What happens when workers don’t feel heard? When they don’t have the opportunity to grow or learn new stills? Employers are learning the answer to that question as they rush to fill deserted roles with too few applicants.

Workers have been feeling unheard for a while. The Workforce Institute surveyed 4,000 workers in the spring of 2021, and the research revealed that 75% of employees didn’t feel heard on issues like benefits, safety, and time off requests. Many of the participants said they doubt their feedback prompts any actionable change.

When employees and employers fail to connect, workers walk. The problem is compounded when employers provide no clear path forward within their organization — leaving workers blind to their professional future.

The other COVID-19 symptom: Poor listening

The pandemic is making employers’ listening problems worse. When COVID-19 forced businesses to pivot to remote work arrangements, communication lines between colleagues, managers and bosses went from walk-bys in the office to faulty video calls.

Remote work has left many workers feeling lonely and isolated, but their disconnectedness isn’t a pandemic phenomenon. The University of Manchester studied the subject in 2003, and her research found that 67% of remote respondents felt lonely. Meanwhile, zero in-office workers reported feeling that way.

The isolation of remote work may be motivating workers to hand in their notices. A third of workers would consider quitting their jobs because of remote work, according to a June 2021 poll by the Miami Herald. Of those, 14% said they were motivated by a lack of team camaraderie.

Nowhere to go but going, going… gone

Loneliness isn’t the only thing causing workers to rethink their jobs. When workers aren’t heard, they have little room to grow because their motivation, skill and potential are going unnoticed.

An August 2021 survey from Lattice found that many employees planned to quit their jobs because they “felt like their careers had stalled.” Nearly a quarter of survey respondents said that they lacked mentorship. A fifth said they felt no sense of clarity about their career path, with no tools to help them reach their goals. Many also reported that their career stagnation was due to a dip in face-to-face meetings with their supervisors.

Do you really know your people and what they need?

As employers grapple with The Great Recession, they must identify the employees who are poised to leave and begin the process to understand them, make them feel heard and offer growth suggestions. The cost of replacing any employee can be staggering in time, cost and energy.

PeopleBest finds the unique ‘code of success’ inside of people, offers insights and identifies critical missing areas whereby an employee may be frustrated or quit their job. By assessing originality, channeling effort, extroversion, agreeableness and nature of reaction, and looking at their situational scores, gaps in where an employee is now and what they need become evident. By discovering how workers score in each category, companies can better understand what workers want, how they stay motivated, and where they can grow to better contribute to their team.

To find out how PeopleBest can serve your team, book a demo and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies.