Remember the phrase “The Great Resignation” from a few years ago?
Over the course of 2021, buoyed by generous financial support from the government during the pandemic, nearly 39 million Americans left their jobs, the highest number since records began.
In the four years since, there’s been a lot of analysis of why that happened. In my opinion, it wasn’t just a wave of people seeking better pay or perks, it was a reckoning. For too long, many business leaders have thought that people should be grateful and happy simply because they have a job. Businesses operated under a prevailing narrative: numbers mattered most, and their people were just functions—means to an end.
The “Great Resignation” was a long time in coming. People were tired of being replaceable. Tired of being considered a function, rather than a person.
However, the root cause was and continues to be poor leadership. And this is why we’re going to see more of these trends identified until more business leaders begin to understand their responsibilities and the effect their actions have on those within their span of care.
Case in point, there’s a new term Gallup has coined that describes what many people are feeling in the current moment: “The Great Detachment.” From a recent report:
Employees across America are feeling increasingly detached from their jobs.
They are seeking new job opportunities at the highest rate since 2015, while overall satisfaction with their employer has returned to a record low.
Yet, unlike the “Great Resignation,” many frustrated employees are struggling to make the leap to a new employer in a cooling job market and economy marred by inflation. Instead, they are left feeling stuck with their discontent… For employers, this means that while turnover numbers may have slowed, employee productivity concerns and future talent loss are hidden organizational risks. In addition, when employees feel detached from their work, organizational change initiatives are likely to meet indifference or resistance.
Gallup gives several reasons for this “Detachment,” and they give their view on a couple of solutions. Here is something they note that I found particularly interesting:
Finding mission and purpose in one’s work provides intrinsic motivation for high performance. People want to know their work matters and that their employer makes a difference in the world. Mission and purpose also bond people together. Highly engaged employees feel like they belong to a community, not just a job… To turn this trend around, leaders must communicate an inspiring vision that people want to get behind. This is critical at the organizational level, but ultimately, the connection must be made at the team level. Employees need a manager to show them why their effort makes a difference.
So, what is purpose in business? My friend Simon Sinek recently talked about this in a blog post on his website:
Providing jobs, driving the economy, serving the shareholder are not purposes. They are rationalizations used when a greater cause or purpose is not clear or not there. Real purpose has a clear and definitive direction. It is a path that points towards a very specific vision of the future. Rationalizations have no destination, they are simply a calculation to demonstrate some benefit to justify the actions. Rationalizations are just that: rational. In contrast, purpose is deeply emotional. This is why we feel passion and intense drive when we are involved with something that has purpose. And it’s why we get that sick feeling when we do something in violation of that purpose. There is no sick feeling from violating a rationalized purpose…nor is there an invigorating passion to pursue it.
Because a true sense of purpose is deeply emotional, it serves as a compass to guide us to act in a way completely consistent with our values and beliefs. Purpose does not need to involve calculations or numbers. Purpose is about the quality of life. Purpose is human, not economic.
Our primary purpose at Barry-Wehmiller is to be in business so that all our team members have meaningful and fulfilling lives. It is the fundamental way by which we contribute to a better world. This is not just our purpose, it is the higher purpose to which we have been called to show other companies that business can be a powerful force for good.
As a leader, establishing a vision that offers meaning and purpose to those you lead is one of the most important things you must do.
On a recent episode of our Truly Human Leadership Podcast, Raj Sisodia, my friend and co-author of Everybody Matters, talked about some of the things he learned from his experiences at Barry-Wehmiller.
Raj’s first trip to visit our facilities in Phillips and Green Bay, WI, he said, opened his eyes to a new perspective on purpose and leadership. He said he had previously thought about purpose in terms of the customer. But at Barry-Wehmiller, he said, it was different:
I started to think of it like an airplane with two engines, right? There's a people engine and a product engine. (Most companies) are only focused on the product engine. They (may have) treated their employees like stakeholders, but there, that wasn't their purpose. Their purpose was always external. And I recognize that it's possible to have a purpose that is also internal, right? And that if you had to pick between these two, then ultimately, the people should matter more, right? Because you can't have a company that has a global purpose out there in the world, but it's a miserable place to work. While they’re suffering inside the company while they're doing something great for customer. I mean, that's not OK. You know, charity begins at home when caring begins at home. And so, the idea that purpose can and should be multifaceted and every company should have a people-centered purpose in addition to ideally also an external purpose.
And over time, I've come to realize that that external purpose can also be about suppliers in some companies, right? If you're a company like some of these chocolate and coffee companies that are all about fair trade and making sure that the farmer in Ethiopia or Columbia has a decent life and is not exploited, so their purpose is very much rooted in the supply chain, not so much in customer, right? Or your purpose can be about the planet like Patagonia, and it's rooted very much in saving our own planet. Some purposes might be in the community. So, broadening the lens on purpose was one big thing and the other one was about leadership. Leadership, I had thought, is primarily focused with what happens at work, right? You create conscious leaders so that people have a wonderful experience while they're at work. They're engaged and they are innovative and creative and passionate and all of that. But the idea at Barry-Wehmiller that the way we lead impacts the way people live and it impacts their families and their children. All of that. I had not thought about that. That wasn't part of our research up to that point. You can have a purposeful workplace, but then people are getting burned out and they're spending all their time there and their children are suffering or there could be a variety of ways in which that can be disconnected. So, the idea of leadership as a stewardship of the lives entrusted to us, that was a deeper concept and conceptualization around leadership.
People thrive when their work is meaningful and they feel cared for and part of the shared purpose.
A few years ago, Harvard Business Review said that nine out of ten people would earn less money to do more meaningful work:
Employees with very meaningful work, we found, spend one additional hour per week working, and take two fewer days of paid leave per year. In terms of sheer quantity of work hours, organizations will see more work time put in by employees who find greater meaning in that work. More importantly, though, employees who find work meaningful experience significantly greater job satisfaction, which is known to correlate with increased productivity. Based on established job satisfaction-to-productivity ratios, we estimate that highly meaningful work will generate an additional $9,078 per worker, per year.
The Great Resignation. The Great Detachment. Great Disengagement. Great Dismay. Great Dissatisfaction. Whatever trendy topic and title the surveyors and scholars choose to characterize the current malaise, it’s clear the string of them will continue until leaders begin to focus on providing meaning and purpose along with a paycheck.
As I say time and again, every one of us, no matter what our job or where we live, simply want to know that who we are and what we do matters. As leaders in business, we have the awesome responsibility to let people know that they do.
Time to strive for a label that reflects a workplace renaissance that people deserve. It is our hope that Truly Human Leadership will spark that new wave. Maybe Gallup will call it The Great Revival, The Great Reinvigoration or The Great Rejuvenation!