Tag Archives: #thegreatresignation

Have you just asked?

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When difficult things happen at work, or when work stops working, leaving will often feel easier that sticking around and working it out. I’ve seen this in my research, and other studies have found this too. Quitting can be easier than confronting an employer with whatever the problem is. 

In a lot of cases this is completely understandable. If you’ve been discriminated, for example, or unfairly treated somehow, it can be daunting and costly both to your health and to your wallet to go up against an organization. Removing yourself from the situation rather than staying and hitting your head against the wall may indeed feel like the only rational choice.

But sometimes it’s not that. Maybe you’re simply so fed up with working the way you do that you just feel like you need to leave. Or maybe the way or how much you work is unsustainable. Or maybe something is going on with your boss or a colleague that is just driving you up the wall. 

You’re reluctant to raise whatever the issue with your boss. Maybe you don’t want to seem like a trouble maker. Or maybe you don’t feel like it will do any good and you don’t want to burn any bridges. It feels hard to have that conversation and you’re so reluctant to do it that it just feels easier to find something else to do instead. 

But finding and starting a new job is generally no walk in the park either.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: leaving isn’t a quick fix. 

The Great Resignation is a term that was coined when the Covid-19 pandemic triggered people to think about what work was and wasn’t doing for them. People started opting out in numbers we had never before witnessed. This you’re probably familiar with. What you may be less familiar with is that there was a study done in 2022 by Workplace Insight that found that 43% if those who quit their jobs as a part of the Great Resignation wave, actually regretted their choices and felt that they would have been better off in their old jobs. 

The reasons were reportedly things like missing co-workers, familiarity, comfort, and salary. These results could of course be problematized further, which they aren’t to any greater degree in the report. For example, we often tend to look back on past experienced with rose-tinted glasses if our current situation isn’t great. So, we need to remember that there was a reason why they left: they weren’t happy with their situations regardless of whether or not they regretted their decision afterwards.

Either way, even though we can probably assume that about half of those asked were happy with the change, the 43% that regretted their decision should probably have had that difficult conversation with their employer.

Should you?

What would happen if you did have that conversation?

What I’ve found over the years when talking to people about opting out, is that there are a lot of people who actually do have that conversation and are surprised by the positive outcome. 

Managers don’t generally want people to leave; employee retention is important for many reasons. If a manager is aware that you’re thinking about leaving, they will most probably be interested in knowing what would make you want to stay. So, if you approach your employer not only with what the problem is but also with ideas of what would make everything better, you’d think that most managers will at least hear you out. 

Besides, another thing I have found in my research is that you really can opt out without actually leaving. No, I’m not talking about quiet quitting – the phenomenon where people scale down their work so that they don’t do more than they absolutely have to. 

No, what I’m talking about is a change of mindset. 

A woman I once interviewed did exactly this. She loved working for her employer, but the way she was working was just unsustainable. It was taking a toll on her health and it was also affecting her family. She realized that something had to give or she would not be able to continue working there. 

She tried having that conversation with her boss, but he just wasn’t receptive. He was probably overwhelmed too…

She finally decided her only option was to quit and that finally woke everyone up. They didn’t want her to leave so they listened to her suggestions and she was able to continue working for the same employer, but on her own terms. 

She did opt out – she opted out of a certain, expected way of working and pursuing a career – but she also stayed.

So, are you thinking about opting out? It might very well be the right decision for you. But if you’re not sure, and if there is a lot about your job that you do like, maybe you should think about whether or not there is something that would make you want or able to stay. And if there is, ask! After all, if you already have one foot out the door, you really have nothing to lose.

This blog post is from a new book I’m working on: 12 Things to Consider when Opting Out

12 things to consider when opting out

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It was at least a couple of years ago, maybe more. I was on an island in the Finnish archipelago on my annual summer holiday. One night I woke up with a start. I had dreamed about my next book and, in my sleep, I had come up with the best title. But there I was, in the middle of the night. I didn’t have single thing handy to record this amazing idea. No pencil, no note pad, no phone… not even a crinkled tissue. And you know how it is, if you don’t write it down, by morning it will be gone. 

The title was 12 things to consider when opting out. 

Well, funnily enough, I managed to will myself to remember what I thought was a catchy title and I fell back asleep and actually continued dreaming about it for the rest of the night so that, come morning, I did actually get up and write it down. Needless to say, I wasn’t very well rested…

So, this has been a book that has been on my writing to do list ever since. It fit perfectly in my plan. For the past few years I have been turning my research on opting out and in into a series of books. My first book, Opting Out and In, is on women opting out and it takes a slightly broader societal look at the phenomenon. My second book, Men Do it Too, is on men opting out and it focuses more on work and careers. My third book, that I am working on as we speak, is about what organizations can and need to do to create workplaces that people won’t long to leave. 12 things to consider would be a perfect fourth. It would take an individual approach and be for people who dream of opting out, which, according to studies, has turned out to be most of us.

At the time of the dream, I was still working on my second book, so 12 things to consider simply had to get in line. But I was excited about it and I started jotting down ideas and came up with a preliminary table of contents. I mean, I didn’t even know if 12 was the right amount. Did I even have 12 things to say about the topic? And it turned out that I did. 

But like every creative, I get filled with doubt at times. It this this really what I should be focusing on? Is this any good? Do people even want to read this? (This is the reason my mantra is ‘keep going keep going keep going’. You just have to trust the process.) And as I’ve been working on the book for organizations, I’ve started to wonder, do I even want to write this book?

After all, I’m always telling everyone that I don’t really want to coach people in opting out, I want people to have working lives that they won’t constantly long to leave. Besides, those who do dream about opting out and would be the potential readers of my book, maybe they don’t want a well-researched book of all the rational things they need to think of before opting out. Because if faced with the sense of urgency that the situation leading to opting out can entail, you may not necessarily have the time nor the patience for a sensible book on opting out. You just want to do to it, you just need to do it because you know that you simply can’t work the way you have anymore. 

So, this has been my dilemma. 

Imagine my surprise when an editor I’ve been in touch with recently mentioned a book that was just about to be published at the time, which, based on the description, seemed to be a book on opting out from an individual perspective! I threw myself on my computer to preorder the book and by now it has been published and I have it in my hands. It’s a book titled Jolted: Why We Quit, When to Stay, and Why it Matters by Anthony Klotz, the very person who actually coined the expression ‘The Great Resignation’. 

You might think that I was bummed that Klotz seemed to have beat me to it, that is, written a book for people who dream about opting out. But you would be mistaken. My initial reaction was relief; I’m off the hook. I thought, ‘wow, I don’t have to worry about whether or not I want to write the book anymore.’ But to tell you the truth, now that I’m actually reading it, I realize it isn’t actually the book I was planning to write. It’s good, but different. So maybe I should just stick to my original plan. 

In the meantime, I thought I would share with you the table of contents I developed after the night of the dream. I’m playing with the idea of just going ahead and writing this book right here on my blog. Maybe my next post could be chapter one? What do you think?

Chapter One: Opt out or lean in – is that really the question?

Chapter Two: It isn’t just you

Chapter Three: Have you just asked?

Chapter Four: How do you figure out what you want to do?

Chapter Five: Not everyone will get it and that’s okay

Chapter Six: There are many roads to the same destination

Chapter Seven: What is success anyway?

Chapter Eight: What about your partner?

Chapter Nine: What will this mean financially?

Chapter Ten: Nothing is forever

Chapter Eleven: Creating sustainable solutions for work

Chapter Twelve: Being a part of the change