Now that we’ve entered a new phase of the pandemic, you may know someone who has recently left their job. Some traded working in a high profile role for a great company and now have a ton of new options that fit the lifestyle they want (remote work, wellness reimbursements, etc.). Others ditched a low-wage job for a better paying opportunity.
Or maybe the pandemic forced some to reconsider the direction their life was going; they had a bunch of money saved up and now they’re in search of a life change.
This exodus has prompted a popular new term: the “Great Resignation.” Attributed to Anthony Klotz, Ph.D., a management professor at Texas A&M, the “Great Resignation” wave is a prediction that many folks who had hung onto their jobs during the pandemic because of uncertainty are now quitting for a variety of reasons, including those mentioned above.
According to the Labor department, between April and May 2021, 7.6 million people quit their jobs. Every industry is seeing these effects, but the leisure and hospitality (hotels, restaurants, amusement parks, entertainment venues), technology, and healthcare industries are front and center.
Why?
The healthcare sector is feeling the strain of handling ongoing pandemic-related duties. Hospitality workers faced layoffs and reduced shifts at first and are now overworked, creating a mental health crisis and making many reevaluate their careers. Employers are fighting over tech workers, and with many businesses offering remote work, employees are empowered to explore new locations, companies, and careers.
The “Great Resignation” of 2021 has had a ripple effect for employees as they now need to handle the formal resignation letters, exit interviews, backfill requisitions, and employee feedback forms and surveys that are coming.
There’s a way for everyone to be prepared and efficient, and Jotform can assist through online forms.
How to proactively plan for employee changes
While it’s a fact that there are resignations, there are also employees who might be “on the fence” about finding a new situation. That presents an opportunity for employee retention.
It’s important for companies, small businesses, and HR teams to be proactive about the return to work by being inclusive and seeking out employee feedback about their return preferences. An Inc.com survey found that 56 percent of employees say their organization hasn’t even asked for their feedback about return-to-workplace policies and procedures.
Engage your employees via forms or surveys so you can keep a pulse on the directions your company needs to consider and find out what’s most valuable, not only for retention but for attracting the best new employees who aren’t shy about what they need to do their best work.
For instance, you can use forms to start a conversation about what type of role employees would like to learn more about, or if they’re interested in different careers and how you might help them get there.
If you’re not already engaging your workers with feedback surveys, a good way to introduce these is just after town hall or all-employee meetings have concluded. When employees have a voice in shaping the company’s dialogue, a sense of community and shared effort tends to permeate the culture.
There are a few more ways surveys and forms can help you determine how to better engage, retain, and attract talent. Reach out to discover how employees feel about topics like
- Well-being and wellness support
- Commute reimbursement
- The employee recognition process
Getting a proactive employee temperature check to discover the best ways to shape your company in the future is a small ask when you consider the cost of losing (and replacing) employees in the “Great Resignation.” You can customize any of the forms to suit your needs.
If you’ve set a date for your team to return to work, plan ahead with collaborative work ideas and team building activities on the days everyone plans to be in the office. You can use signup forms for those activities to ensure buy-in and get employees excited about post-pandemic life at work.
Chances are some of the reasons employees may explore new career opportunities — such as learning new skills, diversity and inclusion, more engagement, and promotional opportunities — could be offset with a mentorship program in your company. Mentorship programs help proactively retain talent and improve company culture by setting up employees for future success.
Once you’ve established the goals and parameters of your program, you can use a mentorship pairing questionnaire to get things started and chart the progress of the mentee through evaluations that will ensure your program is achieving its goals.
What to do when resignations are inevitable
Even when an employee has decided to resign, online forms will ease your logistical needs and get you through the next steps.
An employee can use a resignation letter template to save time when officially notifying their manager about their resignation. HR can use a resignation PDF to log official paperwork, save time, and get the ball rolling for other processes. Additionally, HR can make use of the exit interview form, which will help conduct exit interviews online or obtain key information ahead of time to set up a short in-person meeting.
As an integral part of the exit interview process, survey employees about the factors that may have contributed to their decision to leave. Doing so in a comprehensive manner will aid in future planning and help your business identify immediate red flags.
And don’t worry; it’s not all bad news. While losing an employee doesn’t necessarily put you in a good mood, consider holding a going away event for your employee. Doing so will leave a good impression on the departing employee and remind existing employees that you care and appreciate your team for their contributions to the company.
Online forms ease the way when bringing on temporary help
Lets face it; hiring new employees can be a long and expensive process in order to find the right fit. For businesses that need to bridge that gap immediately with freelance help, there are online forms for sourcing, onboarding, and managing freelance, or contract, talent.
The business of onboarding and managing part-time talent can consume your time and create an organizational challenge if you’re not properly set up for it. Jotform Tables will help you meet those challenges with employee onboarding templates that collect contact details and relevant employee information efficiently. You can even automatically sync new contact info collected through your form to other accounts in apps like Google Sheets, Dropbox, or Salesforce.
Jotform Tables also solves your payment tracking needs so you can easily manage timesheets and calculate payments automatically for your contracted help.
Use Jotform to help retain existing staff and bring on new workers
As the pandemic begins to wane and we sift through the “Great Resignation” of 2021, we’re facing a new era of employee-employer opportunities and challenges. It’s almost certain that solutions we couldn’t have imagined a couple years back, such as remote work flexibility, hybrid work weeks, and refocusing on what employees need to do their best work, will be put in place.
For instance, when businesses in growth mode are faced with discussions about departures, they may learn that employees are open to stay on as contract workers, depending on what they’re looking for.
Similarly, if you’re bringing on contractors who have no previous affiliation with your company, you can use W9s, contractor request forms, and contractor invoices from Jotform. These new and unique employment arrangements can complete the work your business needs to get done as well as meet employees’ desires to work and live the way they want.
In a hybrid work week scenario for your full-time employees, you could use one of Jotform’s log sheets to keep track of attendance and identify trends at the end of the year so that operations are moving along as anticipated.
Other transition duties that can be handled with forms include your backfill requisition and new hire forms, both of which you can use in parallel with Jotform Approvals to streamline your internal approval process. Also, you can easily handle internal role changes and take the pulse of employee satisfaction with surveys.
The “Great Resignation” has forced employers to think differently about how they interact with their employees. Simplify your employee retention and attrition efforts with Jotform.
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