The Challenge of Retaining Talent in the Context of the Great Resignation

The Great Resignation is an ongoing economic trend in which employees have voluntarily resigned from their jobs en masse, beginning in early 2021. Possible causes include wage stagnation amid rising cost of living, long-lasting job dissatisfaction, safety concerns of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the desire to work for companies with better remote-work.

In this context, it is critical for companies to identify the employees they want to retain and mitigate the turnover risk in a proactive manner. Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) enables companies to consider social capital metrics in strategic people decisions and increase the effectiveness of their retention initiatives.

ONA helps companies identify the informal leaders in the organization and prioritize their retention. When an informal leaders leaves the organization, it has a significant negative impact on the morale of their immediate network, decreasing their levels of engagement and productivity and increasing their turnover risk.

ONA can also enhance the effectiveness of predictive turnover models by assessing burnout  disconnected from the organization's informal network (also known as peripheral employees) have on average 20% higher turnover than other employees.

ONA can help companies reduce unwanted attrition by unveiling collaboration dynamics based on the analysis of active data sources such as online surveys and passive data sources such as Office 365 and other collaboration tools.

Conclusion

As companies face challenges to retain top talent in the context of the Great Resignation, organizational network analysis (ONA) offers a powerful approach to reduce unwanted attrition by considering both human and social capital metrics when assessing turnover risk and prioritizing the retention of key employees.