Adopt Human-centric Work Approach or Lose Employees, Warns Gartner
Growing disconnect between leaders, managers, and employees is a major factor in workers quitting their jobs, Microsoft says. Let’s look at how companies can reverse the tide in the days ahead.
The Great Resignation, which saw millions of workers quit or switch jobs amid the pandemic, is far from over. CIOs are particularly in a fix with many of their employees at risk. Therefore, companies should adopt more flexible and human-centered work techniques to reduce attrition and increase performance – suggests Gartner in its new report.
Just 29.1% of IT professionals worldwide have a strong desire to stay with their present company. Still, the percentage is substantially lower in Asia (19.6%), Latin America (23.6%), Australia (23.6%), and New Zealand (26.9%), according to a new Gartner survey. Even in Europe, the best-performing area, barely four out of ten IT workers (38.8%) had a considerable interest in staying.
“While talent retention is a common C-level concern, CIOs are at the epicenter, with a huge chunk of their workforce at risk,” said Graham Waller, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “We’ve heard of IT organizations implementing back-to-the-office policies only to face mass resignations and have to reverse course. CIOs may need to advocate for more flexibility in work design than the rest of the enterprise, as IT employees are more likely to leave, in greater demand and more adept at remote working than most other employees.”
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The issue of retaining IT talent differs by age cohort and area. IT employees under 30, for example, are two-and-a-half times more prone to quit than those over 50. Only 19.9% of IT employees aged 18 to 29 had a high possibility of staying in their jobs, compared to 48.1% of those aged 50 to 70.
According to Microsoft’s second annual Work Trend Index report, a major disconnect between leaders, managers, and employees is one of the possible reasons for fewer employees being interested in continuing their jobs.
The statistics reveal that the Great Resignation or, as Microsoft refers to it, “the Great Reshuffle” is still ongoing. Almost half of the IT leadership polled anticipate that their company would need full-time in-person work from employees in the following year. In contrast, slightly more than half of the hybrid employees expect a bigger shift to remote work.
The figure “sort of blows my mind,” Microsoft’s CVP of modern work, Jared Spataro, said at a briefing, underlining the evident contradiction between the requirements of leaders and employees. However, managers are caught in the middle, with 74% stating “they don’t have the influence or resources to make changes for staff,” and more than half think executives are out of touch.
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What Approach Should Companies Adopt?
Employees have opted for a break from their normal routine to reassess their priorities. According to Microsoft, 53% increasingly prioritize their health and well-being over their jobs. The top three motivating factors for the 18% who left their jobs last year were wellness, work-life balance, and flexibility. Income was placed seventh.
Talent and business outcomes may both benefit from a human-centric work approach. To do so, Gartner urges CIOs to reconsider obsolete work assumptions, such as:
- Working hours – Forward-thinking companies allow employees and teams to choose when they perform their best work and experiment with innovative schedules like the four-day week.
- Office centricity – The pandemic demolished the assumption that workers can only conduct actual work in an office where their supervisors can see them. Most businesses are now preparing for a hybrid future where employees may be totally productive remotely for ‘heads-down’ work. At the same time, the office is better suited for specific job activities like personal interaction and collaboration.
- Meetings – The meeting culture began in the 1950s when individuals had to gather to make decisions physically. Distributed decision-making, cooperation, and innovation are now possible thanks to asynchronous and synchronous collaboration tools.
“CIOs who adopt a human-centric work design will out-hire, out-retain and out-perform those that revert back to industrial-era work paradigms,” said Waller.
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