This episode of The Business Conversation Podcast features Kelly Gunderson, staffing and recruiting expert and the Client Experience Director for Celarity. Kelly talks about the phenomenon called “The Great Reshuffle” and the reasons why people are leaving their jobs, sometimes even without a backup plan. Kelly points to mental health as a primary concern of people and how managers, team leaders, and business owners can and should start taking care of their employees in this area. With working remotely firmly established as one of the top drivers of productivity during the pandemic, Kelly encourages employers to trust their employees to do their jobs and when they aren’t performing as expected, give them grace and find out what is causing them to underperform.
HIGHLIGHTS
QUOTES
Kelly: "People are noticing that they're unhappy and making sure that they're on the right path to becoming happy. And I think that's the biggest factor that we should be focusing on as why people are unhappy."
Kelly: "There's a lot of reasons why people are leaving. But I think one of the biggest that we've been dwelling on and talking about over and over again these past few years is this horrible pandemic that we're in. It's a rollercoaster ride and it's been going up and down but there's been loss of business, budget cuts, re-orgs, layoffs, furloughs, just back in 2020 and that's still happening."
Kelly: "The teams that are doing well, they're actively listening, they're showing interest in what's going on with their employees, they're opening up about their own struggles, whether it's work-related or personal life-related, and just showing the team that they're human and that therefore their team is looking up to them and saying, like, okay, you're going through the same stuff, you're not invincible, you're not a slave driver trying to make sure that we're doing exactly what we need to do and hitting our numbers in a daily basis."
Kelly: "There are companies that are archaic in their ways of thinking, like, just old-school, an older boss thinking that working remotely, they're not gonna get their work done. They're gonna take a nap or do their laundry. Like, yeah, maybe they are taking a nap and doing their laundry, but they're still getting their work done."
Kelly: “I think if you treat your team the way you want to be treated and you treat them like humans, they're gonna work hard for you. If you don't, they're gonna leave.”
Garrio: "I've seen this firsthand: the teams that invest in building trust with each other are the ones that are able to tackle it off. Because again, when the pandemic hit I've heard from a lot of colleagues and a lot of friends. You know, fellow startup founders, business owners, and so on, we're about to enter uncharted energy. There's literally no playbook that we can follow here. We have a choice, we can either do it together, or we can go at it alone."
Kelly: "It's a candidate's market right now. So in the interview process, and this is the most tactical thing I guess I could give as a piece of advice, is to make sure that you're selling your company and your team instead of grilling these candidates because they are also looking at you. They're interviewing you, basically. They're making sure that this is the best fit for them."
Garrio: "It's important to understand the context of a resume that has a lot of jobs. One one hand, like yes, you can say woah this person doesn't appear to be loyal. Yeah that is one lens to look at it through. But this also means that this person has a bunch of different industry knowledge that they bring into the table. They clearly know how to navigate different industries."
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This series is being put together in collaboration with AIGA Minnesota - one of the largest chapters of AIGA, that works to enhance the value and deepen the impact of design across all disciplines of business, society, and our collective future.
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