Leadership

Dhru Beeharilal is a Business and Leadership Coach at Nayan Leadership .

2021 was a historic year when it came to quitting—colleagues, friends, and perhaps even you walked away from employment that no longer served us, with rates hitting an all-time high of 6.6%. There have been a variety of contributing factors to the Great Resignation—many directly associated with the pandemic; however, there is one factor that has been here from the start and has been exacerbated over the last two years—poor leadership.

In short, people are choosing to leave their jobs because of ineffective management and negative workplace cultures. For years, businesses have ignored the need for executive leadership training, believing that anyone can learn to be a leader on the job, like any other skill.

The lack of investment in management development is a self-perpetuating issue that has led us to this point, with unprepared employees rising to a managerial role and not having the right knowledge to build a strong team. Add in a changing workforce, contributing factors and even a “me vs. we” culture shift, and you have the perfect storm that is the Great Resignation.

Over the last 30 years, there’s been a marked change in workplace benefits as well as employee satisfaction. Even though some benefits have a perceived higher value, like unlimited vacation time or even remote work, there’s often an expectation to be consistently online and connected. The line of personal and professional balance is further blurred as younger generations in the workforce want and ask for more from employers, not only in salary to match the rates of inflation but also in how they feel at the end of the day.

Companies should rightly be concerned if they can’t attract or keep the talent they want, as The Great Resignation is a reflection of the vast changes of the last few decades, with the pandemic taking a loose thread and unraveling an entire workforce. This devastation comes from an overwhelming lack of leadership coaching opportunities, with managers being left to discover the best way to lead on their own—and often failing.

How can we fix it?

There are a variety of ways to approach the Great Resignation, but the first step should involve introspection, reflection and a reality check for what your employees really need. Poor leaders will only continue to exacerbate the issue by driving talent to new companies or even moving into an entrepreneurial opportunity.

They tend to point the finger outwards at everyone else while good leaders invest in self-awareness, both individually and organizationally. Executive teams and leaders: Ask yourself if you’re taking the right steps to help your management grow and refocus. Do your managers, even those only managing interns, have the tools and resources they need to lead effectively? Are there clear opportunities for growth, development and climbing the career ladder for your employees in your organization? If you can’t confidently answer yes, it’s time to take a step in a different direction.

Here are three tips to help you implement a leadership development program at your organization:

• Start a leadership book club and discussion group. Pick one book per month around leadership, read it and then discuss it in a structured, action-focused way.

• Create effective feedback loops. One from the top down (traditional), one from the bottom up (relatively novel) and peer-to-peer. Normalizing this kind of communication and feedback within an organization can go a long way toward creating an effective culture long-term if it’s done authentically and in earnest.

• Create mastermind and accountability groups across the organization. This helps with goal-setting and goal-tracking, generally sharing challenges and brainstorming together, and can be a nice parallel or combination with the book club.

There are a few things you should avoid doing, as well:

• Do not just try to train lower- and mid-level staff without having the upper-level leadership undergo the same, if not more, training.

• Do not focus just on training alone; that’s great as a short-term solution, but it’s really the integration of the new skills and knowledge that causes change. Training without reinforcement and a plan for integration through some kind of after-support is, frankly, money wasted.

• Do not try to focus only on short-term incentives like gifts or salary bumps, because that won’t change the culture. It could actually make it worse rather than better.

Your team and organization can only be as good as its leaders.

Many executives think the solution is to pay employees more, and while that might seem like a good solution in the short-term, it will only reinforce the fallacy that money is the solution. In reality, your employees will only stay until they get a better salary offer. Take an honest look at your compensation plans to ensure you’re competitive, but then consider that workplace culture matters as much, if not more than salary.

The solution for the Great Resignation lies in leading with integrity, honesty and accountability, demonstrating respect for employees and simultaneous commitment toward their growth and your business’ mission. Investing in leadership development across your organization allows your leaders to be empowered, supported and ultimately grow themselves, their teams and the culture of the organization. Strong leaders will create stronger teams, and those strong teams will support the continued growth of your organization.

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Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick made significant concessions yesterday to demands raised by studio employees in the wake of a lawsuit over allegations of widespread discrimination and sexual misconduct at the company. His reduced salary is largely performative—his base pay was already halved earlier this year, but he’s still eligible for millions in bonuses—but the other commitments were welcomed by employees.

“Today was a huge win for ABK Worker’s Alliance!” the workers group tweeted . “Forced arbitration has been removed for cases that deal with sexual harassment and discrimination. The company announced they will raise the number of women and non-binary people it employs by 50%.”

