6 ways managers can crush the fear of great resignation (without going crazy)

I had been reading never-ending stories of companies dealing with “the great resignation” and then Boom!

It hit me too ☹️ 

I lost 2 key teammates in one quarter. Multiple people asked, “What are going to do without these teammates?”

Publicly, I was calm but honestly privately, my brain was spinning.

1. Would more people join the great resignation?

2. What key processes would be at risk if they did?

3. Who could step up in our organization if that happened?

4. Could we proactively prepare for attrition while developing people?

The truth is I couldn’t answer the 1st question but in this week’s issue, I share how I’ve worked to answer 2-4 in steps that became the opportunity in the crisis.

Even with a positive team environment, we will have attrition risk and by facing them, you crush your fear of the great resignation, build organizational resilience, and keep your sanity over the long term.

The problem is some leaders fail in this area because they are either not thinking about it, or are stuck worrying about it as opposed to proactively building a framework to address it.

Task, Frequency, and Criticality are the major unlock. Let's Dive in!

Step 1: Identify the task-level activities in your direct team

I learned this one the hard way. Don’t be like me 🙂 

You don’t want to be scrambling during the 2 week notice period to find out about activities that your report was doing that no one else knows. Avoid that fear by meeting with your team and communicating the need to develop others and reduce attrition risk but proactively understand task-level risk.

Ask them about activities they do including but not limited to:

• day-to-day system activities

• information submission to another team or person.

• approvals and decisions

• retrieving/loading/reporting/review of data

• communication

• strategic planning

You’ll be amazed at what you learn either because there is a lot they do or the alternate being some teammates have more bandwidth to take on more

Step 2: Identify the frequency of those tasks being completed

Risk and Fear of people leaving is directly proportional to how often they do things that no one else knows how to do.

Once you’ve identified task-level activities, then for each one, you want to outline each task that is done

• Daily

• Weekly

• Monthly

• Quarterly

• Bi-Annually

• Annually

Doing this will really start helping you understand how time is being spent in addition to what risks may come up in the future.

Step 3: Identify the criticality of those skills.

Not every task is created equal so assessing tasks by criticality to the business is also another way to better understand risk.

At the point, you’ve identified tasks level activities and frequency, you want to segment them by criticality.

My typical rule is tasks that support Regulatory(e.g government agency submissions, company certifications) and financial compliance(eg. closing the books, SOX, etc) deliverables are high even if they are not frequent and others are low.

You get to choose but it is important you are intentional on this.

Step 4: Quantify the capability levels of team members against those tasks.

Now you’re ready to figure out your bench strength.

For each of those tasks, figure out what level of competence teammates are at based on a scale like this one or similar ones.

• Level 1-Aware

• Level 2-Can do with oversight

• Level 3- Can do without oversight

• Level 4 - Can train others

Step 5: Implement a development plan for increasing the number of tasks with people at level 3 or higher

We’re ready to play offense.

Start with the task-level skills that only one person can do without oversight. You can look to automate, document(video is better), and train others to be able to do that task. Automating and documenting are quick ways to reduce risk and training others will increase your bench strength.

The important thing is that you take action.

Step 6: Rinse and Repeat

Once you’re done with your direct team, have them do the same for their teams until your organization is complete. Pro-Tip. Get skills matrix tools for this

This is a lot of work but once you build this foundation, you’ll be amazed at what you learn about your team. If you don't, you’ll also be amazed at what you find if people leave and you don’t have a robust plan.

Thanks for reading. Have a great week!

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