Why Millions of Employees are QUITTING Their Jobs

Hi, I’m Paul Krismer, a happiness expert, and this week we’re going to talk about the Great Resignation. Yes, the Great Resignation. It’s this idea that’s alive and well in the western world these days, and it’s this idea that people are leaving the workforce in record numbers. Literally, in record numbers. The Wall Street Journal just had an article that record-breaking quits in September, just this past recent month, because people wanted to move on to other things in their lives. And there’s also such a rich opportunity in the labor market right now. People have choices. Microsoft had a study done during the pandemic that I think I’ve referred to in the past, where as many as 45% of the workforce are actively contemplating leaving their jobs in the next 12 months. That’s more than double any number they’ve seen previously in the same survey. And it’s obviously a result of the pandemic. People are changing their sense of priorities. They’ve gotten a taste of different kinds of freedoms that they’ve gotten, especially for remote workers, that they’re just saying, “I want something different from the workplace. I want to have a better expression of living my values,” and of course, earning money simultaneously. So, this thing is underway. It’s the Great Resignation. And maybe you, as a listener, are contemplating leaving your job, or maybe you, as an employer, are thinking, “Oh my goodness, what am I going to do? How am I going to retain staff?” And this video is going to be all about how to manage in this context of people wanting something better from their work. And it’s going to give you some context, maybe for both your personal reflection on your relationship to work and maybe if you’re in a leadership role, what exactly do you need to do to maintain your workforce and retain the talent that you’ve got. So, stay tuned. That’s coming right up.

As a coach, public speaker, and best-selling author, I teach topics just like this one all around the world. So, stay tuned and I’ll give you practical tools that you can use to make both yourself and those around you both happier and more successful. Yeah, so in the midst of this Great Resignation where people in record numbers are leaving the workforce and contemplating leaving the workforce, what do we do? How do we manage in this circumstance? Well, it’s maybe a bit easier than at first it sounds. There’s this concept called Psychological Capital. You know, in your workplace, you’ve got all kinds of assets. You’ve got your physical plant. You’ve got your secret sauce to the recipe of your business. You’ve got your client list. All the things that you’ve got that are the tangible items that help you succeed. Well, Psychological Capital is less tangible, but it’s a similar asset. If you’ve got high levels of well-being and optimism in your organization, people feel good about the organization. We call that Psychological Capital. And it’s foundational to having good engagement, high job satisfaction, all that kind of stuff. And it’s not as hard to achieve as we might think. Usually, cultures and organizations get poor over time in kind of an unthought out, accidental way. Nobody was paying attention, grievances built up, untrustworthy actions took place, and you end up with a crappy culture. The same way that in an unthought way we can get a bad culture, in a thoughtful way we can design and create a good culture. And some of the ingredients are kind of simple.

You know, one of them is that we know people are much, much, much more likely to stay at the workplace and be enthusiastic about being there if they have someone they consider a close friend at work. So everything we can do to encourage collaboration, relationship building, informal and formal connection between people, that helps. And a lot of that has to do with having built-in time where we reflect on our personal lives, not just work. So, you know, starting a meeting by saying, “Hey, what’s your favorite movie?” or “Where are you planning on going for a vacation?” and giving people a chance to share some personal details. So that later when I meet those same people in the hallway, I can talk to them about stuff that’s important in their hearts. Their kids, their ambitions, their holiday plans, all that kind of stuff, right? We want to create circumstances where we can have friends at work. And we want to work ourselves at making friends at work and valuing those relationships.

And people also, more than ever, want a sense of meaning at work. They want to be connected to their own values at work. And employers often struggle with this. And that goes a lot to say there’s something fundamentally wrong in that workplace if we can’t connect the mission of the employer to the values of the employees.

And if they can’t do that, then probably that business has got questionable merit in the world. But if it’s got some merit in the world, if you’re running a good business selling insurance, and selling cars and all those kind of things, there are easy ways to tie into what people value most. And so, if we can just draw that line from an individual’s work to the meaning that they should get from it, that then makes it much happier to be there. And I can give you an example.

I worked with a consultant with a big pulp mill at one time, many years ago, a stinky kind of not very positive place to work. But they sold these little weed pellets that they imported and exported all around the world. And these little pellets were used in slow release medications, they were put into babies’ diapers, things that people could make a connection to. I wasn’t very connected to, if I did, little white stinky pellets leaving the factory. But I could be connected to healthy little babies. And so, you put posters up in the workplace of mothers holding little babies, and people suddenly are going to feel more positive about their workplace.

