The Great Resignation 2: Electric Boogaloo

Coming Soon!

Gallup’s latest “State of the Global Workplace” report came out in mid-June. A 99 page banger covering 160 countries and surveying approximately 160,000 people. (Summary here, full report here.) It’s filled with hysterical (if you’re a workplace nihilist) insights:

👉Only 31% of US employees are engaged in their work. The other 69% are either tuned out or worse, trying to burn the place down. And that’s dropping.

For every 1 teammate who’s crushing it, 2 are mailing it in.

The crazy part: that’s better than most of the world. Europe has a 13% engagement rate.

👉52% of US workers feel stressed “a lot of the day.”

Pretty sure this number goes up to 99% if you only count LinkedIn commenters but they didn’t capture that data point. 

👉On-site workers had a lower engagement rate (27%) than full remote or hybrid (35% and 35%). Because duh.

👉47% intent to leave their job.

Alarm bells, anyone?

When the Great Resignation, Volume 1 dropped, I think we misunderstood the nature of it. Covid changed people’s priorities, sure. Remote work went mainstream.

But the biggest lever? Everyone who was still employed was afraid to make a move for a 12-18 month period. Jobs were scarce. Everyone was hanging on to whatever they could.

But they didn’t like it.

Then the hiring flood gates opened. 2 years of disgruntled employees were ready to bounce. And just like that, the most annoying phrase in recruiting history was meme’d into existence.

Key thing to point out: these are averages. Great companies and awful ones combined into 1 number.

👉The top companies (by themselves) have a 70% engagement rate.

Point being: hiring in ‘office dork’ circles is going to pick up again some day. VC funding will increase, Big Tech will ramp up. And it will be 2021/2022 all over again.

If your retention strategy is “let your team know what’s expected of them, in a role that plays to their strengths, and help them succeed”?

You’ll be fine.

If your retention strategy is “the market sucks so people don’t have options, I’ll throw more at them”? 

Enjoy the sequel. 

James Hornick

Partner at Hirewell. #3 Ranked Sarcastic Commenter on LinkedIn.