Retaining talent during The Great Resignation | with Jason Lauritsen, Barbara Lee & Dr. Bev Kaye

Foreign.

Welcome.

You're very welcome to episode number 84 of the shortlist. I'm Johnny Campbell. I'm your host for this show, CEO and co founder of Social Talent. And if you're joining us live, you're very welcome. We'd love to hear your comments and questions on the live chat on LinkedIn or YouTube. If you're listening to the podcast, you're also very welcome any references we make to links you can find in the show, notes in Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. So for episode 84, we've got a slight change in programming this week. I can't believe that after two years. It's been two years since we started the show and in two years Covid has not thrown our schedule out whatsoever. But this week it has. So I'm very disappointed to let you know that Laurie Silvia, who is planning to join us today, won't be able to join us. She's going to be on a future show, hopefully next month. And we'll come back to you with details on that. But in our place, I want to talk to you about one of the biggest things that's being talked about in Talent today, which is the Great Resignation. And what we're going to do today is give you access to a private interview that was broadcast as part of an ST Live special a couple of months ago in November that was hosted by my good friend and Social Talent presenter Jason Lauritson, that talked to two senior leaders about the Great Resignation which what's causing it, what's happening and giving some insights into that. So I'm going to basically introduce that talk to you in just a couple of minutes. But before we do, we thought we'd kind of bring you up to speed, 2022 wise, as to what's happening with the Great Resignation and what's predicted to happen. So that brings us to the news this week and our news article I want to discuss comes from cnbc and it's entitled professor who Predicted the Great Resignation shares the three trends that will dominate work in 2022. And probably unfair to say he predicted it, but he certainly coined the phrase. Anthony Klotz is an organizational psychologist, professor at Texas A and M. And early in 2021 he coined this phrase that we've now heard so much of and maybe you're sick of the Great Resignation. And he's kind of come out now, this, this week with his predictions as to what will happen with the great resignation in 2022. I want to share that with you. We'll put the links out to the article in the show notes as well. Well, so love to know those of you listening live. What are your predictions for the Great Resignation? Will it continue, will it be the same, will it grow, will it get worse, etc. But before we get into our conversation and discussion on this, I want to share with you these insights. And Dr. Klotz has three predictions around this. The first prediction is that the Great Resignation will slow down. So he examines the Great Resignation, the causes for the Great Resignation, the high numbers. In November, when we broadcast the interview that I'm going to play for you in just a minute, first aired, we saw in the US Record highs. It had been building since the summer of people quitting their jobs. So Dr. Klotz predicts that that won't quite be the same. The Great Resignation will persist into 2022 with record highs. But we have reached the peak. They will begin to come down and settled. And he argues that employers are responding with higher salaries, better conditions, and we're going to see that peak begin to tail off the during the year. But his second prediction is that flexible work arrangements will be the norm, not the exception. In the first year of the pandemic, we were all talking about returning to what it was, people saying, well, we're doing this temporarily. I think we can all pretty much accept that flexible working is the norm now, not because employers necessarily want it, but because employees demand it. It's expected. The number one perk that folks are looking for and for most people when surveyed, they said that they will take a 10% pay cut to make sure that they have flexibility in how they work. It's hard to go back after two years. And the third prediction that Dr. Klotz has for us is that remote jobs will become more competitive. What does that mean? Well, he's referring to the fact that he believes that jobs that perhaps are based in a city or locality, many of them may become more international. We'll begin to see more and more employers take advantage of remote working and remote hiring and hiring in different locations. And lots of platforms have sprung up in the last year, like remote.com and others, that are giving employers the flexibility to employ in any country in the world. We mentioned on the show over a year ago that that was a real challenge and there was a perhaps gap between what hiring managers expected, which was the ability to hire everywhere, and the reality for recruiters and HR folks. Different apps and software and technology companies are bridging that gap. And that is becoming an increasingly important thing for organizations in terms of hiring staff. So that means less salaries perhaps for the markets that have been paid highly in previous years are the cities that have had those great salaries. So three big predictions there around the great resignation that have come fre here in January 2022 as they start as we start the year. So that brings me back to where were we just a couple of short months ago? And I'm going to basically hand over to Jason Larson. Jason is based in the U.S. jason's a good friend of social talent, one of our presenters on leadership. He's been on the show several times as well, a fantastic speaker. And Jason at the beginning of the pandemic really dug into the research around what our organization is doing around remote working, interviewed and surveyed hundreds of companies, built a whole program that's on the socialtown platform now around remote and hybrid leadership that you can find if you have access to the platform. But if not, you can check out Jason on LinkedIn or his websites. And Jason's a leading expert on work and workplaces and he interviewed two fantastic guests, first in November, Barbara Lee, who's the senior VP of HR at Nielsen IQ, and Dr. Bev K, who've had on the show before, who's a best selling author on employee engagement. But I'm going to hand over now to Jason to do proper introductions. I hope you enjoy this 25 minute chat. We really enjoyed it when it broadcasts live in November and I think you'll get enormous value added.