That win for the workers was also noticed by A Better Ubisoft, a similar workers collective working for “real and permanent change” at Ubisoft, which has been dealing with its own sexual misconduct scandals since mid-2020 . The Ubisoft employees said they were “celebrating some great progress made by @ABetterABK,” and said they would “continue to stand together as we work to #EndAbuseInGaming.” They also used Activision’s promise of action to draw attention to Ubisoft’s failure to address its own issues meaningfully, despite having had much longer to do so.

“16 months since Ubisoft was forced to take limited action following public posts on Twitter, you talk about ‘a strategic roadmap of change for HR’ that you are ‘getting ready to start rolling out’ giving no timeline for delivery or any hint of what those changes will be,” A Better Ubisoft tweeted .

“Only yesterday Activision Blizzard committed to increase their number of women and non-binary workers by 50% within five years. They have promised to invest $250 million ‘to accelerate opportunities for diverse talent’ and to release annual salary transparency reports, meeting some of the ABK Workers Alliance demands. In just three months it seems that they have listened to the concerns of employees and acted on them. While our demands are not identical, many overlap and could be addressed through similar actions just as swiftly.”

Multiple Ubisoft executives, including former chief creative officer Serge Hascoët and vice president Maxime Beland, resigned from Ubisoft in the initial wake of the misconduct allegations, but others were merely moved around. Ubisoft Singapore managing director Hugues Ricour, for instance, was removed from his position following a leadership audit sparked by multiple reports of sexual harassment, but instead of being dismissed he was transferred to Ubisoft’s head office in Paris to serve as Production Intelligence Director.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said in July that ” important progress ” has been made since the misconduct allegations first came to light, but employees dismissed that claim in an open letter, saying that they continue to wait for ” real, fundamental change .” A Better Ubisoft also criticized the appointment of Igor Manceau to the position of chief creative officer, saying that “the creative team at Ubisoft is composed of white people who are of uniform cultural backgrounds,” including Serge Hascoët’s former assistant, and Patrick Plourde, who remains vice president of editorial “despite the multiple misconduct reports filed against him.”

I’ve reached out to Ubisoft for comment on the Better Ubisoft statement, and will update if I receive a reply.

Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have both promised to increase scrutiny of the Scottish government if they become the next prime minister – ahead of a visit north of the border.

Ms Truss , who remains the favourite to win the race, said she would get “Scotland’s economy moving” and would give Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) special legal protection, allowing them to be more outspoken as they scrutinise decisions made by the devolved government.

Mr Sunak promised Scottish civil servants would face greater scrutiny from Westminster and UK ministers would be required to be more visible in Scotland.

The pair will face questions from Tory members in Perth on Tuesday following a verbal tussle between Ms Truss and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon over the past week.

Ms Truss called Ms Sturgeon an “attention seeker”, then the Scottish leader claimed the foreign secretary asked her how to get into Vogue before Ms Truss accused all three devolved nations’ leaders of playing “political games” over independence.

Calling herself a “child of the Union”, Ms Truss said she will deliver for all of the country and “will never talk down Scotland’s potential”, while saying the nation has been “let down by the SNP”.

She added: “I’ll make sure that my government does everything to ensure elected representatives hold the devolved administration to account for its failure to deliver the quality public services, particularly health and education, that Scottish people deserve.

“As prime minister and minister for the Union, I will deliver on my ambitious plan to capitalise on the opportunity we have to turbocharge the growth and business investment required to get Scotland’s economy moving.”

Ms Truss’ campaign team said she would push for a trade deal with India in which a long-standing 150% tariff on whisky exports would be slashed.

She would also alter the Scotland Act to give parliamentary privilege to MSPs to create more “robust questioning” of ministers and increase the powers of the Scottish Parliament to hold the Scottish government to account.

Mr Sunak pledged to make it a requirement for Scotland’s most senior civil servant, the permanent secretary to the Scottish government, to attend Westminster’s Public Affairs and Constitutional Affairs (PACAC) Select Committee every year – just like the UK government’s cabinet secretary.

He also promised to enforce “consistent reporting of public service performance data across the country” so Westminster could hold the Scottish government accountable for essential public service delivery.

The former chancellor said each nation needs to work together “shoulder to shoulder” as he accused the SNP of being able to “obscure its failures by picking and choosing the data it publishes”.

Mr Sunak has been trailing behind in the polls of Tory members, who will decide who their new leader – and therefore prime minister – will be on 5 September.

He was handed a further blow on Monday after a third Conservative MP, former Welsh secretary Alun Cairns, switched allegiance from Mr Sunak to Ms Truss, saying he believes she is best placed to save the union and fears the break-up of the UK would be more likely under Mr Sunak.