If We Want to Make Work Better, We Must Stop Using the Term "Great Resignation"

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“The Great Resignation Is Accelerating,” reads an October headline in The Atlantic.

“In April, the number of workers who quit their job in a single month broke an all-time U.S. record,” the report went on. By August, almost 3% of workers resigned from their jobs in a single month — an all-time high, according to the federal government.

These numbers tell us something about how work factors into people’s lives, and of course we must listen. But I don’t think we’ll solve this problem — in fact, I don't think we can even define the problem — if we keep framing it as a “Great Resignation.”

Consider the perspective that the phrase "Great Resignation" from: They all resigned! Where did they go!?

To me, the focus on “resignation” feels like half the equation — because of course, these people didn’t resign and disappear. They are going somewhere.

That’s why I was refreshed to hear the economics columnist Heather Long give this moment a new title on The Indicator; she calls it “the great reconsideration of work.” That title doesn’t change what’s happening — people are still very much leaving their jobs — but rather reframes the movement from a broader point of view, including the workers themselves, who have reasons to leave and places to go after they do.

Their perspective seems like an important one to understand. That’s our big lesson today: If you want to move forward from anything that you view as a “problem,” you need to understand its source, not just your own perspectives on it.

We know why people are quitting

One thing we all seem to understand is a core reason that people are quitting: work-life balance.

According to a CNBC and Catalyst survey, the top two reasons for resignations are

1. A feeling that employers don’t understand their needs.

2. A need for flexibility around where, when and how they work (76% of respondents said they want permanent flexibility at work).

When work doesn’t give people that flexibility, they leave. This much we know. In response, companies are starting to offer incentives like higher salaries, more paid time off, and sabbaticals. They’re also scrambling for ways to infuse their work with more meaning. But the numbers of people leaving are still high.

So if this is still a problem, we have to ask the next question: After all these people left, where did they go?

Here's one destination: Franchising

While the resignation numbers soar, another figure is steadily growing: New business applications in the United States are coming in at nearly twice the volume that they were when the pandemic began. And, as I shared last month on PIX 11, a lot of the people filing them are going into franchising.

It makes sense: Franchising provides a kind of ready-made business, where aspiring entrepreneurs can join an established brand and adopt their system. That can be perfect for someone who has left a corporate job, does not have a business idea or the knowledge to build something themselves, but still wants to be their own boss.

Take it from Andy Bell, whose company, Ace Handyman Services, has opened 100 franchise locations in the past year, many run by first-time business owners who had left corporate jobs. “People who did a lot of face-to-face sales tend to not be the biggest proponents of doing everything on Zoom,” he told Entrepreneur. “They see this as an opportunity to change direction but not change how they do business.”

Look at that — here are people who love face-to-face sales. They don't want to leave that skillset behind. But they want to do it in a way that serves them. This isn't a "resignation". These people are not resigned. They are reassessing what's most important to them, and it turns out that owning an Ace Handyman Services (in this case) enables them to utilize the skill they know and love but do it in a way that creates more control and ownership for themselves.

This leaves us with an important insight: Sure, people are leaving their jobs, but it’s not like they’re quitting at life. It takes a huge amount of courage and consideration to leave a stable situation; it’s not a decision most people make lightly, and it’s really not something a lot of people do without a plan. And in many cases, by owning their own business, they're taking on more responsibility than they had before!

Of course, not everyone is going to leave their jobs and start a franchise, or any other kind of business. But that’s not to say they don’t want a greater ownership over their work and lives. It’s why companies may do well by promoting a culture of intrapreneurship—essentially empowering workers to think and act more independently.

This is hard work, and certainly a lot harder than offering a few more vacation days or a sabbatical. "Intrapreneurship cannot simply be about giving employees permission," writes Frank Theodore Koe, a teaching professor of engineering entrepreneurship in the College of Engineering at Penn State University, in a piece we published in Entrepreneur. "It must also be about restructuring a company’s leadership to take those employees seriously, and a willingness to pivot when an employee discovers something transformative."

Again, the thing about "the great resignation" is that it's entirely from the POV of the status quo. But if you shift your view and consider the moment not as a problem but as an opportunity for a new solution, then you can identify and open more pathways for people (like franchising!) rather than trying to jam them back into the jobs that they already made the (very hard and considered) decision to leave.

The way to "solve work" is probably not as simple as retaining employees with slightly higher pay or a little more time off. It's more likely to involve a re-envisioning of how work works. That's not a resignation.

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Cover credit: Getty Images / Klaus Vedfelt