People are quitting their jobs at record rates. Resignations between April and August were up 60% from last year and 12% from the middle of 2019, according to federal data cited last week in a report from The Wall Street Journal.
The main reason why is still unknown, but experts say many signs point to burnout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
"The pandemic was stressful on all of us both personally and professionally, and there are reports of widespread burnout, which is a key predictor of turnover," Anthony Klotz, Professor of Business Administration and Associate Professor of Management at Texas A&M's Mays Business School, told KCBS Radio in an interview on Tuesday morning.
"And sometimes, the only cure for burnout is taking a break of what it is burning you out," he added.
Klotz said some organizations are taking this seriously, giving employers a break while shutting down operations for a week. Others are shutting down email servers in the evenings or on the weekends.
"While not all organizations are responding, a number of them are taking reactive steps to try and help employees recover," he said.
Klotz explained that the management at many organizations are focused on getting the business through the pandemic and selling the actual product, rather than focusing on employees’ morale.
Now that deaths and infections have slowed in the U.S., he hopes organizations can shift and refocus on workers. Klotz said organizations should use pandemic as an opportunity to "rethink and reinvent how workers work" and how that looks in terms of "how we schedule work" as well as "the tasks that we give them."
Workers of all ages are leaving their jobs, according to Klotz. There has been a spike in early retirements, and those individuals have decided to shift and do something else or take care of themselves following wake-up calls of their own.
If someone isn't happy in their job or is thinking about quitting, Klotz suggested a "job-crafting conversation" with a boss. Discuss the parts of the job you don't like and work together with your boss to turn the position from "a job I have into a job I want."
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