Big topic. We have such little time and we do have two brilliant women here to help us sort of sort through what's happening. But before we do that, I do want to pause for a couple of quick introductions. So let's do going to come Barbara to you first. Tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do and your organization, please.

Hi. So I work for an organization called NielsenIQ. We recently split our company in two. So some of you might be familiar with kind of broader and Nielsen and particularly those of you in the US probably know us as the TV ratings company. So Nielsen and Nielsen IQ split, very friendly and amicable split in the last 12 months or so. And so NielsenIQ is the CPG side of the business. So what people buy in supermarkets and all the market research and analysis that goes along with that. So I have been at Nielsen for 22 years in lots of different types of HR roles, working with different areas of the business and more recently in talent acquisition. So I spent the last four years leading our global talent acquisition functions and also leading some HR projects and business groups as well. That's me.

Awesome.

Well, thanks for being here and I'll ask you to do the same. Bev, Dr. Beverly K. Over to you.

Okay. So in a nutshell, I've moved recently from being an entrepreneur and having a fairly sizable global company to being a solopreneur, still doing what I'm doing, but without masses of people on my shoulders. In a nutshell, I've specialized for decades in career development, engagement and retention. I've written a number of books and continue to be excited about those two arenas.

And I love Bev. I always, every time I'm on with Bev, I have to mention that I remember. I still remember. I don't know, it's probably 18, 20 years ago when I found I got my first copy of Love Them or Lose Them. And it changed how I thought about my job in hr. So thrilled to have both of you here. So let's start with, I think the big question, which is, you know, Johnny mentioned, like, is the great resignation kind of hinted at is this a thing? And I think given the numbers that we saw in terms of people thinking about changing jobs in the US the last two months, we've broken records for quit rates. So it's happening whether we think it's a thing or not. So I'm curious, Barbara, I'm going to come to you first. What do you think's behind what's going on? All of the job movement, based on what you're seeing and the data you're looking at, why are employees moving the way they are right now?

So it's definitely a thing. That's for sure. It is definitely a thing. I think there's a certain amount of COVID lag. So what we saw when we were talking to candidates last year was that they were interested in moving, but maybe not just yet. They wanted to wait and see what would happen with COVID and when restrictions would lift and that sort of thing. And then I think, you know, as a global society, we realized a few months in that we were in it for the long haul or certainly for a medium haul. And so there's a little bit of a lag of people who maybe would have moved last year and didn't. We saw attrition rates decrease across the board last year. And now we're seeing kind of a maybe a normalizing or a right sizing of that attrition. And it feels very impactful. And so there's definitely a Covid like factor. But then I also Think maybe related to Covid as well. People have taken the opportunity over the last one to two years to reevaluate what's important to them and what they want from an employer. And so thinking about the environment they want to work in and even down to the career choices that they want to make, you see people make quite significant career changes, maybe because of the pandemic, they moved out of their previous career and they've taken the time to retrain or rethink or go down a different path. But even the dynamics of how the labour market is working has changed. You know, there are fewer. There are way more jobs posted, but fewer people applying for jobs. There's a much bigger focus on passive candidates. We're seeing way more people in more competitive processes, more counteroffers from employers. The whole dynamic around how people engage in job seeking has changed, I think, as a result. And that's part of what we're feeling as companies, as employers, and the impact and the change that we're feeling that we have to adapt to.

