Purpose and well-being, the new love language of employers

Big quit, calls to branch out, quiet quitting... these are all manifestations of a growing dissatisfaction that worries employers. It's a fundamental trend; employees' ambitions are changing, and many don't hesitate to leave if their company doesn't meet their expectations. The cards in the employee-employer relationship are being shuffled and organisations are doubling their efforts to remain desirable. Is the breakup complete? Not necessarily, but the arguments to attract and retain talent have changed.

A wind of resignations from America

Nearly 57 million Americans resigned between January 2021 and February 2022. This phenomenon, known as the Big Quit, is continuously putting the job makret under high pressure in the U.S. A Gallup Institute survey estimates that at the height of this movement in March 2021, 48% of the country's working population was actively looking for another job or keeping an eye out for opportunities.

This wave has since crossed the Atlantic; even if the shockwave is less intense in Europe, the manifestations of discontent at work are well and truly visible there, has now spread far beyond the United States. Although the numbers are not exploding, there has been an acceleration of resignations in some countries. The UK was the first to be affected, followed to a lesser extent by Italy and Germany. In France, more than 520,000 employees left their jobs in the first quarter of 2022, a historically high level, according to a report by the Direction de l'Animation de la Recherche, des Études et des Statistiques (Dares).

One only has to look at the projections and intentions of resignations to understand that the trend is worrying companies. The Work Trend Index 2022, which covers more than 31,000 employees in 31 countries, is alarming: 43% of respondents plan to leave their job within the year, with an even higher rate of 58% amongst Gen Z.

Of course, the numbers vary depending on studies and countries, but there is no doubt about a trend. In the UK and Ireland, 38% of employees want to change jobs within six to twelve months, according to a survey conducted by Personio. And what about Luxembourg? According to the PwC Global Workforce Hopes and Fears study, conducted among 1,200 workers in March 2022, one in four employees would rate the probability of changing employer within a year as "high" or "very high".

Another covid effect?

The phenomenon of the "big resignation" was named and theorised by Anthony C. Klotz in May 2021. As a senior lecturer at the UCL School of Management, he studies the causes and effects of different types of resignations, among other things, and predicting this movement. "From organisational research, we know that when human beings come into contact with death and illness in their lives, it causes them to take a step back and ask existential questions," Klotz said. "Like, what gives me purpose and happiness in life, and does that match up with how I'm spending my right now?So, in many cases, those reflections will lead to life pivots." A. C. Klotz thus notes that the health crisis has changed not only the way we work, but also the way we view our work and the quality of our profession.

It is clear that this wave of resignations has not affected everyone equally. Initially, the majority of resignations touched the sectors most affected by the pandemic. The hotel, retail, restaurant and personal services sectors suffered the most, with 40% of resignations. Indeed, stress, uncertainty and tough working conditions have accelerated this decision making (working hours, high exposure to the virus, low wages and lack of recognition). According to a study published in the Harvard Business Review, resignation in the healthcare sector increased by 3.6% over one year. Also notable, resignations were up 4.5 percent in the technology sector. The extreme pressure of skyrocketing demand on these two sectors due to the pandemic has led to burnout for many employees.

Moreover, resignations concern predominantly women. The Gusto company has shown that 5.5% of SME female employees have left their jobs, compared to 4.4% of their male peers. As the "care" professions are highly feminised, it is no coincidence that care assistants, supermarket cashiers and other holders of low-paid, low-skilled jobs are the most numerous to have resigned. Research shows that the archetypal « American quitter » is a women, over 35 and living in the Midwest.

Clearly, the health crisis was a trigger for this wave of resignations. However, the phenomenon seems to continue today, despite the revocation of health measures. It has even grown, extending to multiple sociological layers and many territories. It is in fact the reflection of an underlying trend, the weak signals of which were already present before the pandemic. Covid was merely the gas pedal of a profound change in the making.

