Burnout, retention, and renewed labor organization are critical challenges for leaders, especially amid COVID-19 and a looming recession. Leaders must ask themselves: What is it about my organization’s culture that is contributing to such a high level of mental stress for my employees? Why are people leaving my organization or refusing to return to the office in such high numbers? What is my response, and how are my employees receiving it?
At a time when people are getting choosier about where they work and employees who are feeling burned out are fleeing jobs during the Great Resignation, business leaders need to step up their game to attract and retain the top talent they need to remain competitive, productive, and cohesive to get through this tumultuous period.
"Leaders must realize that their workers are their greatest assets in their quest to achieve institutional goals.”
Over the past four decades, organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to federal, state, and local governments have slashed benefits, retirements, job security, and labor protections. These actions have saved companies trillions of dollars and have increased value for shareholders. Yet at what price? While gains were focused at the executive and investor levels, these cuts fostered a transactional relationship between businesses and their workers.
So, it should be a shock to no one that in recent years, the power dynamic has switched in favor of employees who would not forget their former employers’ past transgressions.
Generational factors and burnout
Leaders must realize that their workers are their greatest assets in their quest to achieve institutional goals. Instead of paying lip service to caring for employees or publishing a well-crafted PR statement, organizations must ensure their actions follow their words. For individuals to stay at an organization, they must have trust in their leadership and in the organization’s mission and goals, and organizations must be responsive to their employees’ needs.
Worker sentiments will vary by generation, based on the experience each group has had in the workplace, including everyone from the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers to Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. Consider these differences in employment conditions for the various generations:
Employers gave the Silent Generation substantial benefits. Due to the employee and employer covenant forged at the onset of the Industrial Age, the Silent Generation, born between 1928 and 1945, typically had the benefit of guaranteed pensions. The ability of corporations to provide pensions created a workforce that remained loyal to the corporation. Workforce incentives were further bolstered through strong union protection. Plus, employers were focused on maintaining a more competitive minimum wage, making sure their employees could actually live on these paychecks, and ensuring the amount increased with inflation. All of these environmental factors generated a multi-decade tenured professional workforce that experienced less burnout and often happily remained at a single company during their entire career.
Businesses treated Baby Boomers as a corporate liability. Following World War II, Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, benefitted from the prosperity of their parents. They started their working years with guaranteed pensions, strong union protections, a more competitive minimum wage, and spent multiple decades at a single company. However, by the end of their working years, pensions disappeared in favor of a new instrument, the 401k retirement plan. Corporate lobbyists influenced new policies that ultimately weakened critical union protections and ensured that the minimum wage stagnated, failing to keep up with inflation. Baby Boomers experienced conditions in which corporations began identifying their personnel as their largest liability, which triggered firings and layoffs close to the age of retirement so businesses could avoid paying pensions. Also, instead of staying with one company for a lifetime, it became the norm for employees to change companies and roles during their careers. This, in turn, increased personal stress levels, and employee burnout started to percolate.
"Generation X entered the workforce after the tumultuous economic recovery of the 1970s and enjoyed the roaring ‘90s, only to experience the dot.com bust, followed by the financial crisis in 2008.”
Generation X was expected to job-hop. Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980, became the beneficiary of the 401k, weakened union protections, a noncompetitive minimum wage, continued firings and layoffs close to retirement, and an expectation to change companies and roles during their careers. Generation X entered the workforce after the tumultuous economic recovery of the 1970s and enjoyed the roaring ‘90s, only to experience the dot.com bust, followed by the financial crisis in 2008. The need for employees to job-hop, along with the corporation’s requirement to increase value for shareholders by cutting the workforce, created a perverse incentive for employers to exponentially increase the pressure it placed on employees. This contributed to widespread employee burnout.
Millennials and Generation Z focus on social good. Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, and Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2012, are working with the 401k, weakened union protections, a noncompetitive minimum wage, firings and layoffs close to retirement, an expectation to change companies and roles five to seven times during their career, higher minimum entry requirements at corporations, and low pay. These generations expressed greater interest in entrepreneurship and an increased focus on environmental and social good.
Time for leaders to dig deeper
In this new climate, job seekers have greater power and flexibility in finding employment. As a result, organizations and leaders must reevaluate their value proposition to attract and retain talent. Each generation has experienced burnout differently. Organizations currently comprise multiple generations of employees simultaneously and must understand how each group may view any incentives companies provide to encourage people to stay at an organization.
In June, Business Insider said that Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was pleading with workers to return to offices by saying, "I'll get on my knees and do whatever you want.” While more than a few employees might love to see a CEO grovel on their knees, the critical lesson here is that Starbucks employees are voting with their feet.
"Employees want real change, not performative actions.”
Schultz isn’t the only business leader struggling with this challenge. Many employees do not desire to return to the office. So, what should business leaders do?
First, as a leader, it is helpful to listen to the members of your organization and work collaboratively to develop a plan. Consulting firms and media outlets have conducted surveys and interviews about return-to-office policies and future work. Leaders should leverage easily accessible data to understand their employees better.
Second, employees want real change, not performative actions. Schultz offering to grovel on his knees does not deliver the real change employees need. Instead, Schultz should focus on the elements he can bring into the workplace to make it more appealing for workers to come into the office. Those elements could take many forms, like daycare offerings, meal and snack options, yoga studios, or other services that entice people to gather in person.
Using TRIAL to address burnout
As organizations evolve and innovate during this rapid transition, they must experiment and continuously conduct pilot initiatives on a trial basis until they see what works to ease burnout. Leaders would benefit from leveraging what I call the TRIAL framework:
Trust: Leaders must recognize that trust is hard to gain and easy to lose. So, they must communicate realistic expectations and frequently ensure that their business goals align with what employees are reasonably able to accomplish.
Reflection: In order to move an organization forward, leaders must reflect on past activities in order to avoid making the same mistakes. One way to codify this reflection is by developing an after-action review process, a structured debriefing that the United States military leverages to analyze what happened, why it happened, and how it could be done better.
Insight: Leaders must pull the best ideas from their teammates and gain their insights in order to produce the best outcomes for the organization.
Action: If the team is aligned on goals, it will be far easier to take the appropriate action that is connected to meeting or even exceeding the expectations that had been previously communicated.
Lead: Leadership is a contact sport. It requires leaders to be present, engaged, and accountable.
Most of all, workers must trust that the organizations they work for are looking out for them. Trust is not bought and sold on Amazon. It does not come attached to a well-crafted email, nor does it come merely with a reactionary bonus, especially at a time when pay disparities, burnout, and employee retention are top of mind. Trust is earned the hard way through consistency of words and actions that repeatedly show that businesses respect and care about their most important assets: their employees.
About the Authors
Hise O. Gibson is a senior lecturer in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School. MaShon Wilson is a technology operations leader and former management consultant, specializing in growth strategy and operational efficiency. Gibson and Wilson both served as officers in the US Army culminating at the ranks of colonel and captain, respectively.
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Feedback or ideas to share? Email the Working Knowledge team at hbswk@hbs.edu.
Image: Unsplash/Arif Riyanto