How to Manage Great Resignation - The Economist (2021) - How Firms can Rethink their Recruitment Strategy for Keeping their Workforce in Place and Motivated?

Oboulo Int.

Order the writing of a tailor-made International economy Text commentary

Free quote online

Text commentary Format .docx

How to Manage Great Resignation - The Economist (2021) - How Firms can Rethink their Recruitment Strategy for Keeping their Workforce in Place and Motivated?

Download

Read an extract

Themes

Great resignation, recruitment strategy, workforce, pandemic, turnover, covid-19, labor market, career path

Reader
Abstract
Contents
Extract

Abstract

This article from The Economist was edited approximately one year ago (late November 2021), two years after the pandemic crisis. Economies are impacted in many ways. First of all, human resource managers have to reinvent their job. For two years, the job market has been struggling due to the consequences of the pandemic crisis (quarantine, confinement, partial confinement...). The pandemic is the psychological turning point for many employees in Western countries. Youth requires a better regard of well-being at work. Companies are no longer the only ones to require from their workforce: a BCG-IFOP-CGE 2021 survey shows that most of the young graduates prefer comfort, social impact, having collaborative jobs. They prefer a company that cares about CSR issue rather than one neglecting it. The pandemic (teleworking, confinement) has definitively anchored the theme of work-life balance in CSR criteria. This explains the « great resignation ». Our analyze aims at showing how firms have to rethink their recruitment strategy for keeping their workforce in place and motivated.

Inefficiency of Pre-Pandemic Practices to Counter Great Resignation
1. Emerging of a « Covid » or « Post Pandemic » Generation
2. Misunderstanding of Managers on New Labor Market Parameters
3. Collaborators/Candidates Require Other Favors from Companies/Employers
Solutions to Prevent Great Resignation
1. Rating Systematically Potential Level of Resignation among Workforce
2. Tracking of Candidates' Career Paths
3. Re-thinking Recruitment Strategy

Get this table of contents for free after login.

Extract

[...] This is made of workers being fed-up with their daily tasks, moving home, needing to find another job for many different reasons. But on the other side, COVID has created a whole new phenomenon of people needing or willing to change lives and careers after having been impacted by COVID life for a while. In the food and hotel industries, as an example, many workers have been forced to go to another sector while their own sectors were in downturn during more than a year. [...]

[...] Our analyze aims at showing how firms have to rethink their recruitment strategy for keeping their workforce in place and motivated. Main thesis: Workforce turnover seems to be high and retention strategies should be modernized Observations: Times are changing. In the past, workforce well-being wasn't properly taken into account by managers. This trend declined slowly then fell apart, mostly due to triggering of COVID-19 crisis. Since this pandemic crisis, managers have been more concerned about workforce's claims and well-being at work. [...]

[...] For more details, we can refer to BCG's 2022 survey about freelancing in European job market. The fact that remote working has developed so much in recent years, mostly due to the COVID pandemic, could be something useful to help firms re-thinking their recruitment strategy. If people do not absolutely need to all be based in the same city, the recruitment possibilities are much wider than if they do. This needs however to be thought about careful, as some on site working is considered by many employers as something really absolutely necessary to be successful as a company. [...]

[...] Some managers are late responders to the new labor parameters and have been struggling to take them into account in their human resources strategies. Others (and sometimes, both are the same) are struggling to integrate that "managers need to pull different levers to retain different types of people". Levers need to be adapted to different populations. Some are looking for money first, others are much more interested in health coverage or other benefits. Collaborators/candidates require other favors from companies/employers Indeed, the sole « Raising wages » strategy is becoming useless because jobseekers/employees are rethinking their way of regarding their work (emerging of new priorities . [...]

[...] However, emerging of machines doesn't mean end of human workforce. It's an opportunity for make work-life soft, defining its workplace and improving skills in order to stay attractive. The main human resources managers challenge will be to conciliate workforce's well-being and breakthough of technologies in job market. Well-being at work doesn't mean laziness. This requires mainly modern ways of working and define a new era in the human resources managers - workforce relations. HR managers need also to upgrade its skills for understanding changes in making. [...]

docx