Leadership Development

In the battle against burnout, HR leaders have tried a slew of strategies from extra time off to added benefits and everything in between, but we’re still seeing unprecedented rates of burnout. A whopping 89% of employees have fallen victim to burnout, according to a survey conducted this summer (2021) of 1,000 full-time U.S. workers by workplace analytics firm Visier. So, the age old question: what actually works?

To thrive in today’s modern workplace, every single person at your organization needs to grow their “soft skills,” skills that can only be honed through practice and experimentation. Before we get caught up on the fact that the term “soft skills” doesn’t remotely do this set of skills justice, take a minute and think about the current way learning typically happens in most workplaces: programs and classes.

As The Great Resignation rages on, let’s talk about why people are leaving. According to a recent study from Edelman, the #1 reason employees are leaving is a lack of fulfillment. The pandemic triggered a personal reckoning for many people, and for many people, their current work fell short of what they want it to be. With choice and flexibility at an all time high in the job market, they also have the opportunity to weigh how they feel about the work they do as much as the benefits they’ll receive.

According to the World Economic Forum, women lost 36 years of progress in 2020 alone, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 36 years! That number is staggering. Despite comprising nearly half of the workforce and earning more than half of all college degrees, women still only represent 25% of executives and senior managers, hold less than 5% of CEO jobs, and occupy less than 20% of board seats at S&P 500 companies.

The “Great Resignation” has been in full swing for the bulk of this year, with a record-breaking 10.9 million open jobs at the end of July, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But you already know that—this isn’t new news. HR leaders have been facing ongoing and exceptional pressure for the last 18 months, and this is the latest stressful headline to directly affect them.

Workforce Management estimates that companies spend a combined $8 billion on diversity and inclusion training annually. For the most part, companies have focused on anti-bias training, mentoring programs, employee resource groups, and adding DEI roles. Yet, with all this increased investment, it’s difficult to measure how effective they are at making a meaningful difference.

Engagement surveys are a commonly accepted aspect of most HR strategies, yet they only tell a partial story of your people’s actual experience. Surveys are self-reported and conducted at a fixed point in time, and according to a Cornell National Social Survey, 26% of the employees withhold information about ideas for improvement or problems they face due to the futility of the exercise. In fact, futility was 1.8x more common reason than fear for withholding information.

Over the past year, companies have increased their investment in employee experience benefits, and yet according to Gartner Benchmarking Survey, only 31 percent of human resource managers believe their current workforce is satisfied with the perks they get from work. Gartner’s research found that the companies must reinvent their EVP (employee value proposition) to shift from being about features and benefits to covering the social and emotional needs of employees.

A great culture is one of the most important things a company can have—and one of the hardest things to achieve, especially in the hybrid workplace. Cultivating trust is a key ingredient to a winning culture while research clearly shows lack of trust has detrimental effects. As Stephen M. R. Covey writes in The Speed of Trust, “When trust goes down (in a relationship, on a team, in an organization, or with a partner or customer), speed goes down and cost goes up.… The inverse is equally true: When trust goes up, cost goes down, and speed goes up.”

Internal networks can be used not only to foster learning and mentorship, but also to create valuable human connections between coworkers. This is especially true in an economy in which flexible work schedules and remote work are becoming more and more common. There’s been no existing way to create diverse trusted peer networks in hybrid work places, but organizations need to figure it out quickly.