Speaker 1: It's Monday, ma I'm Oscar Rome Mirrors from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: The number of Americans that quit their jobs during the
Speaker 1: pandemic spite and it could be a permanent fixture on
Speaker 1: the job market. This has led to more opportunities for employees,
Speaker 1: but for employers it's been a nightmare. They're dealing with
Speaker 1: high turnover and how to keep workers happy. Simply offering
Speaker 1: they work from home model doesn't work anymore. Aki Itto,
Speaker 1: senior correspondent at Business Insider, joins us for the Forever resignation.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining US Hockey, Thanks for having me. I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about the state of work in the
Speaker 1: country right now. Obviously, throughout the pandemic, we heard a
Speaker 1: lot about the great resignation, people leaving their jobs looking
Speaker 1: for better working conditions, better pay. A lot of work
Speaker 1: from home is what people were really looking for. That
Speaker 1: figures a lot into what's going on right now. But
Speaker 1: what we're seeing right now is a new report saying
Speaker 1: that high levels of resignation could be a permanent fixture
Speaker 1: right now. The forever resignation, I think is what you
Speaker 1: called it. So for employers. It's a bad thing, right,
Speaker 1: they have to transition, they have to figure out how
Speaker 1: to operate here. For employees, they've never had more power
Speaker 1: than they do now. So it's a really interesting thing
Speaker 1: that's going on right now. So Aki tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about it. So, I mean, we've been seeing
Speaker 1: incredibly high attrition rates at companies across the country for
Speaker 1: at least a year now. People are calling this a
Speaker 1: great resignation and executives are just, you know, really tired
Speaker 1: of it. It's incredibly expensive to hire right now. They're
Speaker 1: trying so hard to retain their existing employees. It's exhausting,
Speaker 1: and so they're asking when it's just going to end.
Speaker 1: But what one research from Gardner predicts is that it's
Speaker 1: never gonna end, That a high turnover is just going
Speaker 1: to be a permanent thing in the American workplace because
Speaker 1: of remote work, which isn't going away even after the
Speaker 1: pandemic um. So it's a really interesting prospect. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't know if this is going to be true,
Speaker 1: and so the future comes. But I found the prediction
Speaker 1: incredibly compelling, and they have some interest in data to background,
Speaker 1: So for a little perspective, right, they say that it's
Speaker 1: going to remain higher than before the pandemic. The rate
Speaker 1: of resignations, let's say, and you know, so for a
Speaker 1: large company something with twenty five thou employees, that means
Speaker 1: that a thousand employees could be quitting each year. That's
Speaker 1: a lot of training and retraining that you got to do,
Speaker 1: you know, all the new hires and added benefits everything,
Speaker 1: that's a lot that the companies would have to go through. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. And that's an additional one thousand people quitting
Speaker 1: per year compared to before the pandemic. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's just a tremendous amount of turnover for companies. It
Speaker 1: means that they're probably going to have to hire more recruiters,
Speaker 1: right to replace just all of those openings. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Gartner says that companies are probably going to
Speaker 1: have to run their organizations in a very different way
Speaker 1: as well. Leading up to probably today, there is this
Speaker 1: incredible emphasis on running hyper lean organizations, making sure that
Speaker 1: everybody was working at a hundred percent capacity, and you
Speaker 1: probably can't do that in the world we're entering into
Speaker 1: the future, just because that means that when you have
Speaker 1: high turnover, you know, entire teams are not going to
Speaker 1: be able to do their work, or people are going
Speaker 1: to have to work over time to make up for
Speaker 1: the person who left and they're going to burn out.
