Videos, Articles and Podcasts
We all know what a metronome is. A metronome is a device that helps its user stay in time. The user sets the beat of the metronome, and the metronome produces an audible click or other sound for the user to follow. The metronome is typically set in beats per minute because it’s traditionally used by musicians to help them keep the pulse when playing an instrument.
People leave their jobs for all kinds of different reasons.
They thought the role was right for them, but it wasn’t.
They thought they were going to spend most of their time working on the parts of the role they enjoyed, but quickly realised that the less enjoyable ‘administrative’ parts of the role were what the job is really about.
Way back in 1974, a guy called Marvin A. Jolson wrote an article called ‘The Salesman’s Career Cycle’ for a US publication called The Journal of Marketing. It starts like this, “The Product Life Cycle (PLC) has been found to be a fundamental key to successful and profitable product management, from the introduction of new products to the phasing out of obsolescent ones. An analogous continuum that ranges from the recruitment of a new salesman to his termination suggests that appropriateness of the salesman’s career cycle (SCC) as a general model for assisting sales executives.”
It’s easy to think that the only guaranteed way to retain employees is to pay them more money than your competitors. If only it was that easy because there’s a lot more to employee retention than that.
Hopefully, when you take that inevitable moment between now and 2023 to look back over the last twelve months, you'll see a lot to be happy about. As far as business is concerned, if a few things didn't go so well or a couple of your leadership decisions might have been better, that's what being a leader or a manager is all about—making mistakes and learning from them.
One of my colleagues recently created a presentation about generational differences among employees. It went something like this:
Generation X people, who were born between 1965 and 1980, tend to be ‘over workers’ with an ‘I’ve got this job for life’ mentality. They typically have high levels of faith that the company they work for will stay loyal to them.
Generation Z people, who were born between 2001 and 2020, tend to have a more transient approach to work. They’re focused on finding a work/life balance and they don’t have faith in the loyalty of the company they work for.
The Great Regret is the fallout of The Great Resignation. While The Great Resignation was all about the mass exodus of employees who decided to pack up their jobs post-COVID and look for something better, The Great Regret is what's happened now they're starting to realise that the new, 'better' job they found isn't all it was cracked up to be.
According to recent studies conducted by the Harvard Business Review and the recruitment site The Muse, almost a third of US workers who quit during The Great Resignation are suffering from The Great Regret. The Muse even has a new buzzword for it. They're calling it "Shift Shock". In The Muse-speak, Shift Shock is "that feeling when you start a new job and realise, with either surprise or regret, that the position or company is very different from what you were led to believe." That's because the job changer has had:
Economists, politicians, academics and newspaper editors with too much time on their hands love to make up buzzwords.
One of the most recent examples is the phenomenon that occurred soon after the COVID pandemic ended, when a massive wave of people who were fortunate enough to still be in work decided to pack in their jobs and look for something else.
The buzzword the economists and their cronies gave it was 'The Great Resignation'.
