Feel the churn: how to preserve employee loyalty amid the ‘great resignation’

In what’s become known as the great res­ig­na­tion, more and more peo­ple are leav­ing their jobs in search of a bet­ter lifestyle, with many hav­ing rel­ished their lock­down-enforced expe­ri­ence of remote work­ing and the extra time it’s giv­en them with their fam­i­lies.

The trend is extend­ing from the busi­ness world into the pub­lic sec­tor. The Trades Union Con­gress has warned that a “tox­ic mix” of low pay, high work­loads and a broad­er lack of recog­ni­tion is push­ing hard-pressed pub­lic ser­vants to the brink. Its lat­est sur­veys indi­cate that 21% of key work­ers in the sec­tor are “active­ly con­sid­er­ing” a move into anoth­er pro­fes­sion.

This research is backed up by a sur­vey from HR con­sul­tan­cy Rand­stad, which has found that 64% of employ­ees in the pub­lic sec­tor are feel­ing “con­fi­dent to move to a new job in the next cou­ple of months”, com­pared with 70% in the pri­vate sec­tor. 

Randstad’s senior direc­tor of oper­a­tions in the UK, Adri­an Smith, notes that com­par­a­tive­ly few pub­lic-sec­tor work­ers changed jobs dur­ing the first 12 months of the Covid cri­sis. “That is lead­ing to a del­uge of res­ig­na­tions now. A num­ber are suf­fer­ing from burnout,” he says, not­ing that the pan­dem­ic has prompt­ed many peo­ple to rethink life, work and what they want from both.

“Work­ers in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors want to change one of the key aspects of their life – their job – and the high num­ber of vacan­cies means that they can,” Smith adds.

Job vacan­cies in the UK hit an all-time high in July, with the num­ber of open posts exceed­ing 1 mil­lion for the first time, accord­ing to the Office for Nation­al Sta­tis­tics. As more sec­tors of the econ­o­my reopen, demand for tal­ent is fast out­strip­ping sup­ply. It’s now most def­i­nite­ly an employ­ees’ mar­ket.

What can pub­lic-sec­tor employ­ers do to pre­vent val­ued staff from walk­ing away? One effec­tive mea­sure could be to upgrade their tech­nol­o­gy, “espe­cial­ly if that enables peo­ple to improve their work/life bal­ance through hybrid work­ing”, says Dr Grace Lor­dan, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor in behav­iour­al sci­ence at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.

“The pan­dem­ic has giv­en many peo­ple a first taste of work­ing at home and spend­ing more time with their fam­i­lies for a bet­ter lifestyle,” she says. “So now they’re look­ing for jobs that can con­tin­ue to give them such flex­i­bil­i­ty. The pub­lic sec­tor will have to keep up in this respect. Oth­er­wise, it will lose a lot of staff to the pri­vate sec­tor.”

While tech­nolo­gies were trans­form­ing oper­a­tions before Covid-19, the pan­dem­ic was an inflec­tion point. The Covid cri­sis made clear the need to upgrade tech as gov­ern­ment organ­i­sa­tions and local author­i­ties endeav­oured to enable remote work­ing.

Peter Flem­ing is the leader of Sevenoaks Dis­trict Coun­cil in Kent and chair of the Local Gov­ern­ment Association’s improve­ment and inno­va­tion board. He believes that local author­i­ties nation­wide have stood up well against the prob­lems posed by the Covid cri­sis. Like oth­er employ­ers, they adapt­ed their work­ing meth­ods quick­ly dur­ing the lock­downs, offer­ing more flex­i­bil­i­ty to work­ers who were capa­ble of doing their jobs remote­ly. 

“Coun­cils have worked hard to ensure that their ser­vices con­tin­ue to be as acces­si­ble as pos­si­ble, mov­ing more of these to dig­i­tal plat­forms where appro­pri­ate. Their ongo­ing mod­erni­sa­tion has helped us to engage more effec­tive­ly with our com­mu­ni­ties and also giv­en us oppor­tu­ni­ties to auto­mate rou­tine tasks, there­by enrich­ing jobs and increas­ing the skills of our staff,” Flem­ing argues. 

