How the great resignation is affecting the C‑suite

Thanks to the pan­dem­ic, busi­ness lead­ers have more on their plates than ever. The extra strain imposed by new con­cerns, such as man­ag­ing remote teams and address­ing the phys­i­cal and men­tal health ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the Covid cri­sis on employ­ees, is start­ing to tell.  

Of the 1,000 HR direc­tors polled in a sur­vey by HiBob and Fiverr in the US last month, 46% report­ed that man­agers and direc­tors were leav­ing their firms at a faster rate than entry-lev­el employ­ees, high­light­ing how the great res­ig­na­tion is man­i­fest­ing itself in the upper ech­e­lons of busi­ness.

Tal­ent strat­e­gy con­sul­tan­cy the Chem­istry Group has got through more work on senior lead­er­ship in the past 12 months than it did in the pre­vi­ous four years com­bined. Demand from clients for a bet­ter under­stand­ing of lead­ers and the issues they are fac­ing is “going through the roof”, accord­ing to its founder and direc­tor, Roger Phil­by.

He warns that busi­ness­es need to rethink how they sup­port and devel­op their lead­ers, not­ing that the lone­li­ness many peo­ple feel at this lev­el is being under­es­ti­mat­ed. 

“How the pan­dem­ic has dis­con­nect­ed lead­ers from their organ­i­sa­tions is show­ing up in engage­ment scores, as peo­ple have tak­en this time to reflect on their lives, poten­tial­ly choos­ing to do some­thing else,” reports Phil­by, who works with employ­ers such as Exper­ian and The Co-oper­a­tive Group. “There’s been a lot of talk about hav­ing lead­ers who are more empa­thet­ic with their peo­ple. That’s all great, but it’s also putting more demands on lead­ers who are actu­al­ly going through their own prob­lems.”

Phil­by adds that sim­ply enhanc­ing exec­u­tives’ reward pack­ages will no longer com­pen­sate for this. He argues that per­son­al devel­op­ment at senior lev­el has “fall­en off a cliff” in the past two years, as the phi­los­o­phy of “self­less lead­er­ship” has been blown out of pro­por­tion.

Lead­er­ship devel­op­ment prac­tice needs to change rad­i­cal­ly, accord­ing to Phil­by. He believes that there has been a lack of focus in many firms on how man­agers need to change their behav­iour to become lead­ers. In effect, this is leav­ing their prospects of ensur­ing the con­tin­ued effec­tive­ness of their senior teams to chance.

“Organ­i­sa­tions don’t have a sys­tem­at­ic approach to devel­op­ing their lead­ers,” Phil­by says. “They’ll get them a coach, but how do they know whether that’s hav­ing an impact?” 

He con­tin­ues: “There’s a space for very per­son­alised, indi­vid­ual devel­op­ment and then a met­ric that demon­strates the impact of that devel­op­ment growth on busi­ness out­comes. But I don’t see any evi­dence-based lead­er­ship devel­op­ment going on out there.”

Joan­na Swash, CEO of Mon­eypen­ny, an out­sourced provider of cus­tomer ser­vices, sees the impor­tance of such an approach. She recent­ly designed a new train­ing pro­gramme for her senior team to help iden­ti­fy lead­er­ship styles and align these with the organisation’s vision and pur­pose using a bespoke set of tools and frame­works.

Swash also plans to add train­ing in soft skills to help devel­op attrib­ut­es such as empa­thy and to pri­ori­tise “atti­tude over apti­tude” in both recruit­ment and devel­op­ment.

“We will men­tor man­agers to devel­op their strengths and sup­ply them with the tools they need in these chal­leng­ing times,” she pledges. “Peo­ple who are aligned with your cul­ture, val­ues and atti­tudes can realise their poten­tial and that of the busi­ness.” 

Yet even such con­cert­ed mea­sures may not be enough to address the dis­en­gage­ment that many senior exec­u­tives are feel­ing. A recent poll of 200 UK lead­ers in invest­ment, law and con­sult­ing by M&A tech provider Dat­a­site found that more than a third were pri­ori­tis­ing fam­i­ly time in 2022, while 17% want­ed to accel­er­ate their retire­ment plans, cit­ing inter­ests out­side the work­place as a huge fac­tor in their think­ing.

Reshap­ing the para­me­ters of the lead­er­ship posi­tion – from nor­mal­is­ing part-time roles and job-shar­ing at senior lev­els to embrac­ing the ‘side hus­tle’ phe­nom­e­non – could enable more firms to retain tal­ent­ed lead­ers by offer­ing them the best of both worlds.

Insur­ance firm Zurich, for instance, has dou­bled the num­ber of peo­ple it has hired as part-time employ­ees since it began adver­tis­ing all vacan­cies as poten­tial part-time roles and/or job-shar­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties two years ago. High­light­ing its suc­cess in recruit­ing and retain­ing more women in par­tic­u­lar, the com­pa­ny is urg­ing the UK gov­ern­ment to leg­is­late that all employ­ers over a cer­tain size adver­tise jobs this way.

Zurich’s approach to recruit­ment would find favour with Angela Nyman, chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer at dig­i­tal asset man­age­ment plat­form Bright. She returned to her role on a part-time basis in Sep­tem­ber 2020 after tak­ing parental leave.

“If your com­pa­ny is behind you and it val­ues out­comes – staff well­be­ing and team pro­duc­tiv­i­ty – rather than analysing the hours you’re work­ing, you’ll stand a much bet­ter chance of find­ing a good work/life bal­ance,” Nyman says. “If I give peo­ple the right guid­ance and moti­va­tion, along with the tools and infor­ma­tion they need to work autonomous­ly and make the best pos­si­ble deci­sions, it doesn’t mat­ter whether I’m sit­ting next to them every day or not.”

Bri­an Dolan is the founder and CEO of WorkRe­duce, a mar­ket­ing and media con­sul­tan­cy based in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts. He is vocal­ly sup­port­ive of peo­ple in his busi­ness who have side hus­tles, even at senior lev­el. His vice-pres­i­dent of sales also runs a bike store, for instance, while his senior direc­tor for client suc­cess has a boat-char­ter­ing busi­ness. 

Dolan’s believes that find­ing ful­fil­ment out­side your pri­ma­ry work­place and achiev­ing suc­cess with­in it are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive activ­i­ties. “We want our peo­ple to be real­ly hap­py and sat­is­fied,” he says. “As long as they’re deliv­er­ing the results, we’ll jump through hoops to retain them.”

Regard­less of what approach a firm might take to keep its senior exec­u­tives engaged, Phil­by rec­om­mends that cor­po­rate boards should be pay­ing close atten­tion to their lead­ers’ needs as the pres­sure they are under shows lit­tle sign of abat­ing.

“The num­ber-one focus of every board in every com­pa­ny right now should be: how are the peo­ple who are run­ning this firm?” he stress­es. “They should lit­er­al­ly be sit­ting down and ask­ing these peo­ple how they’re doing. When some­one answers: ‘I’m fine,’ they need to say: ‘No, how are you real­ly?’”