Bev, I'm assuming that you're seeing the same thing with your clients.

Well, the word career, Barbara, you took the word out of my mouth, but it is searching for the career I really want when many times the search is in front of them in their current organization and they're not seeing it. But the second reason I think they're leaving, when I wrote love them, it's according to the Alphabet and the J stands for jerk. Don't be one. And when I interviewed people around why they left, why they really left, and they were in the next company, they said my boss was a jerk and I couldn't stand it anymore. And they gave me at least 50 jerkitudinal characteristics. So I think people are leaving if their boss is not caring, respectful, all those things.

Collective tolerance maybe has gone down as another way to kind of frame that too.

Well.

So let's dive in on that then, because I think that's why we're here is like what? You know, let's think about solutions. And so given the fact that we're in the situation we're at, given the fact that I know, I know that most of the people probably here today are, are drowning under demands on the talent acquisition side, trying to backfill this. I think one of the things I remember from my talent acquisition days is saying the best way to solve our talent acquisition or start to solve our talent acquisition problems is to stop losing the people we already have. And so I know that's kind of what we're here to talk about today. So, Bev, I'll come back to you based on what you are seeing and hearing. You know, what do you think are the key? You know, give us one or two sort of key things that organizations should be doing, can be doing to keep employees to retain the folks they already have.

You know, I don't mean to keep referring to a book, but I think they need more stay interviews. And I think when managers say the words, what can I do to keep you? It's at the exit interview, I think the question or anything like it, I don't want to lose you. What's important when we say this in our classes, managers say, well, they're going to say more money or that other position. And we say, then you need to tell the truth. I can't deliver on that. What else matters? So I really believe if managers take the time to find out what really matters now, if they can't do anything about it, say so. But I'll bet you if you ask enough times, you'll find things that you can do something about. So I think that's critical.

Barbara, what have you found? What are you using, or what have you found success with at Nielsen IQ on the retention side or engagement side?

I think so. One of the. One of the questions that I've been asked way more so recently than I ever used to get before when I'm interviewing people is why I've stayed where I am. Because I've been here for a period of time, and so people will ask why. Now, part of that is a factor of the fact, you know, I didn't get asked that question question six months into my tenure at Nielsen, but, you know, 22 years, and I get asked a lot, why have I stayed? And the other question that comes up a lot is around kind of values and purpose and culture. And that was certainly always something that people asked, but it's much more prevalent now, I would say. So I think in terms of what we can do to keep people motivated, it's focused around those things. That's what people are interested in. That's what they're seeking from employers. So therefore, that's what they want from their own employer as well. Right. And so when I think about what are the things that have made me stay for as long as I've been at Nielsen, it's around autonomy, it's around career progression, and it's around variety. And I think if we can lean in on those things and make sure that we give people that kind of autonomy to get on with it and do their own job, that we can help them find that career path. I do think employees have to take responsibility for their own career path and they have to drive their own career path. You can't sit back and wait for somebody else to drive it for you. But that career pathing, I think and having those opportunities and seeing a future ahead of you and something that's varied and challenging and going to help you learn and grow is critical. And I think it's, you know, pay and benefits are important, but they're almost like a hygiene factor, like a baseline. And really without the career progression and the kind of learning and engagement, no matter how much you pay people, you won't really keep them engaged. So for me, those are the kind of key things.

