Photo by Parastoo Maleki on Unsplash
Over the past year, there’s been a hiring and talent retention crisis. Massive resignations, staggering salary demands, and the strong resistance of many to return to work, all of which share a single, underlying theme: “post-trauma.”
For decades, the Digital Revolution has created tectonic shifts in the market, but despite their pervasive nature, they never unraveled the foundation of work force dynamics. We may have complained about long hours, the challenges of virtual teamwork, and the burden of continuous innovation – issues at the core of Vayomar’s consulting and training projects – but few were driven to pose existential questions – until now.
This true Black Swan event violently upended our personal and professional worlds:
The result: hundreds of millions of people experiencing deep, existential crises and angst in the form of:
Any of these would be enough to trigger a debilitating emotional state and existential thoughts, leading to a crisis and an inability to accept, or even ignore, the reality of the modern workplace.
Often, our behavioral responses to these uneasy states are equality troubling. We revert to deeply rooted basic instincts (watch my podcast series to learn more); we divert from the path that led us to the crisis, end life-long relationships, quit jobs, consider different professional paths, and adopt new philosophical identities.
This ties directly into the post-Covid realization that being an employee does not offer the stability one may have originally assumed. When you get paid to not work, or are let go and spend months in professional limbo, you change. You suddenly have time to think and re-evaluate your life.
How do we deal with existential questions? What are the behavioral manifestations of such contemplations? For some, these questions stir up excitement, anticipation, curiosity, expectation, and even hope. Yet for most, such contemplations lead to fear, confusion, and even depression. A study of psychiatric consequences of SARS, a respiratory illness similar to Covid, 31–50 months after infection evidenced a 54.5% occurrence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 39% of depression, 32.5% of panic disorder, and 15.6% of obsessive–compulsive disorder. While these statistics refer to the patients themselves, one can assume that many of their family, friends, co-workers, and community members were likely influenced by these troubling physical, emotional and mental consequences. We can see the similar impact Covid-19 has leveraged on us today.
Assuming that Covid-19 has triggered all three of the human emotions mentioned above, the global regression in the workforce – also known as “The Great Resignation” may, in fact, be a response to trauma.
We may, very well, be seeing the results of a loss of stability, trust, and meaning in people’s lives. Consequently, many people have started examining their lives leading up to the crisis, and are making decisions that impact their futures accordingly. All the more so regarding young people entering the workforce; a 2020 survey found that 27% of young adults changed their career plans, due to the pandemic.
Global and local companies looking to retain workers despite current workforce events should explore learning more about, and addressing, the three powerful existential emotions listed above, as framed in a post-trauma – or Post-Covid Employment Disorder (PCED) – perspective.
Companies looking to source, attract, and retain top talents should explore innovative ways of interacting with existing and prospective employees, including those hailing from post-trauma treatment approaches. Pre-Covid-19 employee experience efforts are no longer sustainable. Branding videos, nationwide billboard campaigns, and outlandish salaries must be replaced with adaptable tools and methods that have been proven to work best in a post-Covid world:
Whichever path you choose, be sure that it is one that studies the deeper layers of our human nature. Tap into interdisciplinary sources that offer insight into the inner workings of our human operating system. Invest in learning and integrate knowledge from diverse fields to better understand and connect with what promotes wellbeing among your current and potential future employees. In short, stop thinking about how to manage your company and start thinking about how to manage human nature.
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