Hint: It Starts with Managers

What Is Causing The Great Resignation?

What is driving this historical moment in time where tens of millions of people have quit or are thinking about quitting their jobs in search of something new? The standard aspects of a job like career advancement, compensation, and benefits play a role, but it’s the human aspects of work (or more accurately, the lack thereof) that seem to be pushing people over the edge.

A recent article published by McKinsey & Company in September 2021 reported that because of the isolation, uncertainty, and change brought about by the pandemic, employees are craving a human investment in the workplace. Specifically, people want:

This need for employees to feel valued by their managers seems to be overlooked by employers. In that same McKinsey & Company article, employees rated “valued by my manager” as the second most important factor in staying at a job, only behind “valued by my organization.” Conversely, employers placed it significantly lower, all the way down at number 18, behind the more transactional aspects of work like compensation and the ability to work remotely.

This striking difference between what employees want vs. what employers THINK they want is a problem.

Understanding the Employee/Manager Relationship

We dug in to learn more about this gap in understanding by surveying nearly 5,000 employees—from individual contributors to C-suite executives—to get a better understanding of the employee/manager relationship as it stands right now.

First, as you may have guessed, management matters.We learned that the relationship turns over quickly with 62% of respondents reporting a change in their manager within the last two years. Despite tenure, however, managers are a key driver of the employee experience with 96% of individual contributors surveyed agreeing that their manager has an impact on their well being at work, and 42% stating they have left a job in the past because of their manager. In addition, managers are culture shapers with 98% agreeing this group plays a critical role in building an engaged and connected organizational culture.

Second, helping managers improve their effectiveness through management training is universally perceived as a good investment in time and money with 99% of leaders, 98% of managers, and 92% of individual contributors agreeing that it’s worth managers’ time to develop and improve their management skillset.

The Great Resignation is a major problem for organizations.

We know that focusing on the manager/employee relationship, and ensuring each manager has the skills they need to adapt their approach to each of their direct reports, could have a massive impact on retention, engagement, and ultimately performance. Management, like any other human element in the workplace, is not a one-size-fits-all discipline. Each manager has a distinct set of strengths, stressors, hidden assumptions, and blind spots they bring to their management practice—all of which are shaped by a lifetime of social and emotional experiences. Here, we use a simple yet powerful personality model—the DiSC^® model—to uncover some of the hidden assumptions each management style brings to work, the impact they have on their teams, and actionable strategies to help each management style rethink their role.