- May 17, 2022
- 3 min read

Stay Ahead of the “Great Resignation”

If you’re having a hard time holding onto workers, you’re not alone. Going into the third year since Covid-19 emerged and, with it, a surprising exodus of workers leaving their jobs, the Great Resignation is still upending the labor market.

And that much turnover is pricey for employers. It costs about $4,000 to hire a new employee, but that price can quickly escalate depending on the position and other factors. High turnover affects your company in other ways, too. From lost productivity to lower customer satisfaction, your business suffers when top employees move on to greener pastures.

How can you stay ahead of the Great Resignation and stem the tide of exiting employees? Here’s our top four tips.

Increase Compensation

We know it’s not what you want to hear. But the fact remains, low pay is a top reason employees left their jobs in 2021, according to Pew Research Center. The leisure and hospitality industries, which tend to have the lowest wages, saw the highest quit rates during the pandemic.

But increasing your compensation package may have surprising benefits to your organization that go beyond employee retention. A Chick-Fil-A operator in Sacramento made headlines when he implemented a living wage model back in 2018.

While at the time Eric Mason was “super-scared” his pay hike wouldn’t pan out, turns out he needn’t have worried. Not only did his franchise achieve a 76 percent retention rate in an industry with a notoriously high turnover, his yearly sales doubled from about $5 million to $11 million over four years.

Make Flexibility a Priority

Another survey found that lack of flexibility is a significant factor driving resignations. While allowing remote work is a good way to offer flexibility to your employees, working from home is not possible or preferable for many positions. So how can you offer more flexibility beyond the obvious?

Forego meetings as much as possible. Switch to recordings, presentation slides or written content to get important information to employees.

Let employees decide their schedule as much as possible. Sometimes an employee needs to switch to a different shift to care for family or attend school. Make the switch happen, even if there aren’t officially any openings for the desired shift.

Accommodate employees when they have appointments or ill family members. Parent-teacher meetings, pediatric appointments, or medical procedures for aging parents are typical sources of conflict for employees.

Provide Career Pathing & Development Opportunities

The Work Institute’s 2020 Retention Report found that lack of career development accounted for 20 percent of voluntary quits. Your best employees are most likely to leave if you don’t provide opportunities for them to grow. Provide career pathing, mentoring programs and continuous learning opportunities to keep employees who show initiative and ambition.

Adopt a Proactive Recruiting Strategy

Given the high cost of hiring new employees, keeping your current employees is the best way to stay ahead of the Great Resignation. Still, even in the best of times, you’ll need to recruit new hires. And don’t forget, the flip side of the Great Resignation is that 44 percent of your competition’s employees are thinking about switching jobs.

Adopting a proactive recruiting strategy can help you reduce the time-to-hire while increasing your pool of qualified candidates. Follow these strategies to attract top talent.

Cultivate a great employer brand. When you become a first-choice employer, qualified candidates will seek out your open positions. Dedicate your career sites to showcase the reasons yours is a great company to work for. Scour ratings sites such as Glassdoor to find out what employees are saying about you. Better yet, implement an anonymous employee survey.

Create content geared toward potential employees. Create a video about what it’s like to work at your company. Share news and photos from employee events on your social media page.

Implement an employee-referral initiative. Studies show that new hires are more likely to become long-term employees when their friends refer them. Create and promote a program that rewards employees when their referral is hired.