Great Resignation Now Great Regret?

Fox Business cites survey showing “Great Resignation” turns to “Great Regret” as worker needs are not being met in new, if better paying post-pandemic jobs. Did anyone ever hear of old saw, “Grass is always greener …”

My beloved & wise retailer turned farmer Uncle Jerome, RIP, was always fond of that practical warning, and that survey, indeed, showed that “26% of people who quit their job during what was dubbed the ‘Great Resignation’ already regret it.” The WSJ’s Peggy Noonan had recently wrote a column on the alarming, en masse, job-shifting trend and followed it up with an op ed titled, “The Lonely Office Is Bad for America.” Could part of the regret ID’d by the survey have something to do with the pandemic lockdowns & workers forced into, then, addicted to “remote” work? If so, Noonan argues, “working” at home “tends to break down both organizational and national culture.” And, along with it, morale.

True, Peggy concedes, “The benefits from working from home are obvious: freedom, no commute; it’s easier to be there for family, the dog, the dentist appt. Less time wasted in goofy officewide meetings.” Yet, she wonders, what about the goofy zoom meetings? More to the point, she reminds, “There is something demoralizing about all the empty offices, something post-greatness about them … it feels too much like a metaphor for decline.” But, too, Peggy touches upon the office things that reflect we are HUMAN, not mindless boxes of Great Grains. We are built to need one another for support, comfort, expertise, examples of professionalism … and leadership. As JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon recently said in his annual report, people with ambition “cannot lead from behind a desk or in front of a screen.”

Davd Soul