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We are in the midst of the Great Resignation era. With more than 10 million vacancies, the Great Resignation era is a mass exodus of our workforce voluntarily choosing to quit. This has to be addressed.
There are different reasons customer service is deteriorating - employee burnout, low employee morale, high employee turnover, staff shortages, and poor reactive hiring just to fill positions. People are just throwing employees in their positions because there’s no time to train them. Or the training they do is only tactical and they’re not delivering the experience that makes the company special any longer.
Other reasons could be supply chain issues and not managing customers’ expectations. All of these end up pissing off your customers.
Stop calling it a labor shortage. It is a turnover crisis. A labor shortage is if there were more jobs. The number of jobs increased and there were significantly fewer employees. That’s not the problem. People are choosing to quit and that’s not a labor shortage.
Since April 2021, 15 million workers quit. 41% more employees currently employed are considering quitting. That number goes up to 54% when we talk about Gen Z’s. 885,000 women left the workforce compared to 216,000 men.
The two biggest mistakes companies are committing to combat the Great Resignation are filling positions with anyone with a pulse and keeping poor performers. They’re just going out there and filling positions or keeping poor performers. You can’t hire your way out of a poor culture. You can only make it worse because you’ll lose your good employees. It is better to lose the sale than lose your reputation.
For more information and resources on overcoming the employee turnover crisis, check out The Customer Service Revolution podcast. If you’d like to listen, head over to Episode 068: Stop Calling It a Labor Shortage, It Is a Turnover Crisis.
John R. DiJulius III, author of The Customer Service Revolution is president of The DiJulius Group, a customer service consulting firm that works with companies including Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, Ritz-Carlton, Nestle, PwC, Lexus, and many more. Contact him at 216-839-1430 or info@thedijuliusgroup.com.