Over the past few weeks, there have been astute voices questioning the terminology behind “#TheGreatResignation” – in a nutshell, it doesn’t feel right that people simply resign themselves to resigning and we should think of it from their perspective, as an act of long-overdue self-love and self-respect where they will no longer put up with artificial and damaging constructs of work or toxic cultures and we should consider how this is a raising social wave of realisation not merely a few individuals wanting better work conditions.
Firstly let me just say this is an amazing topic. I love the slant and the questioning, after all, it’s in this questioning that we will all find the most value. The term caught and it spread like wildfire but who’s to say if it’s wrong or right?
This article entitled “The Great Resignation or Great Awakening” in Forbes is tremendously eloquent in explaining what type of questioning we ought to do – are people leaving because of the pandemic or are they leaving because they finally had enough, this is the time when the veil fell off their eyes and they can see what they deserve clearly?
Obviously, the author and I can’t agree any more in terms of the extreme need for the awakening – after all, I spend my every waking (and some times non-waking!) hour helping people reduce the HumanDebt™ through what I happen to think is the most urgent and overarching lever -increasing the Psychological Safety of teams and consequently the happiness of the employees that are part of them but we may differ in our view of the term “TheGreatResignation”.
Again, for those who haven’t seen me repeat it ad nausea, here is the definition from my book “People Before Tech: The Importance of Teams and Psychological Safety in the Digital Age” :
HumanDebt™ is the equivalent to Technical Debt but for people. All of the initiative, the projects, the intentions we (the organisation) had to do better by them, but we abandoned halfway. All of the missed opportunities to make their lives and their work easier and more joyful. All of the empty talk on equality, respect, lack of blame, courage and trust. All of the missing talk on teams. All of the lack of preoccupation or resources for building better team dynamics. All of the toxic culture that comes from it. That’s Human Debt.
If you read any of our articles over the past couple of years, at PeopleNotTech we keep warning of how great the HR crisis really is, of how big a human tragedy it is that we have workers not only actively disengaged but genuinely suffering and in life-threatening situations due to the HumanDebt in their organisation and ultimately how utterly ridiculous and wrong it is that employees should be forced to set their humanity aside and go through the motions in a semi-productive fashion irrespective of how unhappy we make them.
It’s an outrage, undoubtedly. And it’s now clear to everyone including said employees. Clear enough that they are doing something about it and clear enough that in the future, we have no reason to believe they will ever settle for less.
Less than flexibility. Be it around time, place, mindsets or process.
Less than being accepted as a whole individual with a life.
Less than being valued, trusted and free in close-knit, curious, high performing teams that care more about the human work than the day-to-day ops.
Less than enjoying themselves at work.
Less than being never afraid.
Less than feeling whole and human and cared for.
None of that less will be an option for talent, they won’t settle ever again and anyone unprepared to offer what they need when they don’t can’t keep them. More so, above and beyond the talent, anyone who can’t get over the cringing and can’t comprehend they have to ruthlessly audit their HumanDebt and then redesign their every thought and process until they have a true human-centred organisation with happy, productive, autonomous and psychologically safe teams, runs a huge risk in terms of sustainability and may well not even be around in the years to come if they haven’t taken been scared by the GreatResignation or Awakening into doing the right thing.
While I absolutely take Sesil Pier’s point that the power of language is immense so getting these things to land with the right formulation is essential, I feel that “economical language” will serve this cause a lot better than “social language” and anything we would say around “a movement” “a revolution” or “workers’ rights to be cared for, respected and flourish” would be damaging. The fact that we have skipped over “the fluffy” bit – because make no mistake about it, to old school execs each and every mention of these words is “fluffy” is probably for the best.
In tomorrow’s video and article we’ll get started on a list of terms to normalise so you have a way to start on the big human work in your organisation.
So yes, I believe if it is to accomplish anything it has to be an economic imperative – even then it isn’t scary enough – I keep giving this example but look at D&I, look at Engagement – we know how doing better at those and reducing the HumanDebt puts money in the pockets of the stakeholders and we still have leadership cringe and deprioritize anything to do with “purpose”, “impact”, “emotional bond”, “team wellbeing” and even “psychological safety” when most of these have been shown to directly affect their bottom line.
So I’ll go against the grain here and disagree despite how I wholeheartedly agree with the spirit. Of course, it’s “The Great Awakening” but “The Great Resignation” is much more poignant and more powerful and will -hopefully- at least by mere keyword scare some execs into drastic action because giving their talent what they now know they deserve and can get elsewhere is first and foremost an economic imperative and if we should call it a social or moral one we’re even less likely to see lasting transformations happen.
The pandemic was/is an intently emotional moment. Panic or at least Maslow-lower-pyramid-levels-fear, hope, gratitude, forced introspection, intense human connection and intense human disconnect, and so many more but indeed, it’s only one of the causes of why this moment has arrived, it had been brewing in the unhappiness of talent for aeons and work had long been overdue an overhaul. We need to start paying off some of this HumanDebt on the double in order to respond to “The Great A-Ha Moment” or whatever we want to call this, because irrespective of the wording, the time for monumental change has come.
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This Thursday on the Fundamentals of Psychological Safety Series: “Psychological Safety In Numbers” so be sure to subscribe so you have it in your inbox.
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The 3 “commandments of Psychological Safety” to build high performing teams are: Understand, Measure and Improve
Read more about our Team Dashboard that measures and improves Psychological Safety at www.peoplenottech.com or reach out at contact@peoplenottech.com and let’s help your teams become Psychologically Safe, healthy, happy and highly performant.
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