And if I could just build on that because I'm seeing some great words in the chat. Joshua, I love what you said. Maybe managers need to be punished. Maybe there needs to be a penalty when they're bleeding talent. And you're right, Jonathan, I think that we aren't saying to managers, look who you've lost and look what that loss costs. And I think that one of the issues is that stops movement is that managers are hoarding talent and not even letting their talent go to other places in the organization. Good, good. And Carolyn said managers should find out more about each and every individual and what they need.

So bravo.

I do want to, I guess I'm curious about something I want to come back and ask about because I think one of the things I've become really aware of over particularly the last 12 to 18 months is that so much of the conversation we have about these topics focuses in on people making middle income wages and above that have very distinct kind of needs and challenges and interests. Whereas a lot of the labor discussion, at least in the U.S. i know, is really focused on, I mean even at like the hospitality level and restaurant and grocery and at the minimum wage level, they're seeing people quit and they can't find people and restaurants can't stay open and retail stores are closing earlier because they can't. Staff think money has a very different level of importance at that kind of job. And so I want to be very careful about dismissing the importance of money when it comes to retention and engagement because I think it's all about money at that level. If I'm not I can't make enough money to pay my bills, then I don't really care about your value.

That's what I meant as a hygiene factor. I think Once you have that baseline that allows you to, know, survive and pay the bills you have to pay, after that, you know, and you're comfortable right. After that, it's less of a. Of a deciding factor, and it's more on, you know, as Bev said, the manager engagement and the career opportunity that people have. We saw it from the poll. Right. And the PwC report in the second poll.

Yeah.

And I.

And I guess I was wondering, Bev, is there anything that you see differently in terms of stratification of types of employees? So if I'm making $100,000 a year versus I'm making 12 or $15 or euros an hour, is there a difference in retention strategies or how should you be stepping into that differently?

Well, I don't think any manager should think more money is the answer. And I'll keep them forever. I mean, we've talked about that forever. But where I'm seeing the differences, some of them jumping out at me and is in the different industries and specialties. I know that hospitality is number one for loss of people. Health care is number two. And last week I gave a keynote in health care. And the words that stuck in my mind were that nurses were suffering from compassion fatigue. And I held onto that word and I thought, my heavens, because they're so burned out. Who would want your loved one to be helped by a nurse suffering from compassion fatigue? All the different industries, I think, are suffering from different things that burn them out or make them go. Healthcare is a big industry for that.

Absolutely. I saw a question come up here internally, I think, Bev, you alluded to it, but there's some interest in internal mobility. Right. How do we make sure we're creating internal career movement and opportunity? And how do you minimize the risk that employees feel for putting themselves out there for that? Barbara, how do you do this with employees to make it not only to make it easy for them or visible, but support them in moving internally in the organization or finding their way to other opportunities internally?

Yeah. I mean, it's critical. Right. It's almost like the. It's sort of the lifeblood of how companies get along. Right. And I think sometimes we have a tendency to focus more on the external recruitment and maybe not even track the numbers as much on internal moves and mobility within the company. But it is what makes. It's what we survive on as companies. I think you can't possibly, you know, you can't build that culture and engagement that we're talking about. You can't build that with constant intake of External people into your organization, you have to have a cohort of people in your company who are going to stay. If we consider that cultures are built on shared norms and shared values, you can only grow that by having people who work together for a sustained period of time. So in order to build your culture, you have to maintain your staff to a large extent. And in order to maintain your staff, you have to offer them opportunities to grow and develop. And, you know, when you look at things like the cost of attrition and things like that, it absolutely makes sense for every stakeholder involved in that scenario. So I think, you know, making sure that we are succession planning, that we're helping people, having those career conversations, you know, as Bev said, talking to people about what would make a difference to you, where do you want to go in your career and looking for opportunities for people. And when I say opportunities, it's not just about your next promotion, right? It's about the projects that you can get involved in. It's about when you can, you know, be a delegate for somebody at an event or at a meeting. Like there's all sorts of different ways that we can keep people engaged and motivated and growing in their career. And we have to think about all of those opportunities. What is it that allows people to build out their kind of their career toolkit? And I think that's much more important. That kind of breadth of experience and development and learning that we can give people is much more important than that directly upward career path, which I find often leads people to a dead end. Right. Because they don't have enough broad experience to be able to, you know, you get to the top and then where do you go the top of your particular funnel. So I think those broader experiences that we can give people is critical, not just promotions, although they're obviously also important. And that onward trajectory is important. But it's a bigger kind of ecosystem of development than just pure role changes.

