What did we learn from 2021? Despite the shifts in workplace culture, numerous surveys show that a large percentage of employees would like to leave their current employer and move to a new one
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By Clinton Wingrove
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once came across a great quotation, “Life's about being made to do things and then being glad you were made to afterwards." Doesn’t that just sum up the past two years? The professional press is littered with articles about how organisations are: • Prioritizing the mental and physical health of their employees; • Reimagining all aspects of work and looking at employee health holistically to better support their workforces; | DECEMBER 2021
• Getting their HR and IT leaders to ensure that technologies, workflows and processes are designed in a way that enshrines worker wellbeing; • Responding to employee needs and continuing or expanding WFH and flexible working policies; • Investing in training and development to ensure diversity and inclusion; • Finding new ways to support talent development to secure management continuity.
And yet, numerous surveys show that a large percentage of employees would like to leave their current employer and move to a new one! Employees are not stupid! They can smell when policies have changed because they had to. They can tell the difference between leaders and organisations that genuinely care about them and those that act as though they do but only out of necessity. They can spot when their employers were forced to do some-
thing and yet claim that they are glad that they did it. I contend that virtually none of the things so positively described in the professional press would have happened without the combined pressure from the pandemic, social media, and the workforces. If these three factors had not combined to create the perfect storm, many of the organisations would have continued with the traditional beliefs, processes, and practices of short-term profit goals; 9-5 working; on-site working; pressure to keep short term absence down; cost-cutting; etc. It’s easy to claim benevolence when you have already been forced to pay. So, against that backdrop, what did we learn from 2021? Our employees have the measure of us, the taste of power, and high expectations. In no order of priority, here is my list of learnings: 1. It is possible to have substantial parts of the workforce working remotely. But, we do not yet understand the longer term and unintended consequences of virtual or hybrid working. Many questions remain e.g.,
Whilst individual rewards can trigger temporary spikes in motivation, it is an employee’s cumulative experiences that determine their true motivation
