining or attracting a skilled workforce. Flexible work arrangements provide access to a larger talent pool and create a more diverse and inclusive workplace that fosters creativity and increases employee loyalty. This, in turn, can add to business resilience.聽

Some of the ways in which flexible work arrangements can be brought about at the workplace are job sharing, flexible working hours, compressed workweeks and flexible rostering.

• Enable work from home for those who desire it

Employers and employees have more or less perfected the work-from-home model. While employees are now reaching the pre-pandemic productivity levels and producing quality work from their home offices, remote working has cut the fatigue and sensory overload that accompanies the travel to and from the office.聽

Because of the reduction in physical office space, distributed work models can save a lot of money, but establishing and maintaining a work culture and sustaining cooperation can be difficult. Successful firms have deployed efficient remote access and collaboration technologies that have made the employee experience flexible, standardized, secure, and simple to use while also allowing for increased productivity. Such a strategy can amplify employee engagement, productivity and retention, and will benefit the business in the long term.

• Practice empathetic leadership

The importance of compassionate leadership is felt keenly now, more than ever. Empathy was always considered a key trait of a good leader, who puts people at the center of business or technological decisions, from a work, personal or wellness level. When CEOs, managers, team leaders and others in decision-making roles put themselves in employees鈥� shoes, they are able to make informed decisions that have positive implications for the workforce. This enhances employee well-being, boosts their morale, increases their loyalty and sets in motion the wheels for business resilience and growth.

• Ensure communication is clear and consistent

As work models, expectations and processes churn rapidly, it is vital that communication channels between employees and the management remain open and clear. Employees should have regular updates on how the organization is moving forward. They need clarity on how the company will address issues related to workplace health, safety and well-being, flexible work models, etc. Timely and transparent communication will engender employee trust and build employee and business resilience.

• Ensure safety and well-being of employees

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant uncertainty and fear it created has affected the physical and mental health of employees across the world. While each individual responds to stress in unique ways, it is established that stress affects employees鈥� ability to empathize, be open-minded, engage with the organization, take up challenging tasks, and to learn and grow. Thus, the health, safety and well-being of employees should be the highest priority for all organizations as workplaces reopen. While some industries with high-risk jobs have long prioritized safety, Covid-19 mandates that all businesses, regardless of location, have safety practices in place to protect their employees and show that they care.

• Update R&R programs to reflect what employees really want

Companies need to revisit their Rewards and Recognition (R&R) programs considering the new reality. They must figure out what is more likely to motivate their employees, since monetary rewards may not hold the same sheen as before. Experiences are more important to new-age workers. Thus, personalized rewards aligned to individual preferences and lifestyle choices are more likely to appeal to them. Even acknowledging the dedication and hard work of employees through small acts of everyday appreciation can go a long way to make them feel valued.聽

By using technology such as virtual working platforms and remote collaboration applications, companies can give their R&R strategies a digit redesign to deliver an employee experience that fosters pride and a sense of belonging.

• Provide training and upskilling opportunities

Building the most effective, resilient workforce necessitates not just new hiring but also the development of existing talent. As the way we do things changes because of digitalization, businesses have a big potential to make the most of their existing staff.

Many of the duties that today’s employees perform are monotonous and unfulfilling. However, if advanced machines take over most of the monotonous, repetitive work, employees can be reallocated and upskilled to more satisfying occupations that provide them with greater happiness.

Training and learning initiatives are important for the career development and growth of employees. Identifying unique skills or traits such as initiative, creativity, and problem-solving, and creating training programs to sharpen them, will benefit both the employer and the employee. Personalized learning journeys boost the self-esteem of employees and their feelings of inclusion and belonging. Future-ready organizations must invest in upskilling and reskilling initiatives in transferable skills that cut across domains, functions and businesses to remain competitive.

• Leverage technology to ensure high employee engagement

Employee engagement is better in organizations that provide effective collaboration tools and integrated digital workspaces to access apps. With a majority of the workforce staying connected to the firm for longer periods of time now, compared to before the epidemic, these measures allow improvement in employee productivity.

AI, machine learning and cloud-based tools have proven to be highly efficient for multi-regional teams to communicate, collaborate and work together. For example,聽聽is a single cloud ERP solution that connects every function across a company with proven best practices and in-depth analytics to build business resilience.

Companies that use digital analytics and data tools to identify and fulfill employee needs are more likely to succeed in the new normal.聽聽of solutions can assist leaders make informed decisions with access to real-time insights on a single, scalable platform 鈥� leading to standout employee experiences and business transformations.聽

Conclusion

To summarize, resilience is required for firms to sustain global competitiveness since it equips them to recover from any organizational setback. It is tough to build a resilient workforce, but with proper planning and execution, as well as trust and open communication, one can succeed.

During the epidemic, firms that prioritized robust processes, agile decision-making, technological investments, and nimble organizational structures survived and even prospered. Those that redesigned work had lower attrition rates, improved employee experience, engagement, and productivity.

With the support of technological tools, data and people analytics, organizations can mine employee data, analyze it and come up with actionable insights and solutions to create employee experiences that are meaningful. Pivoting to an employee-centric approach when adopting technology will establish a work environment that fosters productivity and engagement.

To find out how to accelerate your journey to becoming digitally resilient and setting yourself up for success in the long run, learn how you can integrate聽聽into your operations. Listen, understand and respond to employee needs and experience gaps to ensure your employees, and your organization, stay resilient and productive in the long run.

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