Using a range of sys­tems and devices in a secure cloud, coun­cils can help their front-line staff, who may work in var­i­ous remote loca­tions and on dif­fer­ent shift pat­terns, to col­lab­o­rate in an effec­tive and ful­fill­ing way, he adds. IT upgrades may have been forced on local author­i­ties by the pan­dem­ic, but the result­ing ben­e­fits for staff could help to reduce the num­ber of poten­tial res­ig­na­tions.

In his Octo­ber bud­get, the chan­cel­lor pledged £65m in fund­ing for Eng­lish local author­i­ties to cre­ate a “new dig­i­tal sys­tem” to “improve the plan­ning regime”. This should not only pro­vide a bet­ter ser­vice for those seek­ing plan­ning per­mis­sion; it should also make life eas­i­er for coun­cil staff deal­ing with appli­ca­tions. The poten­tial automa­tion of some of the more hum­drum admin­is­tra­tive tasks could free them up to do more reward­ing work.

Giv­en the wide array of tech­nolo­gies on the mar­ket, find­ing the sys­tem that best suits the organisation’s needs can be dif­fi­cult. The key ques­tion to con­sid­er first is how much time is spent pro­cess­ing paper­work. If the answer is ‘a lot’, then tools that can auto­mate work­flows by send­ing doc­u­ments elec­tron­i­cal­ly to the right peo­ple are like­ly to be a good option.

If the vol­ume of work is like­ly to grow sig­nif­i­cant­ly, it will also be nec­es­sary to have a sys­tem that can eas­i­ly be scaled up to keep pace with increas­ing work­loads.

Most coun­cils rely on enter­prise resource plan­ning (ERP) soft­ware, a suite of inte­grat­ed appli­ca­tions for stan­dard oper­a­tional func­tions such as account­ing and HR man­age­ment. At their core is a data­base man­age­ment sys­tem that cen­tralis­es infor­ma­tion from all depart­ments. Inte­grat­ing key process­es, the tech­nol­o­gy stream­lines work­flows, empow­ers employ­ees to col­lab­o­rate and enables man­agers to access and analyse busi­ness-crit­i­cal data as it’s being gen­er­at­ed.

But, as the pace of change increas­es, tra­di­tion­al in-house, serv­er-based ERP pack­ages can’t always keep up. For­ward-look­ing coun­cil lead­ers are there­fore turn­ing to the cloud.

Cloud com­put­ing, which has become ever more impor­tant since the pan­dem­ic start­ed, has already trans­formed many busi­ness­es. Local author­i­ties are now fol­low­ing suit – and their employ­ees are ben­e­fit­ing as a result.

The cloud gives users remote access to the infor­ma­tion they need for their work via their smart­phones and oth­er devices, ensur­ing that no one is left out of the loop. Staff who have busy sched­ules and/or work a long way from the office can eas­i­ly keep abreast of pro­ceed­ings else­where in the organ­i­sa­tion. 

Such tech­nol­o­gy can engen­der a sense of belong­ing and shared pur­pose. Team mem­bers can view and share infor­ma­tion eas­i­ly and secure­ly. Some cloud-based ser­vices even pro­vide col­lab­o­ra­tive social spaces to con­nect employ­ees across the organ­i­sa­tion, there­by increas­ing inter­est and engage­ment. This lev­el of col­lab­o­ra­tion may be pos­si­ble with­out a cloud com­put­ing solu­tion, but it’s unlike­ly to be as easy to achieve.

Adopt­ing the lat­est in dig­i­tal IT alone is not enough when it comes to retain­ing tal­ent, of course. The intro­duc­tion of any new tech­nol­o­gy will require coun­cils to train staff in its use, but they also need to cre­ate a nur­tur­ing cul­ture that encour­ages peo­ple to learn and devel­op them­selves.

