As discussed last time, business productivity has certainly been affected by the Great Resignation Era and the popularized practice of quiet-quitting. But other than productivity, how is doing business being affected?
Doing business encompasses the operational and economic transactional practices and procedures that create profit and a customer base for businesses of any industry. In other words, having a business setup is just the groundwork, but running it includes selling and transacting with the public in order to obtain profit to keep it going. So how has the Great Resignation Era affected doing business?
What business owners should know already
According to Derek Gallimore of Entrepreneur, employers are now faced with trying to navigate their way through the Great Resignation Era amidst increasing employee frustrations. Trying to retain the majority of their staff, despite burn-out and little compensation from the employer, has become a huge concern and struggle for select industries. This was especially prominent while “organizations urged workers to return to their respective offices [during the COVID-19 pandemic and public unease].”
As described by Aluminati, the trend is certainly real for all businesses across the globe, and an enormous percentage of employed people are actively looking for a new job or career path, more specifically there are over 5 million more open jobs than there are unemployed people. As any employer or business may feel, this can be scary as the very last thing you want is for your workforce to suddenly dissipate. This is worsened by the concern that many businesses are currently without the ability to find and retain new employees, despite the incredibly high demand.
As I established in my prior post ‘What You Ought to Know About the Great Resignation Era,’ January 2022 alone witnessed more than 4.3 million employees quit their jobs in the U.S. Furthermore, there are currently over 5 million more open jobs than unemployed people, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With more and more staff leaving their jobs for better work opportunities, or to just finally taking a break, employers have had to alter their operations therefore affecting the quantity of being able to procure business activity and growth.
One common alteration that hundreds of businesses have had to implement was shortening their store hours from previous years. Whether it is your local Starbucks that now closes at 5 p.m. instead of 9 p.m., or the nearby pharmacy or barber shop, the nationwide labor shortage has made businesses comply with changes that ultimately lower their revenue and other factors for any business or company.
How employers can keep business going
As described by Sharice Wells of Grey Journal, the first and most vital step for employers to continue doing business is to understand why your staff may be choosing to leave. Without this step, employers will be blind as to why employees are leaving unexpectedly and affect their capabilities of conducting business operations. If and when an employer completes this first step, and knows where they can improve the business, the second step is to be as objective as possible when it comes to improving employee work incentives and conditions. In other words, make employee wants and needs your guide to improving conditions and functionality.
Another critical point that Wells makes is that many businesses, especially small ones, can capitalize off of the Great Resignation Era. As she explains it:
Look at this as an opportunity for business growth. As more employees leave larger companies you could offer appealing roles. Not only extend the roles, but also support roles employees are pursuing. If your business can remain effective with a hybrid or remote environment offering this option could increase your candidate pool.
Further, being able to clearly provide vision and direction to someone that isn’t getting that elsewhere could attract quality talent. And this could help your company reap the benefits of the training of employees from other organizations. Their training and skills could bring changes your organization needs to take your company to the next level.
In the end, businesses need to adjust themselves to more fair conditions for their employees if they want to maintain, retain, and attract a current and new workforce. The Great Resignation is also being called the Great Reshuffle, as employers and companies are seeing future employees shifting careers or interests, therefore benefitting select industries over others. By making employees the forefront of your business aspirations, you should be able to thrive throughout this economic era we are living and operating within. For questions or advice, reach out via the Contact Me tab up above!
Business Wellness 