The Silent or Grand Resignation is a topic that has been a major concern in the business world in recent years. Particularly during and after the covid era the frequency with which people leave their jobs has increased rapidly.
This new condition is causing great concern within organisations. First, because they are losing competent staff who are difficult to replace and then because it is costing them both in money and quality. It is really damaging to lose an executive who is competent, fits the culture and performs at his or her best. The time that needs to be allocated to the recruitment and training processes for the new employee may be far more costly than if the existing person received a generous raise or was rewarded with some form of bonus scheme.
HR experts attribute the great resignation movement to the pandemic. Everyone was so engrossed in their daily lives that they hardly noticed if and to what extent they were happy and genuinely happy in their jobs, both with that very subject matter and with the environment in which they spent most of their day. With the pandemic, the balance was upset on both a personal and professional level.
But what is the real reason for the major resignation? Surprisingly, it has been observed that salary is not a primary criterion for employees to leave. The frequency of leaving is shaped by many different factors. The top five factors are:
The toxic culture
Job insecurity
Reorganisation
High levels of innovation
Failure to recognise performance
Poor response to COVID-19.
There is also the view that the sources of employee dissatisfaction revolve around three fundamental characteristics that are common to every human being:
Needs, values and purpose.
The toxic work environment is by far the real cause of resignation as presented in the research completed to date. Some behaviors reported as toxic corporate culture by employees are: disrespect, imbalance, non-inclusion and even immorality. A person whose values do not match or conflict with management’s values is unlikely to remain in a work environment that he or she does not value for long.
Something also related to toxicity in the workplace is work-life balance. Particularly in the Greek work reality, there are no appropriate employee support programs that can give direction to the individual employee facing related difficulties.
The questions that arise from all of the above are threefold.
How will HR managers manage to reduce the phenomenon of high resignation?
How ready are they to adapt to the new situation with innovative ideas and actions?
How quickly can they absorb all this change?