Riddle Me This: Does Anyone Want a Job Anymore?
Photo by Nastuh Abootalebi on Unsplash
Why Won’t the PLAY Button Work?
If you thought we’d reached the pinnacle of loss these past few years, you aren’t alone. The numbers of those lost to COVID-19 alone are indicative of a future derailed by the absence of incredible minds and beautiful spirits.
To those of us who work in nonprofit, the losses have been confounded by the systematic tears we see in our communities, the long nights and desperate applications to funders. As vaccines rolled out, many hoped we could push PLAY on lives we had paused.
By now, we’ve all heard (and felt the impacts) of the Great Resignation.
The Texan psychologist who coined the term, Anthony Klotz, explained that many workers are having what he termed “Pandemic Epiphanies” in light of so much loss and uncertainty.
That is, over the last two years, millions of workers have been reevaluating their priorities. According to Business Insider, nearly 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs in January of 2022 alone.
Most of those numbers belong to those working in hospitality and the medical field, but nonprofits have not been spared. Hirers across the country are watching their workforce vanish during a crucial time.
In the nonprofit sector, the people who make up our organizations are more than just a workforce, but often the backbone of critical safety-net life-saving programs, frontline services and policy-shaping community organizing.
Like many others, it may have crossed your mind that this does not seem like a Texan problem, but that too is proving to be unreal. According to Texas Monthly:
“November’s [of 2021] numbers showed a continued alignment with the national trend: 3 percent of the national workforce quit their jobs, compared to 3.2 percent of Texans.”
So, riddle me this: is anyone looking for a job anymore?
It is an easy and reasonable instinct to blame the Pandemic’s new version of normal or a moment of existential crisis. Who quits a job that pays and has benefits? Who quits a job where they can make substantial and real change in the world?
On the other hand, like everything in this pandemic, it isn’t that easy.
Just as the pandemic exposed fault lines in almost every other aspect of our culture, so too it has exposed issues in how we work. The Pew Research Center conducted a survey in 2021 based on 6,627 non-retired U.S. adults, including 965 who say they left a job by choice last year. This survey indicates that there are three main reasons that workers leave their jobs: low pay, a lack of opportunities for advancement and feeling disrespected at work.
When faced with those numbers, suddenly it doesn’t have anything to do with existentialism or even our culture’s new reliance on remote work. Rather, it is a tipping point in the ways people spend most of their week.
In the same way that labor unions revolutionized workers rights, spurred on by the overworked and underpaid, these past few years of loss have galvanized people to seek change in the workplace. It shouldn’t be a cause for panic, but rather a proactive invitation to reinvent our workplaces.
After all, in the nonprofit sector, change is what we do.
Try the Rewind Button Instead
At Mission Capital, we felt the ramifications of these statistics like everyone else. In 2020, we lost 30% of our employees, including members of the leadership team, as staff transitions trickled into 2021 and 2022. The reasons varied. Some left due to family responsibilities amidst the pandemic, offers for better jobs, promotions or for some, all of the above.
Given that our nonprofit workforce sector is also predominantly women, we also felt the impact of the “shecession”, as droves of women left the workforce to focus on childcare, eldercare and the safety and well-being of our families. As our colleagues at the National Council of Nonprofits have shared, “the pandemic exposed and worsened the systemic racial and gender inequities” of our time.
Anyone familiar with the nonprofit sector understands that there is no rest for the weary. The increasing demands for services, coupled with leaner budgets and staffing structures, meant that our remaining staff experienced the burnout and compassion fatigue associated with doing work meant for two or three people instead of one.
This scarcity had a palpable impact on our organization. Our resiliency was challenged, and we struggled to achieve balance in the middle of a never-ending Pandemic.
Our team suffered, and because of that, our work was not the best it could have been. Thus, we chose to proactively pause and take a second look at how we support and manage our team.
In the Spring of 2021, Mission Capital staff participated in a Beating Burnout Series conducted by Harvard Business Review. From this work, we committed to create a people first culture and uphold principles to create and solidify norms for wellbeing.
We continued our efforts to support and manage our team by conducting a job analysis and launched an ongoing formal compensation analysis in the Fall of 2021 as we strive to benchmark and pay a livable and competitive wage in Central Texas.
This Spring 2022, Mission Capital conducted Stay Interviews to determine the top reasons people left, were considering leaving and what changes would encourage them to remain.
We also revisited our holiday calendar, added two additional floating holidays for staff to use as they choose, and an additional week of leave for Summer Break with the virtual office being closed.
What are we learning?
We’re learning and striving to reset our internal culture around grace and flexibility, for ourselves, our clients, community partners, and volunteers.
Let’s face it, the world’s institutionalized and systematic wrongs and faults aren’t going to get fixed today or tomorrow or even by next week, even if we all stay up until two in the morning for two weeks straight straining toward just that.
Mission Capital has since instituted Summer Fridays (where we close the “virtual office” at noon during the summer) and a Guide for Beating Burnout. We aren’t done yet. In fact, the more we reexamine, the more we find we are very far from being done remodeling our internal and external culture to reflect our changing workplace.
Please understand, this isn’t a flex. Like everyone else, we’re just trying to get to a place where we can once again push PLAY without causing another crisis.
Hopefully, we can use our lived experience and hard-knocks lessons learned to ease the way for others.
Riddle Me This: What’s so wrong with a Pause?
We propose this mindset shift: the Great Resignation is not another catastrophe. It is not a sign of traditional values crumbling. It is not a trick question, but rather a door that has been opened where before we didn’t even see one there.
Don’t be afraid of the pause!
In this spirit, and because we know it’s hard, but we believe in the power of our members to do hard things well, we have some resources to share. True to the new normal, they’re all online and have very catchy titles, such as:
If none of those options sound appealing to you, we understand. Everyone begins their journeys in different places, and for that, you need advice and guidance from various sources.
Photo by Hello I'm Nik on Unsplash
Here are some of the brilliant minds we took inspiration from in our own PAUSE. May they assist you in recharging your workplaces so that you become conduits of Great Inspiration and Innovation.
Check out these books and articles!