The Great Resignation

[delta0]

Many will have seen this coming up in the news recently. It was predicted that due to the pandemic that people would start to reassess what they are doing in their lives and this includes work. The expectation was that a large number of people would resign for a fresh start, a completely different role, work less or not at all. I work in the tech sector and in the last few weeks I’ve noticed this is just starting to gain momentum. Resignations are running at around twice as many as they usually do and the rate is increasing. They expect 41% in the US and other countries predicting similar or higher numbers are going to resign.

For me the pandemic did have an effect on what I did at work. In the middle of the pandemic I did ask to change roles to an area I am much more interested in doing and the idea of not working to old age really started to grow on me. I have even dabbled with the idea of moving to another company and that’s still on the cards depending on how I feel about things over the coming months.

Anyone else noticed the impacts of the great resignation on their industries or have possibly considered it themselves?

 

[delta0]

Companies, especially in tech, that don't adapt to how people now want to work are going to struggle to recruit and retain talent. At least in the short term anyway, who knows how things will look in 5-10 years.

Edit: Actually OP didn't you post the other day that your company is dead set against remote work? If so are you really surprised that people are looking for opportunities that will give them more freedom to live their lives?

Generally tech has moved against remote work. Mine isn’t set on that yet. They have moved significantly towards that recently but until the offices have moved back to full capacity they aren’t forcing it yet but that time will come. Tech may allow the turnover to happen if it’s not in their interest to have people working from home for example. This could be one thing that causes people to move on but really the great resignation is about much bigger things than that. It’s about people thinking more about what they want in life and the realisation of ones mortality is a factor in that. That little startup idea or that travelling you always wanted to do is one of many things that will drive this.

 

[delta0]

I don't think it has. A few companies maybe but I'm a software engineer as are a lot of my friends and acquaintances and I only know of one who is being forced back into the office full time. The rest of us, including people working at companies like Facebook and Amazon, are somewhere between fully remote and 50:50 hybrid and will likely be that way forever. Certainly at my company the policy moving forward is to work where you want as long as you keep UK hours.

That’s definitely strange. Amazon are an office centric company and quite openly so. There are situations where the tech company are just waiting while things settle down but the shift I’ve seen recently has been to go back towards office working. However as mentioned the great resignation is much bigger than this.

 

[delta0]

I work for another big software company and we've just spent the last 12 months / lots of money converting all offices into hot-desking so majority of the workforce will work from home at least 3/4 days a week, with the office being for collaboration meetings etc rather than for working in. Certain roles are needed to be on site to manage the infrastructure, but generally the majority won't have a need to be on site.

With the time and money spent changing to this pattern, this isn't going to be a short-term "thing" for us, and will likely only get looked at again in 5-10 years if it's decided that things aren't working so well.

Interestingly though, we're not seeing a mass of resignations though. It's a biggish department so the odd one or two people resigning each month is about the norm. We are having a lot of new starters though, probably a good 10 or so a month for the last few months.

We’re not seeing the turnover in our London office. However we are keeping things flexible. We have a mix of fixed desks for those that want to spend more time in the office and we are currently easing people back in if they want to with flexible hot desks. Generally it’s going well with around 60% of people back which considering we were already very flexible prepandemic is pretty good as we were lucky to have 50% in the office on most days.

 

[delta0]

The market is crazy out there. I look after a team of about 30, and whilst I'd say people are generally happy and the vibe is good, we're getting competitors offer frankly insane packages to people. With the best will in the world, if you're 21 and someone offers you £250k a year and £250k in stock, you'll probably leave

I assume this is tech? They seem to be in a bit of panic at the moment about the people shortage. I got pulled into a meeting out of the blue last week and got a 5% pay rise for retention.