Curing the ‘I Quit’ Syndrome
In his classic 19th century short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street,” Herman Melville captured the perfect storm that erupts when a productivity-minded capitalist brings on a new hire with the opposite agenda.
Bartleby’s job is to copy tedious legal documents; he responds to all of his employer’s special requests with the same five words: “I would prefer not to.” Yet he never leaves the premises and sleeps at his desk, leaving his boss, a lawyer, confounded.
After several tortured months, the lawyer feels compelled to transfer his entire office elsewhere to escape from Bartleby, who wanders the empty building until he is hauled off to the Tombs, the city jail, where he protests by starving himself to death.
Reflecting on his failed attempts to engage or help Bartleby, the lawyer concludes that the fault is not his, because “nothing so aggravates an earnest person as much as a passive resistance.”
Unhappy workers in 2022, unlike Bartleby, have another way of resisting, and they are doing it with impunity: quitting. More than 4 million U.S. workers per month voluntarily left their jobs from January through mid-2022, according to a McKinsey & Co. survey released in July. More frightening for employers is the survey’s prediction that 40% of American workers are considering quitting their jobs in the next three to six months.
The old adage, “don’t quit a job until you have another one lined up,” no longer applies. Many Americans taking part in the Great Resignation want to find satisfying and challenging jobs on their terms, including the flexibility to work from home at least some of the time.
The most cogent response to the crisis of employee turnover comes from another McKinsey report from mid-July, “Are You Searching the Right Talent Pools?” McKinsey consultants say the answer to a “fundamental mismatch” between companies’ demand for talent and the number of workers willing to supply it lies in wooing “nontraditional workers.”
Who are these people? Initially, they are people willing to return to work in a different industry; it’s their skills, rather than their industry experience or education, that give nontraditionalists the confidence to jump ship to a totally different environment.
Because there’s less concern over job-hopping or résumé gaps, workers now feel empowered to act on their dissatisfaction without worrying about their “stability” image.
McKinsey’s survey showed the top reasons people quit their jobs from April 2021 to April 2022 were 1) lack of career development and advancement; 2) inadequate total compensation; 3) uncaring and uninspiring leaders; and 4) lack of meaningful work.
The McKinsey report mirrors a Pew Research Center survey from March 2022, which found a majority of workers who quit a job in 2021 cited, in order, “low pay, no opportunities for advancement, and feeling disrespected.”
Because there’s less concern over job-hopping or résumé gaps, workers now feel empowered to act on their dissatisfaction without worrying about their “stability” image.
McKinsey’s recommended talent pools include: “Do-it-yourselfers,” who value flexibility, meaningful work, and compensation and tend to be 25–45 years old. “Idealists,” who value flexibility, career development, and a community of reliable and supportive people. They’re often students and younger part-timers ages 18–24. “Caregivers” value workplace flexibility and support for employee health and well-being, and generally range from 18-44, with most being women. Finally, “relaxers” include retirees and others who have exited the full-time, permanent workforce and are not actively looking to return to a traditional job.
All these workers have assertively left the historic labor market, and, presumably, feel happier (or at least less stressed) because of their exit.
To persuade them to rejoin the full-time workforce, McKinsey recommends that companies not only change their recruiting messages, but their actual culture—to one that revolves around flexibility, mental and behavioral health benefits, and different forms of career progression.
Considering the high cost of employee turnover—often twice the salary of the employee who quit—companies simply cannot afford to operate in a pre-pandemic mode. Workers in the nontraditional talent pool demand a different type of workplace and can hold out until they find it.
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They’ve changed the employer-employee balance. Adapting to that power shift will determine which companies stay afloat, or which, like Bartleby’s employer, remain confounded by people who “prefer not to.”