There's some great technology emerging to help with that.

I just want to thank Carolyn for her long, long, long chat because it's very good thought that maybe we need to reward managers who keep people not just on their team, but in the organization. And maybe managers who cause a loss of talent need to be penalized in some way.

They talk about that in American football. They always show the coaching tree of particular coaches that have been around for a long time. And you know, the really successful coaches tend to have given. Given sort of birth to all these other coaches that are coaching in all sorts of other places, like the Great ones have taught and inspired others up and that. That's a great idea. What I started to say too earlier is there's some really interesting things, I think, Barbara, to your point, there's some great technology emerging around, you know, creating internal gig marketplaces, right? Being able to create sort of a poll economy or sort of more of a, you know, like the gig economy internally. Like, here's our gigs and people can find them and pick them up and do different things. So it's a really interesting time, I think, for that.

As a HR professional as well, it's extremely satisfying to see that. I was at a meeting last week, a leadership meeting, and I looked around, there were a number of people in our very senior leader roles now who started as graduates. And I love to see that. I love to. You know, when I'm talking to my teams, I often say, you know, you might be recruiting a junior role now, but that person could be the next head of a function or CEO. I think it's a really nice message to be able to send to our internal employees when you can see people who started in, you know, as I say, in those graduate positions, intern positions, and who've worked over a period of years up through the organization, lots of different, varied experiences, either in different locations or in different functions. It sends a lovely message.

I do want to add. Welcome back, Bev. We lost you for just a moment there. It's all good. You're back. Look good. I do want to add, I know that there's a lot of focus here on managers and it's very easy, I think, to jump and pile on managers as being the issue here and the school. But I think when it comes to career, we also need to be really aware. I think historically HR systems and HR processes have made it really difficult to navigate to new career. We've prioritized external candidates over internal. And so part of this is on us. Part of it is on us to design and make it much easier, much more transparent, much more visible, much more safe to navigate internally. And that's where I think some of the technology is really helping. We didn't have that in the past and now we do, if we open our minds. So. So I would say that's one of our opportunities. Which brings me to our last question is I'd like both of you to think sort of big here and think about this. Feels really painful right now, for sure. I'm sure. Especially if you're losing people and it's really challenging to find and backfill positions and to grow. But there has to be opportunity. We know there's opportunity in this moment for organizations to sort of seize the this moment of transformation, of disruption, to reorient, recalibrate, think differently about what we're doing. I'm curious, what big ideas are you betting on right now, or are you leaning into for how do we capture the opportunity of this moment so that we can be better moving forward? Barbara, I'll come to you first.

Sure. I completely agree. I definitely think there's opportunity here. Sometimes maybe that opportunity will be more visible to us in retrospect, because, you know, when you're in the moment, it can feel like certainly a pain point. But I do think there's opportunity. I think there's opportunity to bring in different skills. And, you know, I think a lot of companies coming out of the last couple of years and the impact of COVID are rethinking how they do business, finding ways to work in a way that facilitates virtual engagements. And so there's more kind of technology and automation involved in that, but also maybe just thinking differently about what their growth paths are, and therefore, they might need different skills. And so this gives us an opportunity to bring in those skills in a different way in the organization. I think it gives us an opportunity to focus more on diversity and lean in on our diversity. It gives us an opportunity to rethink things like early careers, hiring and how we want that to feed into our talent pools and our organizations. And I think it gives us an opportunity to rethink how we attract talent and how we manage our. For me personally, we're completely rethinking how we manage our recruiting function and what kind of external partners we want to work with and how we want to think about the work that needs to get done and how we want to plan for that. So there's huge opportunity. As I said, it'll be easier to see it and appreciate it in retrospect because it's a painful period right now. But undoubtedly, I think we'll look back at this point in time and it'll really be like a pivotal point in how organizations work. Awesome.

