Unless you’ve been living under a rock with no WIFI, you’ve inevitably come across articles mentioning huge signing bonuses, the Great Resignation, seen and heard countless job ads or shown up somewhere during business hours to be turned away for lack of staff. The Atlantic recently pointed out that “more Americans quit in April (2021) than any other month on record going back to the beginning of the century”.
The Great Resignation and The War on Talent are here. In some professions such as sales and front-line customer service, the war has been waging for years but only intensified during the pandemic recovery. According to the Work Institute turnover is costing us over $680 Billion and 77% is preventable. Surveys conducted in the 2018 study by the Work Institute cited career development as the leading reason employees were leaving their jobs. More employees than ever (40% and growing) are leaving their jobs within the first year.
So as employers, managers, and business owners how do we fight back?
According to Psychology Professor Margaret Rogers in a 2020 Harvard Business Review article “the most obvious solution to upping employee retention, then, is creating more effective training and development programs“. The pandemic has accelerated both the competitive landscape and the need to engage, train and retain our employees. According to Researchandmarkets.com “the global market for E-Learning estimated at US$250.8 Billion in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of US$457.8 Billion by 2026”. As much as 98% of businesses are expected to embrace some form of LMS for e-learning but as HR Gazette pointed out with “the need for constant switching between the HR Information System (HRIS) and the LMS and you have a potential administrative nightmare on your hands”. Not to mention a poor employee experience managing multiple software vendors to complete processes that all fall within the purview of the HR function.
Payroll and HR vendors have been consolidating or adding applications but not fast enough. The large HCM (Human Capital Management) and payroll vendors have each added some combination of a core employee / HR database, a recruiting and applicant tracking system (ATS) and some limited employee onboarding processes. Some more advanced vendors have added Workforce Management (mobile or biometric time punch, PTO/vacation management and scheduling). A few leaders are now offering performance and compensation management.
Given that more employees than ever are leaving, the availability of talent per position is declining dramatically from 7:1 to 1:1 (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics), 77% of turnover is preventable and lack of development is the leading reason for turnover, the next evolution needs to be a completely integrated HR platform that also facilitates job-specific remote learning. If we truly believe we’ve entered The Great Resignation and want to fight back, it’s past time to invest in tools that help us fight back by engaging, training and retaining our employees while delivering a pleasant and streamlined employee experience.