Let’s discuss turnover contagion, shift shock and great regret

Question:

I joined a medium-sized start-up organisation recently (which is a first for me, as I have always been with stable non-start-up companies). The first week in, and I was shocked at the employee turnover rate. It’s the highest I’ve seen in my working life.

The fact that I’m part of this critical project that will make or break the company, yet I am seeing important and experienced stakeholders of the project leaving almost every month, is very unsettling. To say that the project team has low morale is an understatement. The only saving grace is my supportive manager.

How are employees supposed to manage the impact of the Great Resignation, especially the ones with already crunched resources?

Answer:

I asked Vicki Kavadas, an organisational psychologist and lecturer at the School of Psychology at Deakin University, about your question. Her response was thorough, detailed and really interesting, so I’ll get straight to it.

“Given [the reader] recently left their previous workplace – a stable company which was not a start-up – and went into an environment they were probably not expecting, there may be a certain level of regret.”

Kavadas explained that scholars have started to look at a phenomenon they’re calling “the Great Regret”; it describes the dejection some people feel after deciding to move jobs as part of the Great Resignation.

“Part of the Great Regret is when workers expect one thing and then experience another – some have used the term ‘shift shock’. It may not necessarily be regret for leaving their previous workplace, since they may have had very good reasons for leaving; it could be about a perceived lack of fit in the new organisation.”

This sounds very much like what you described in your initial email and in follow-ups (the details of which I won’t mention for reasons of anonymity). And Kavadas says, your own reluctance to leave the proverbial sinking ship might underscore that regret: you didn’t find that the grass was greener and now you’re wary about making another change in case the disappointment is the same or even greater.