A profound evolution of the relationship with the company

The relationship between the public and the business world has changed profoundly. The very notion of the employment contract that unites the company and the employee has undergone significant changes over the past several decades. Today, we are far from the almost paternalistic "taking charge" and the protection offered by the company over an entire career in exchange for the work and loyalty of employees. We have also moved beyond the Generation X conception of a commitment to work in return for a comfortable life, with the promise of a better life not always fulfilled. This disappointment has of course been reinforced by a growing precariousness. The sacrificial relationship with the corporate world is over, as young people are well aware: contracts tend to become shorter because the skills required on the job market have an increasingly short life span. This is the infamous obsolescence of skills and even professions. A study conducted by the OECD shows that in the 1970s, a technical skill had an average lifespan of 20 years, compared to between 12 and 18 months today. As a result, the younger generations no longer live in the distant projection of a promising career; the watchword now, above all, is immediate professional and personal fulfillment. Recruiters must therefore revise their copy because employees are going to the highest bidder. We are talking about salary, of course, but also a whole range of other attributes: the sacred work/life balance.

The perception of the social utility of work is deteriorating

Beyond the evolution of the relationship with the company, the great uneasiness concerns the very purpose of work. It is no longer clear to everyone. More and more employees are refusing to accept the much-maligned "bullshit jobs" that anthropologist David Graeber has defined as alienation: meaningless jobs with no real interest in society, in which office workers dedicate their lives to useless tasks. Work psychologists have used Graeber's concept to describe a growing phenomenon: brown-out, which they describe as "inner resignation". From there to actual resignation, there is of course only one step.

Without adopting this caricature of the almost systematic uselessness of office workers, it is evident that the accumulation of processes, reporting and other peripheral steps in the daily life of a worker's mission, gives the feeling of a system that works for itself and distracts individuals from the deep meaning of their contribution to society. Hence the return to certain fundamentals and the change of course of some employees who are retraining in very concrete or manual jobs, where their work results are tangible. Worse, this feeling of lack of concrete impact even affects the field, as shown by the nurses who are increasingly expressing their discontent. The reason is that paperwork and administration are taking up more and more space, when these essential workers simply want to do what they are trained to do, which is to care for patients. In this respect, it is interesting to note that as classically defined work becomes meaningless, the so-called invisible work, outside the professional field, is highly useful socially (in 2009, the Stiglitz report estimated domestic production at 35% of France's GDP). The business world is faced with the immense challenge of responding to the deep quest for meaning: how and for who is my work useful? 

Another notion that is being lost is that of collective utility. This is played out at the level of society: mechanically, every worker contributes to society via a redistributive system. However, this social solidarity function is now less and less valued and felt. This raises questions, even though work is an essential pillar of the social contract.

Whether it is through a disaffection for the job itself or a lesser adherence to the collective project, the social utility conveyed by work is thus globally at half-mast.

Toward greater consideration of societal and ecological issues

Faced with this generalised loss of meaning, having a job that aligns with one's ecological and social convictions is becoming the sine-qua-non condition for many young people to work for a company. A Harris survey conducted in March 2022 in France underlines that 86% of young people aged 18 to 30 consider it important that the company in which they work takes into account environmental and social criteria. Two-thirds say they would not apply for a job with an organisation that does not meet the ecological requirement. Finally, nearly 7 out of 10 say they would be willing to change jobs to take an ecologically meaningful job. These figures, while they must be taken with caution as they reflect declarative statements, clearly indicate that these concerns are very much on the minds of young workers. It is not surprising in this context that companies that are strongly committed to these issues - social businesses, mission-based companies and other B Corps (see our Grand Format devoted to the Boom of the B Corp movement) - are a great success with candidates!

Young graduates sometimes call for a change of direction, as some AgroParisTech students did at their graduation ceremony last April, a sequence that has gone viral on social networks. The idea? To not take the path that leads to a successful job which in the end doesn’t align with the desire for a profound transformation of society. Instead, choose paths that have a positive impact. This is also the choice of Arthur Gosset, an engineer at Centrale Nantes. He improvised himself as a documentary filmmaker to follow these young people for a year, when they decide to abandon their career as studious students in order to devote themselves to an activity that is more in tune with their values. These choices of branching out for some, or resigning for others, are strong and militant acts that seal the emergence of a small community. There is a dedicated media, with the explicit name "I quit, thanks", which relays the testimonies of these changes of course. It may still be a minority, but these are strong qualitative signals to listen to.

The actual extent of this movement is indeed debated. Vincent Meyer, a research professor in HR at the Normandy School of Management, is currently conducting a vast study on the phenomenon of mass resignation. In the fifty or so interviews conducted with resigning employees, although the ecological reason was clearly essential for some departures, it only emerged once as the major cause.

