Here's what you should know about why an employee quits, according to author Anthony Klotz.
Today’s labor market bears little resemblance to the days of “The Great Resignation.”
Anthony Klotz, who coined the phrase in a May 2021 interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, has a new book about the factors that drive employees to quit: “Jolted: Why We Quit and Why It Matters.
And while employees are more hesitant to quit a job today, that doesn’t mean employers should relax. For some employees, the pandemic has forever shifted their relationship with work.
The “lottery question” gets even more interesting when you ask people if they would keep working at their current job after reaping a financial windfall. Klotz says those people amount to only 10%-20% of Americans.
That’s because a sudden event that changes your relationship to work is a powerful nudge toward the door. Klotz calls these events “jolts.”
What companies get wrong about quitting
“What perplexed researchers for a long time is why do employees often suddenly quit, often in illogical ways, sometimes in ways that leads to regret,” Klotz says. The culprit? Jolts.
In around 50% of the cases of all turnover, leavers can point to one event that happened that led them to really think about quitting,” Klotz explains. “This may be an out of the blue epiphany, or it could just be the straw that broke the camel's back.”
Those long-term factors like pay, benefits, a good boss, and meaningful work are all invaluable parts of the picture, but jolts help employers understand the triggers that drive action.
“We know that if somebody just had their first child, or somebody is reaching a milestone in their life, these are moments … when we take a step back and think about the arc of our career,” Klotz says. Employers should be aware that these events can trigger change.
Some jolts are not in employers’ control, but some can be influenced.
“We're increasingly finding that even small negative events in the workplace — like being treated rudely by your boss or just a small incident of ostracism where coworkers leave you out — those are often moments that make us step back and we experience them as a jolt,” Klotz says.
How do you know if an employee might have recently experienced a jolt? “They withdraw a little bit,” Klotz says. Someone who always volunteers in meetings or participates in group activities starts backpedaling.
Klotz shares two kinds of jolts that are commonly missed in the workplace today:
What drives retention (and engagement)
Great Place To Work® has data on what drives employees to want to stay with their company. According to a survey of more than 1.3 million employees:
- Employees who feel their work is meaningful are 294% more likely to want to stay
- People who feel their workplace is psychologically and emotionally healthy are 103% more likely to stay
- If someone feels like a full and respected member of the team, regardless of role, they’re 104% more likely to stay
When the labor market cools, factors like jolts can be just as important for employee engagement and performance.
“A lot of leaders realize that there's actually a healthy level of turnover,” Klotz says. You want new employees bringing in new ideas, and employees who are ready for their next chapter to easily navigate their transition.
In this market, however, companies are likely to see disengaged employees cling to their role. “You might be building up in your workforce people who have been jolted, [who] can't leave and so have disengaged a little bit,” Klotz warns.
What great companies can do
Klotz has some tips for businesses to navigate jolts:
1. Ensure every employee has a great leader
While the aphorism that “people don’t leave bad companies; they leave bad managers” isn’t exactly true, people leaders play an outsized role, Klotz says. That’s because employees likely interact with their manager every day.
More importantly, leaders wield a lot of power. “They have power over the tasks that we do, how our days unfold, whether we think anybody cares about us at work, our career development, and so forth,” Klotz says.
2. Engage around events that cause jolts
Once you start recognizing the events that cause jolts, the skills for remedying the situation are already in leaders’ toolkits: listening, helping employees craft their jobs to fit their current situation, reminding employees of the impact of their work, etc.
3. Get better at saying goodbye to employees with grace
While leaders want to prevent turnover, especially from high performers, sometimes it's inevitable, Klotz says. These transitions offer an opportunity for leaders:
4. Dig into the data around quits in the organization
“In this age of people analytics, there's a lot that companies can learn by studying the ways that employees quit their jobs,” Klotz says. Sometimes employees give lots of notice or express a lot of gratitude on their way out. Other employees impulsively walk off the job.
“What predicts whether employees leave in really positive ways versus really negative ways is how they feel that they've been treated in those last few months,” Klotz says.
An executive can look across the organization at how much notice people are giving each department when they leave. The more notice? The better the manager on that team.
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