Employers around the country may still shudder at the mention of the Great Resignation, which saw millions of workers leave their jobs or even leave the workforce entirely. Those who stuck around might have engaged in practices like “quiet quitting” or “Bare Minimum Mondays,” both involving doing the bare minimum either one day at the beginning of the week or virtually all the time.
To Workers Deciding to Stay
Lest employers get too familiar with these new trendy terms, a new one has emerged, reflecting both the shift in power in the labor market and the continued challenge of employee engagement: The Big Stay. Lillian Stone explains the trend in an article for BBC Worklife.
“According to some economists, The Great Resignation that defined the past three years of workforce mobility is over,” Stone writes. “Now, the data points to a phenomenon of “The Big Stay”, in which workers are staying put to avoid an increasingly competitive labor market and fears of economic instability.”
Staying Doesn’t Mean Staying Productive
Still, Stone write, workers who do decide to stay aren’t necessarily productive. That’s particularly the case if they’re staying in jobs that really don’t suit them. In addition, these workers can struggle with both physical and mental health issues. “Experts say that if employers want to stem the quiet quitting among their workers, the onus will be on management to proactively invest in worker satisfaction,” Stone says.
The Big Stay is a bit of a double-edged sword for employers. Sure, it’s great workers aren’t leaving in droves, but do companies really want a bunch of disengaged staff hanging around just because they can’t find something better?
An Opportunity
One way to think about the new dynamic is that it’s an opportunity for employers to turn things around with disengaged staff. While during the Great Resignation, unhappy employees would have been much more likely to simply leave and take their grievances with them, today they may have second thoughts about actually leaving.
This doesn’t mean they’re happy with the state of affairs at work, but it does mean they just might be around long enough for employers to address the root causes of that disengagement before it’s too late.
What are you planning to do about that?
Lin Grensing-Pophal is a Contributing Editor at HR Daily Advisor.