For most of them, employees would not leave their jobs for this reason alone. That said, social and environmental issues are undeniably on everyone's mind, leading to a new kind of phenomenon that is equally worrying companies. A June 2022 study by the recruitment consultancy Imagreen and the Kantar Institute reveals that 9 out of 10 employees find the current social and environmental situation very worrying and, above all, that 4 out of 10 say they are in cognitive dissonance with their work. In other words: their job goes against their ecological and social sensitivity, their values. According to the Gallup report, only 9% of employees in the UK are committed or enthusiastic about their profession. The result is the famous quiet quitting, a silent resignation that does not go as far as breaking the contract, but by which the employee limits him or herself to the strict respect of the job description and, above all, of the working hours.
An IFOP study conducted last November revealed that 37% of French people say they refuse overtime and tasks that are not directly related to their mission. This distancing from work is often fully acknowledged, judging by the more than 350 million views of the hashtag #quietquitting on TikTok.

Salary, yes, but what else?

Faced with this megatrend, companies are competing with each other to attract, motivate and retain their talents.

Studies are unanimous; salary remains the number one factor in professional mobility, regardless of the country concerned. The majority of resignations concern the lowest salaries. Nevertheless, earning more money is no longer enough. Working people certainly have new expectations of their work, starting with the importance of a work/life balance and therefore of flexibility. Many companies have heard them.

"Flexibility", "agility", "adaptability", are terms that have been used for some years now in the professional world. Telecommuting, flexible working hours, co-working, the possibility for employees to work wherever they want, are flexible forms of work that companies increasingly offer. Accelerated by the pandemic, remote work has allowed many people to avoid the commuting time, to have more time for themselves and to adapt their work schedules to certain private and family constraints. Some people do not welcome a return to more face-to-face work and do not hesitate to leave their job for this reason. This trend is very pronounced among young people: while 38% of French people say they are comfortable with the idea of going back to the office full-time, more than half (53%) of 18-24 year-olds say they are ready to quit if teleworking is not possible in their company, according to a study conducted by the ADP Research Institute in 2022. Recruiters are aware of this and jobs advertisements are now highlighting increasingly attractive schemes: four-day work weeks, the possibility of "breathing leave", unlimited vacations... And it would be a shame to miss out, since the State of teams 2022 study by the publisher Atlassian reveals that hybrid work organisation has the effect of optimising innovation, increasing well-being and reducing burnout among employees: nothing less!

It is also essential for companies to put in place a culture of well-being at work, and to take a serious look at it, if they have not already done so! Having an onboarding and offboarding process and providing efficient work tools is good, but it will not be enough in this society in search of well-being. Indeed, several criteria enter into this notion. From an individual point of view, toxic management is on everyone's radar. Of course, exemplarity, sincere listening and support from superiors are essential here to understand each individual’s perceptions, needs and expectations. To fight against contemplative presenteeism, it is also increasingly common to introduce objectives as a way to manage employees. Not to mention the investment in continuous training to support employees’ growth and development. From a collective point of view, especially since the pandemic and the emergence of teleworking and videoconferencing, fostering social ties within the company is also a major challenge for employers. We must rethink how to create social links and real exchanges between employees. Involving them in diversity, equity and inclusion policies to create ambassadors of well-being within the structure can also benefit everyone. In short... Cultivate pleasure at work!

According to the Expert college d'expertise on the follow-up of psychosocial risks at work, enhanced autonomy is the possibility for employees to be actors in the value creation participation and in the conduct of their professional lives. In short, it is the best way to prevent employees from dropping out. This is what some companies are taking into account by proposing so-called flat or lateral organisational structures. Their motto? To give employees room to maneuver, trust them, and let them participate in the decisions that concern them and thus encourage the use and development of their skills. On the other hand, when not enough autonomy is given to employees, high demands and low latitude lead to high tension situations, resulting in boredom (bore-out) and risks for physical and mental health. Therefore, the workplace should be considered as a win-win effort: granting a minimum of freedom and increasing the room for maneuver by encouraging initiative, which benefits and encourages employees' commitment.

Faced with the profound changes in the relationship with work, companies have no choice but to adapt their HR policies and management methods to meet the "give and take" demands of their employees. In short, to create the conditions for a more balanced relationship between employer and employee. But more fundamentally, the organisations that will attract talent and benefit from their total commitment will be those that know how to create adherence to their purpose, those that can answer the fundamental question: what positive impact do I have in this world?

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