Thank you. Bev, what are you thinking about?

You know, I would just add, and I've done work. I think people are either opportunity miners, like, I'm going to really look for the opportunity here, or they're opportunity whiners. Oh, poor me, poor me. There's nothing here. We keep reorganizing. I really believe that there are opportunities in the organization for everyone. If we get out of the mindset Then I'm only looking up. I think there are many opportunities. I think we have to fight the talent hoarding and open up the doors to people moving within the organization. And managers have to opportunity mine for their employees. If a manager is an opportunity whiner himself or herself, it's very hard to have a proactive, positive thinking employee. So it goes back to career again and that there are options out there. Absolutely.

Now, just because I have the 30 seconds here left, I'll add one thing on and it goes back to the conversation we've had about managers is that I think one of the things we often miss in this work is that if your managers are not caring for your talent, if they're not doing the things to retain their talent, it might be because nobody's caring for them. Right. How will they know how to do this if nobody's caring for them? We tend to overlook and forget about those middle managers. And they have the hardest job in the organization, I think. So go show them some love. Wrap your arms around them and show them some love and make sure they understand what it feels like and how it works. And then they will turn around and do the same thing for their people. But it's really hard to give that gift to someone else if you're not receiving it yourself first.

And they are so burned out managers are. We need to hug them more.

Indeed. Indeed.

I want to thank Jason for, for that fantastic interview. I think it's great insights from both Barbara and Bev there. And you know, Jason's comment at the end there around managers, you got to look after your middle managers. It's often so much so forgotten by organizations. Just on that kind of broader thing, you look at the great resignation. Really, to me, it's part of this larger issue that's been around for quite some time, which is the skills gap. Right. It's been around for many, many years now. Well documented, before the pandemic. But post pandemic, the importance of it or its urgency has risen massively. Nine out of 10 executives in organizations say there is a skills gap or there's about to be a skills gap in their organization. And when you look at how organizations are solving for it, McKinsey's recently published data on this that suggests there's four core ways that organizations are going after this skills gap problem. One is building the skills. 53% of respondents said that was the number one thing they're doing. 20% said hiring, 20% said redeploying, internal mobility, and 6% said contracting. So the Great. Resignation is fueled by this skills gap, right? There's a skills gap that's got massively accelerated by the pandemic. More and more companies with that divide between digital skills and analog skills and then what we call the core skills or soft skills required to manage remotely hybrid deal with the issues we've been dealing with the last two years. So we're going to see more of this and hiring is just one of the ways that organizations are trying to solve this. But let's go to next week. We're going to be back next week with a new guest. I'm going to be delighted next week to welcome to The Show Andrew McCaskill. Andrew has been a spokesperson for LinkedIn in the UK over the last number of months because being the voice of the candidate, essentially doing tons of events with LinkedIn because his insight is fantastic. He's going to bring it to the show next week to share what candidates really want. Andrew in his business careers career jump works with individuals looking to make new career changes and he's spoken with thousands of individuals over the last year, coached them through their career change and he has a unique perspective on what they're looking for when they talk to employers, how they research their interviews, how they they look up organizations and the people they're meeting with. Are you going to be sharing that insight with us next week? So do not miss that. If you're hiring people, you're a recruiter providing services. Are you thinking about talent at all? And if you're not, why are you on this show? There's no different podcast. But we're going to be back next week. Wednesday, 26th of January, 4pm UK Ireland time. It's 11am on the east coast of the US, 8am on the west coast and the podcast drops on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcast on a Wednesday evening. So come back then you can find me on LinkedIn, YouTube or come back to socialtalent.com the shortlist. We'll see you next week.