Episode 54: The Great Resignation with Shivani Gupta 

I'm Shivani Gupta, and welcome to the Ask Shivani podcast. I believe that one of the best presents that you can give yourself is time to be able to sit down and ask yourself some questions. I believe that the quality of the question that you ask yourself will determine the quality of your life.

Hi everyone and welcome to the AskShivani podcast where you get to ask some questions and either try and answer them do some research, we'll get some great guest to talk about the things that matter.

Today's podcast is going to be focused on the great resignation, this is something that we're hearing a lot about, let's talk about what's happening, what are some of the stats and what you as an employee or employers could be doing around managing them. So, the great resignation is something that has really started to be talked about since the pandemic in 2020, where there are large numbers of people that are resigning from their roles across the globe, not just in one industry, not just in one demographic, but across the board.

Let me give you some stats in terms of what's happening as part of a slash resignation, Germany had 6% of the employees quit, as a result, in that 12-month period, which is a lot of people when you multiply it, the UK has had 5%, that's classified under the great resignation. The Netherlands, even with great structures, and the employee benefits have had 3%. In the US, the biggest area where they've had the biggest Dropout is the retail. Now partly that's because the pandemic, partly certain things weren't open. But there's also people as things have opened, have not wanted to return to it. I know recently, every cafe I go to every different place I go to there are signs up saying we need people we are hiring; we are wanting needing more staff, urgent, please apply. So, there is absolutely more gaps in certain places in terms of what needs to happen.

So, why are people doing this? I know certainly in some of the conversations that I've had, and some of the articles that I've read, people are going to this notion that I know Marie Kondo made famous about what brings me joy, what is actually bringing me joy in my life. And if I'm not feeling that joyful around it, then what will I need to change? And what will I need to do? For me, if I share my personal experience, I completely out of the blue, just walking the puppy, with the kids on one of the days of January this year, broken ankle, rolled it over and absolutely cracked the heel, I wasn't jumping, wasn't doing anything exciting. I wasn't on rough ground; it was a concrete path. And I rolled over and did it. So besides spending nine weeks on the moonbow, I also then ended up getting a physio and I spoke to my couple of my spiritual teachers, broken ankle, lack of joy in certain aspects of your work.

So, this year, really started to get me to think about what I was going to do differently in terms of being able to create a different reality and a different future, not only for this year, but also going into 2022. So, one of the reasons about the great resignation, and people are saying, hey, this thing is not bringing me joy. In fact, it's the opposite. It's actually bringing me stress. It brings me sleepless night; some people are talking about how much anxiety and depression that they've had. And so some of the people have done it for them.

The other reason that's coming up in a lot of the articles that are posted and people that are speaking about it is this lack of connection. So, they've actually recognized that there's connection isn't just physical connection, when you're in the office, if you're in the office environments or in cafes, it's not the physical connection, but it's also feeling deeply connected to it to something that you believe in, perhaps is that purpose, conversation? Perhaps if that why conversation of saying, am I connected to other people? Am I connected to something bigger than myself? And am I actually making a difference in what I'm trying to achieve? So, this notion of more joy, more connection, more purpose more why is one of some of the major reasons in terms of part people are starting to talk about this great resignation. And people have also started to question this word ambition.

Ambition has often been a judge word. I actually think ambition is a great word. Because ambition just talks about here are my goals. Here are my aspirations here is what I'm ambitious about. I'm hoping to exceed this particular goal, and I'm feeling ambitious about it. But sometimes it's been seen as a really negative thing. But certainly, again, people that I'm speaking to are saying, I'm not sure I've got the same ambitions. As I'm dealing with the effects of the pandemic that I did before. It's making me realign my values, what's really important to me and what's really not. I know that last year, as we spent more time at home, we've got 11- and 12-year-old and one of the things we noticed in the last decade since having the kids is that one of us has travelled a bit and we've had fairly you know, hectic lives and obviously all of that came to a halt in 2020 with my husband's travel, coming to a halt my travel coming to a halt. We are all going online as much as we could working from home. And one of the things on our we asked our family is that the way these changes ever happened as a result of the pandemic things that were outside of circle of influence. Is it something that we want to continue and go back to? Or is it something that we want to make more long-lasting changes?

