By Béatrix Charlier, CEO of P’OP – In this highly Darwinian period, the primary challenge for business leaders has become a matter of survival. Succeeding in sustaining one’s business has never been so difficult, complex, or even hazardous.
However, neither chance nor luck can be of any help.
To this challenge is added a second one, often unspoken: the disengagement of employees, from those who do not wish to return to their structures to those who are leaving them.
Today, the gap has never been wider between the challenges faced by leaders and the expectations of their employees! The objective of the bias survey conducted in June is to provide you with the keys to understand what is shifting during this Momentum within your organizations.
Welcoming Back
While the issue of health conditions for employees’ return is at the heart of every organization’s concerns today, there remains another apprehension, more subtle, more complex, and therefore difficult to articulate: that of their re-engagement.
This is the current challenge. How can we welcome team members back when the feelings provoked by the lockdown of the past three months have severely impacted everyone’s professional and private lives.
All of us have had our relationships with the world, work, family, loved ones, and ourselves shaken.
Ephemeral paths of loyalty
The first indicator of this 3rd survey reveals that 27% of employees, across all generations, intend to leave their current job. Compared to the two previous surveys in 2016 and 2017, this indicator shows a decrease of nearly 30%. If we consider only representatives of Generation “Y” (born between 1978 and 1995), the Turnover Gamers, only 30.7% now dream of new horizons. This is far from the 60.5% who claimed this in 2016!
This first indicator is, of course, inherent to the “crisis effect”! Fear creates paths of loyalty. In this period of doubt and uncertainty, the need for security becomes one of the primary needs to be met. However, be careful not to draw hasty conclusions from these figures, whose volatility remains one of their attributes, especially concerning Millennials, as we will see later.
New Meanings Are Emerging
The second telling indicator is related to the question: ‘After the health crisis of recent weeks, have your professional aspirations changed?’
The answer is yes for 46.7% of respondents!
Leading the way are representatives of Generations “X” (born between 1966 and 1977) and “Y” (born between 1978 and 1995), each accounting for 49.5%. They are followed by 41% of New Joiners, those from Generation “Z” (born between 1995 and 2012) who have just embarked! Finally, 38% of Baby Boomers (born between 1945 and 1965) align with this opinion.
This score is all the more telling as it clearly informs us about these new aspirations. If we consider the average rate, across all generations, their ranking is as follows:
1. Invest myself in a company whose values align with my own (50%);
2. Work closer to home (45%);
3. Reduce my working hours, even if I earn less (40%);
4. Get involved in actions that have an environmental impact (28%);
5. Change professional direction (21%).
From Values to Virtues
“Investing myself in a company whose values align with my own” tops the list of new aspirations. This new value-centric need is not just a personal matter; it signals a new requirement: authenticity. Displaying company values on walls, whether physical or virtual, is no longer enough. Let’s give them meaning again! This is what these initial results seem to tell us.
Company culture is not decreed or proclaimed; it is lived and embodied!
The next two aspirations seem to stem more from the private sphere. There is a resource whose management was questioned during this lockdown: time. If the 24 hours of a day are the only resource by which all human beings are equal, we have all already asked ourselves how to save time?
It seems that the lockdown has shed new light on it.
The first aims to avoid wasting time by reducing commuting time and, above all, time spent in traffic jams. The second, more committed if I may say so, re-evaluates the allocation of time dedicated to one’s private life. From this, a new intention arises for some: to work less, even if it means earning less money! The experience of remote work has allowed us to domesticate work, to give it its proper place. There is a life to be lived fully, not just a remaining living space once work is done!
Are we witnessing the emergence of new freedoms?
Whether we lacked it or rediscovered it, during this lockdown, our relationship with time acted as a revealer. For those who had it, they were able to outline new projects, adopt a different vision, and dream of other possibilities. In a word, access a space of freedom.
This freedom, an emblematic value of Generation “Y” before the health crisis, has remained so. Indeed, the aspiration to change professional direction is predominantly held by Millennials, at 34.7%. Believing that the current crisis will reduce their need for change would therefore be a serious mistake. Their quest for meaning constantly drives them to reinvent themselves!
The meaning of work has changed.
Before the lockdown, there was already a crisis of meaning within companies, as revealed by our 2016 survey on “Generation “Y” Turnover.” However, during the lockdown, all of us questioned the meaning of our work. We have, in a way, integrated the quest and the world of Millennials.
Today, working for the sake of working is no longer enough; just as enriching oneself for the sake of enriching oneself can no longer be the sole purpose of a company.
No one knows what the companies of tomorrow will be!
The current challenge for companies is to offer a meaning greater than mere economic performance.
Those who succeed in retaining their employees in the medium term, meaning after spring 2021, will be those who at a minimum integrate autonomy (remote work, co-working spaces, new mobilities…) and embody strong values that commit them to contributing to a livable and sustainable society.
To think that Covid-19 has given us no gift would be a mistake. It has offered us a break! And a break is necessary for progress! It was not by perfecting the candle that electricity was invented…
On the eve of an announced collapse, let us be bold, even utopian; let us bring out our trump cards! Let us dare to use intelligence to achieve our dreams and be reborn like phoenixes. Let us dare to light true lights!
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If you are experiencing signs of disengagement or even turnover among your employees, solutions exist! Come meet me at the P’OP stand during Human Capital Europe on November 26th and let’s discuss in more detail via chat or video call.