During the summer of 2022, we kept hearing about the Quiet Quitting, a term that relates to significant employee disengagement at work.
Whether or not it’s a new phenomenon or simply a new emphasis on an issue that has always been there, the consequences remain the same:
Employees are less engaged, tend to either stay and become less present, or leave without a second thought, and companies eventually lose talented people and money. Lots of money, actually.
According to a Conference Board study, quiet quitting costs US-based companies approximately $500 billion a year, not a small amount.
But it’s much more important to focus on the question of What will make employees stay, or become more engaged?
What could reverse this trend of absenteeism or presenteeism, and get the business systems on a more human-sustainable path?
And the biggest question mark of all – is it ALL about money?
Here’s where the data become interesting and paint a different picture than pure opportunism.
While more and more employees tend to take their own destiny into their hands, we can see a clear rise in motivations such as freedom, flexibility, and fulfillment.
Take a look at this striking number:
75% of employees stated that they are more likely to stay with a company that offers continuous training
The immediate conclusion?
Companies should invest more in training – continuous(!) training – in order to retain employees.
But there’s also a sub-conclusion to that representation of employees’ will:
We all have a need to evolve over time. Societies, companies, and individuals altogether.
Ultimately, that’s a conclusion that companies should have known by now: a body that can’t evolve and grow over time, will die (or quit…). It’s a natural process.
The meaning of it is that training is not just about bridging skills gaps and knowledge sharing; Training is also about evolvement. Horizon. Emergent future.
It’s less about taking control and more about delivering value, capacity, and tools to enable someone to pave their way forward.
Fulfillment, according to the Cambridge dictionary, is “the fact of doing something that is necessary or something that someone has wanted or promised to do”.
Fulfillment, therefore, involves listening to individuals’ needs and aspirations, and keeping up with a given promise. In the mentioned case, it’s an unwritten contract between companies and their employees to support their fulfillment in varied ways.
Idealistic? Not when considering two complementary elements:
First, companies are made of people (humans), and those have human needs that need to be met and fulfilled.
Second, companies will halt their growth (money, stability, etc) if their people’s growth will stall.
A final thought:
Investing in employees’ training and capacity to grow is investing in the system’s ability to grow, since one is tied to the other. But more than that – it’s the right, human-centered thing to do. This is where the business world is stepping toward, and no company should be left behind.