You know, let's take weight for an example. A lot of people can lose weight really quickly. But are they able to sustain that weight loss? That becomes the key issue. So, we're all forced into the, into the pandemic, we're all forced into not travel. But when things change, will we actually travel or where we actually leave it and not worry about it? So yeah, really, really interesting conversation. And when we all sat down as a family and had a family discussion about it, none of us wanted to go back to the pace that we were perhaps living between our travel and our full-time work and our kids, schooling and sports. And that's before we've got too social anything else in the community. And we went, we probably need to take a backward step here and really look at how we living and what we want to change.

So, some of the changes that we made was that my husband decided to apply for more local based jobs. That will include some trouble, which not a lot has happened in 2021. But it's not going to be anywhere at the pace that it was, we also both looked at how much energy and time was going into what was causing us some stresses. Some of it was some of the processes, some of it was our financial, some of it was, so we then start to say, well, actually, what are some of the things that we and decisions we could make, that would reduce our stress, align ourselves with our values, and so that we started to look at our ambitions differently and reset them with a different intention now. I'll be honest, there's parts of me that really misses the travel. And there's some of it, I'm really looking forward to by myself for my own learning, but also with my family. Because travel is a really important part of who we are and how we live. But it's also about how to make the most of what we've got, and how to have more gratitude for what we have.

And one of the conversations that starting a lot in workplaces now. And I'm dealing with lots and lots of clients that I have an opportunity to mentor and organizations is that people are still trying to find this magical balance between what day is that they can stay home and what days and work from home, and what days can they need to be in the office. And so, some of it needs to be forced, some people have absolutely loved working from home, and I have other people have absolutely disliked it, because they've really missed that human connection. And particularly if you have really little children at home, and you're trying to manage all of that, I could say that, that would be a lot more challenging than for us having twins. And for people that perhaps have got older kids or don't have any children, it'd be a very different landscape in terms of how you manage some of your time.

And the other increasing trend that I'm seeing, and I know that it's a small sample size with a number of people that are mentoring is a lot of people going into 2022 are asking the questions, how could they restructure their role so that they could actually work for days? How could they potentially get paid for four to four and a half days? But how could they work longer hours. So, some of my clients have now started saying actually, what they'll do is do nine, nine and a half or 10-hour days, four days away, work longer those hours. So, they are still on full time salary, and looking at how we can restructure and renegotiate that with the workplace and come up with different parameters around that. The other thing that people are saying is actually I'm happy to take a 20% pecker. And I'm now wanting to really manage a bunch of other things that I've learned from the pandemic. And I want to work a lot less hours. So, people are looking at things very, very differently in terms of, you know, what will get created, and what will happen.

So, I just think it's really important as you look at and learn from and watch the right resignation, and certainly the trends that indicating that this will continue to happen. Some industries will be worse than others. I know, like I said, a lot of cafes, restaurants are really, really short staffed. And you know, people are really realigning in terms of who they are. And also, the question becomes, what happens to some of those industries in the long run as well.

So, I hope today just get you to think about you know, are you seeing the trends in your industry? Are you one of those people that are going to be thinking about the great resignation? Or are you seeing and feeling the impacts of it, but if you apply this to you, and what your 2022 looks like, as you get to the end of 21, then what are your new ambitions? What are your values? And are your goals and what you're trying to achieve next year in alignment with what you're trying to create? Or do you feel like they're not? And what are the changes that you want to make around that?

So yeah, I'm certainly starting to think about doing things differently next year learning from my broken ankle, learning from some of the not-so-great things that have happened in our business as well as personal life in the last 18 months, 20 months, and how to actually make those shifts, and I hope you do too. Thank you.

I'm Shivani Gupta. And you've been listening to the Ask Shivani podcast where I'd like to ask some questions. Thank you so much for listening. Please follow Ask Shivani on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. And if you haven't done so, please go to the Apple podcasts and subscribe rate and review this podcast. It would mean a lot. Thank you.