I’m not saying that to say people are super easily manipulated. But let’s face it, we appeal to people’s emotions in ways that they’re universally relevant. And people will come alongside if it looks like an honest and integrous way of expressing the values of the organization. And there’s a concept that I really want to emphasize in this video about positive energizers.

Positive energizers are the people who boost the quality of the workplace. They’re usually in leadership positions, but not always. They can be a line worker who’s just a very positive influence. They usually have lots of connections with people. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re highly extroverted. There’s no relationship between extroversion and positive energizers. It could very well be an introverted person, but they’re the kind of people that we want to spend time with. When we have finished a conversation with them, we feel better. If I’ve got a grievance or a complaint about something, I’m probably going to go to them and want to say, hey, look what’s going on, and I know that they’re going to listen to me, and I’m going to feel better having had the conversation with them.

So we want to do everything we can to create and amplify the impact that positive energizers have in the workplace. And that may sound like, well, how do I go about doing that? It must be these positive people are just the rare gems that come along. But that’s not at all true. I mean, I spend my living basically teaching organizations how to train leaders to be positive energizers. It’s a bunch of learnable skills. Just like every week, I create a video that’s about how happiness is a series of learnable skills. We can grow happier by learning skills, and we can grow good leaders by teaching them some important skills, and they’re not difficult.

I’m going to summarize just a few of them in this short video. Teach them to listen. You know, people who actively listen, hear what the other person has to say, inquire with curiosity, paraphrase back what they heard, all that has a tremendous benefit for people feeling positive having had an interaction with somebody who was a good listener. They share the plum assignments. So if you’ve got leaders who always take for themselves all the good assignments and get the little perks here and there with the business, people obviously are going to be less energized. But a good leader gives, in a judicious way, plum assignments to people and lets them have some profile and the fun perks that can come with the job.

And that whole idea of meaning being so important in the workplace right now that I talked about earlier, well, leaders, good positive energizers make that connection. The vision they have for the organization has to be something that appeals to people’s values. And if they can’t come up with a vision that appeals to their values, then there’s something wrong with that workplace. They have to be trustworthy, be people who walk their talk, and people who behave with integrity, have a virtuous character. They’re positive energizers, and we need to amplify their voices.

And then here’s the kind of last one I want to talk about today. And it’s the opposite of what people often think. They think that when I’m going to talk about happiness and positive psychology, it must be all fufu, super happy. Everybody should get a pat on the back, and we should all go and play golf every afternoon because we want the workplace to be happy. Well, of course, that’s ridiculous, and no organization could actually go and do that, nor would it be a place that has much integrity. We wouldn’t want to work there.

But if by contrast, positive energizers are known for setting high standards. They see the best in people. They bring the greatest wisdom out of their colleagues. And so when an organization has really good positive energizers, these are people who are going like, we are going to achieve great results, and they’re going to hold people to them, not in some cruel waving a stick over their heads kind of way, but in a way that just says, I have this ambition for the organization to be fantastic. And when there’s people who see that potential and live it, breathe and are emotionally connected to it, we want to work with those people because we all want to do our best.

So these component qualities that are very learnable, they’re not difficult, that we can get out of positive energizers, well, that’s who we want to be ourselves, whether it’s in our communities or with our families. We want to be positive sources of energy for other people around us. And of course, when we’re that way, we pump ourselves up too. But when we’re employers and in a supervisory or leadership role, we want to make sure that those people who have that positive energizer quality, well, that we do more and more to amplify them. And we train them. We give them the skills so that they can be the kind of people who light up the workforce.

So if you want to stop the great resignation from happening in your workplace, or if you want to be the kind of person who doesn’t feel like you have to run away from your workplace, I would seriously consider taking the things that I’ve shared in this video to heart. And consider for yourself how you can be a more positive energizer, and how you can have a good friend at work, and make sure that your values are connected to your work. And if it’s impossible to connect your values to your work, go find a different place to work. Take your time. There’s great opportunities in this very tight labor market. Thanks for watching.

If you like this kind of content, click the like button, share with your friends and family, particularly maybe with your HR director, and I’ll see you next time. Bye for now.