“The pub­lic sec­tor is, unfor­tu­nate­ly, rife with tight bud­gets,” notes Dar­ren Hock­ley, man­ag­ing direc­tor at e‑learning spe­cial­ist DeltaNet Inter­na­tion­al. “This means that there are lim­it­ed resources and a lim­it­ed num­ber of peo­ple to do the work. The last thing that local author­i­ties want to wor­ry about is los­ing good tal­ent.” 

Tra­di­tion­al train­ing meth­ods can be tedious, unen­gag­ing and inef­fec­tive, he adds, but arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) tech­nol­o­gy has the poten­tial to trans­form the learn­ing process. 

“Instead of repeat­ing the same old train­ing each year, using AI can offer more tai­lored, per­son­alised expe­ri­ences that will keep employ­ees more engaged,” Hock­ley argues. “Enabling employ­ees to car­ry out this train­ing online allows them to do any manda­to­ry cours­es when­ev­er and wher­ev­er they wish, work­ing around their dai­ly tasks and even from home if they are oper­at­ing to a hybrid work mod­el.” 

High-qual­i­ty train­ing, such as adap­tive learn­ing, doesn’t force employ­ees to go back over mate­r­i­al that they already know. Instead, it val­ues their time, leav­ing them feel­ing more engaged with the con­tent and with their organ­i­sa­tion, he adds. Fur­ther­more, adopt­ing user-friend­ly col­lab­o­ra­tion plat­forms such as Microsoft Teams or Slack will “allow imme­di­ate com­mu­ni­ca­tion between teams and sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve work­flow process­es”.

Ben Will­mott is head of pub­lic pol­i­cy at the Char­tered Insti­tute of Per­son­nel and Devel­op­ment, a pro­fes­sion­al body for HR prac­ti­tion­ers. He believes that the com­pe­ti­tion among employ­ers to hire skilled peo­ple in a wide range of roles will con­tin­ue to inten­si­fy. 

“The increas­ing dif­fi­cul­ty in recruit­ing exter­nal­ly high­lights the need for employ­ers to improve how they devel­op and retain their exist­ing work­ers to counter labour short­ages,” Will­mott says. “They need to focus on fac­tors beyond offer­ing a com­pet­i­tive salary to improve reten­tion. These include pro­vid­ing high-qual­i­ty line man­age­ment, dif­fer­ent types of flex­i­ble work­ing arrange­ments and oppor­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple to devel­op new skills and advance in their careers.”

An enlight­ened approach to man­age­ment should help to stem the tide of tal­ent that’s leav­ing the pub­lic sec­tor. Lead­ers of local author­i­ties and oth­er pub­lic bod­ies need to design a new employ­ee expe­ri­ence that’s fit for the Covid era. They should lis­ten more close­ly to staff feed­back to improve the work­ing envi­ron­ment, includ­ing the IT tools pro­vid­ed, and turn insights into action. Any fail­ure to act on a pledge will incur employ­ee dis­sat­is­fac­tion and so defeat the object of any con­sul­ta­tion exer­cise.

Reten­tion is the new bat­tle for pub­lic-sec­tor employ­ers and it’s being fought dig­i­tal­ly. Employ­ees are demand­ing high-qual­i­ty IT tools so that they can pro­duce their best work in a low-stress work­ing envi­ron­ment.

Finan­cial rewards are impor­tant, of course, but only to a point. The con­sen­sus among HR pro­fes­sion­als is that peo­ple want to feel part of some­thing big­ger: an organ­i­sa­tion with a cul­ture of emo­tion­al con­nec­tion, recog­ni­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. If pub­lic-sec­tor lead­ers aren’t delib­er­ate­ly work­ing to cre­ate such an envi­ron­ment, they’re des­tined to fail.

Pur­pose-led enter­pris­es will have a reten­tion advan­tage over those that aren’t. If peo­ple are brought into the col­lec­tive pur­pose of the organ­i­sa­tion, they are much more like­ly to be hap­py in their work and loy­al to their employ­er.