Priyanka Agrawal: Is the great attrition a threat or an opportunity

In India a substantial number of employees have either quit their jobs last year or are thinking of doing so, according to a Mckinsey report. While organisations are struggling to accept, strategise and act on the situation without impacting business and profitability, employees are struggling with more existential questions. A lot of them are tired, and many are grieving. Priyanka Agrawal (pictured), Managing Partner, CX Consulting, Merkle India & Co-Founder, Chief Strategy Officer Fractal Ink Design Studio explains why.

So, how do companies survive this wave and thrive in today’s extremely dynamic environment with a more human approach? It not only requires courage, judgement and flexibility but also an investment in the human currency.

Some aspects of employee and organisational relationships that make the workplace more desirable are as follows:

Relational v/s transactional OR Appreciation v/s compensation
The measures taken by Companies to retain people, define the nature of their relationship with their employees. Companies are struggling to reason out why employees are leaving and what will make them stay. They are deploying all sorts of mechanisms to retain them by giving ‘thank you’ bonuses, higher compensations, performance incentives, upskilling, reskilling, certification opportunities, rapid promotions, etc. In the hope of making jobs more lucrative, the employees are perhaps witnessing additional financial perks.

While money and rewards do play a small part in retention they are not the key drivers of tipping the scale to stay. People inherently need to feel valued, to have a sense of belonging and work with a purposeful organisation. That is what makes a workplace more desirable. Some of the factors that go a long way in retention are the employers face time with their employees, their transparency in communication, appreciation for a job well done, personalised messages, compassion, genuine caring, etc.

Well-being v/s productivity
Maintaining a work-life balance, burnout, no discipline in working hours are a few common challenges that people have been facing. According to another research by Microsoft, not only has the time spent in meetings increased, but the average duration of a Teams meeting has also become 10 min longer. A lot of those are unscheduled meetings and chats, which further result in exhaustion. Organisations that fail to deep dive and resolve this, will see the talent drain.

The development of wellbeing policies, external help for mental and physical counselling/ training, a scheduled time off for recharging, setting team/ manager/ client expectations to respect working hours are some of the aspects of great importance for the employee’s wellbeing. It also creates a caring and humanised work environment that reflects on the management’s priorities and showcases their focus on the workforce. This strong ‘people first’ culture is the primary predictor of a company’s lesser churn rate and higher performance.

WFH v/s hybrid work environment
The pandemic has taught us new ways of working and employees are seeing a lot of benefits in working from home or flexible working hours. At the same time, a large number of employees who quit their jobs recently did so because they didn’t feel a sense of belonging and connect with their team members. This dichotomy is leaving the organisations perplexed in terms of reopening and rebuilding the company culture on an interpersonal level.

A thoughtful, empathetic leadership with meticulous planning of a hybrid work environment may be the way forward for a new working model. Methods of opening the physical workplace twice or thrice a week, bucketing people in work groupbased or task-based functions to come and work from office coupled with team building events/ lunches/ activities need to be devised. The ‘want’ rather than ‘need’ to come to the office needs to be created with safety at the heart of it.

Career growth v/s professional development
Organisations are laying a lot of stress on upskilling and reskilling of the workforce to make people adapt to the changing ways of working and thus, increase productivity aligned to the company’s job description and growing needs. This is great if they align it with an individual’s professional growth and work satisfaction.

Identifying the professional interests of the person and creating opportunities for them to excel in those, goes a long way in fulfilling their professional development and not setting them up for failure. Employees should have a say in their professional development, not only because it will help them grow in their career but also help them find a sense of purpose and meaning at work.

Conclusion
Bottom line, an in-depth understanding of what employees are looking for or running from, investing in creating a more fulfilling work experience, catering to new demands of autonomy & flexibility and creating a more people-centric work culture is imperative. By addressing these, companies can turn around this churn to their advantage and create a desirable work environment to attract newer talent and retain the existing ones.