Speaker 1: That's not sustainable. So that means, you know, hiring more
Speaker 1: people across the board, across the entire organization, which once
Speaker 1: again is also an expensive thing. That's why a lot
Speaker 1: of employers do not want to, you know, believe that
Speaker 1: this prediction is true. But I once again I find
Speaker 1: it really compelling. Right, Like you said, more recruiters and
Speaker 1: over hiring, right, So what does that do even you know,
Speaker 1: it makes a team less efficient. It could because there's
Speaker 1: more players going throughout the thing. But you know when
Speaker 1: you talk about a company being nimble and adapting very
Speaker 1: quickly to rapidly changing situations, you know a lot of
Speaker 1: times that was with smaller groups. Right. You can do
Speaker 1: things a lot easier that way because people could take
Speaker 1: more ownership of certain aspects of it. But now it
Speaker 1: kind of means the opposite. You need more people. So
Speaker 1: when something happens and people do leave unexpectedly, as you
Speaker 1: mentioned right now, it doesn't fall onto everybody else and
Speaker 1: everyone is overburdened at that point. So, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a real interesting way that the companies are gonna have
Speaker 1: to adapt and kind of as we've been talking, right,
Speaker 1: one of the big things that they found was that
Speaker 1: a big chunk of people saying why they're leaving jobs,
Speaker 1: why they're looking for other things have to do with
Speaker 1: things specifically related to the pandemic. They work from home
Speaker 1: stuff was just so important to a lot of people
Speaker 1: and for the employers, you know, trying to attract new people. Now,
Speaker 1: just saying hey, you can work from home is not enough,
Speaker 1: you know, you need to go above and beyond that,
Speaker 1: because a lot of companies are offering that. And the
Speaker 1: remote thing specifically is people saying I wouldn't have you know,
Speaker 1: in their exit surveys at the companies that they're quitting,
Speaker 1: they're saying, I wouldn't have taken this new job if
Speaker 1: I had to move for it, But because it's remote,
Speaker 1: I don't have to move for it. It essentially means
Speaker 1: that you have so many more options right with these
Speaker 1: remote jobs than you ever had before, especially if you
Speaker 1: were in a smular city a small town. And because
Speaker 1: you have more options, that means that there are more
Speaker 1: options to leave to you know, permanently in the future.
Speaker 1: And and that's why Gardner is estimating that volunteery turnover
Speaker 1: is going to remain so high. And here's another catch
Speaker 1: twenty two that I saw in the article too, is
Speaker 1: that according to Pew Research Center, when they talk to
Speaker 1: people of new remote workers say they feel less connected
Speaker 1: to coworkers. And this disconnection is one of those things
Speaker 1: that causes a lot of people to quit their jobs,
Speaker 1: a lot causes a lot of turnover in the workforce.
Speaker 1: So even more birth is placed on the employers to
Speaker 1: try to figure that out, how to make everybody feel
Speaker 1: connected in part of a team, because when you are
Speaker 1: and I can attest to it, right and itcdotally a
Speaker 1: lot of people can working from home over zoom calls.
Speaker 1: It's just not to say. And it's a catch twenty
Speaker 1: two because you know you have to you know, in
Speaker 1: this new world of work, you pretty much have to
Speaker 1: offer the option of at least hybrid work in order
Speaker 1: to get people to even interview with you. But once
Speaker 1: you offer hybrid and remote work to get people through
Speaker 1: the door, to even get them to come to your company,
Speaker 1: then retention gets a little bit harder because you don't
Speaker 1: have those in person relationships the way that we used
Speaker 1: to back in the pre pandemic world. You know, executives
Speaker 1: might be tempted to hear this and say, oh, this
Speaker 1: means that we should just call everybody back into the office,
Speaker 1: But that's not the solution at all, because then you're
Speaker 1: just driving everybody away. That's gonna make retention worse. The
Speaker 1: real trick here is to try to figure out how
Speaker 1: do you build these connections that we used to have
Speaker 1: in the workplace, even in a remote environment. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's really hard to do over soon, but it's
Speaker 1: not impossible. You know, some organizations have figured this out
Speaker 1: or are starting to figure it out. So I think
Speaker 1: that is going to be really one of the big
Speaker 1: child which is for every company over the next few years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to take away things that you've given
Speaker 1: to employees, you know, and and to take it back
Speaker 1: is always so tough and just another interesting look at
Speaker 1: how the pandemic has really affected us in so many ways.
Speaker 1: The Great resignation now the forever resignation, right, it is
Speaker 1: quickly changing landscape. So we'll keep an eye up for
Speaker 1: all of that. Aki Eto, Senior correspondent at Business insider.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. I'm
Speaker 1: Oscar Romrrors and this has been reopening America. Don't forget
Speaker 1: today's big news stories. You can check me out on
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