October 2022: The Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting

The Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting - what do these phrases mean? For the month of October, the SE3 committee would like to welcome the SEAONC community to join us in discussing the challenges our industry and the overall workforce are facing in recruiting and retaining talent. 

The following articles and podcasts provide examples on how The Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting are shedding light on employee needs and desires while also providing suggestions for organizations to meet these shifting demands and increase employee engagement. Perhaps you are seeing these workplace trends taking place in your own organization; this is a safe space to brainstorm ideas with peers on how to better recruit and retain structural engineers in the profession. Feel free to read or listen to any or all of the suggested articles below, or find some of your own to bring to the group!

• A sceptic’s guide to ‘quiet quitting’ on Working It by the Financial Times
  
• Quiet Quitting: A Loud Trend Overtaking Social Media on Consider This by NPR
  
• The Great Attrition is making hiring harder. Are you searching the right talent pools? - McKinsey & Company
  
• The Great Resignation is not over: A fifth of workers plan to quit in 2022 - The World Economic Forum
  
• The Great Resignation Didn’t Start with the Pandemic - Harvard Business Review
  

Sample discussion questions

• Did your organization see higher levels of attrition in 2021? Were attrition rates more pronounced at certain levels (entry vs mid-career vs seasoned)?
  
• Has your organization changed or expanded their recruitment strategies? How so?
  
• Has your organization changed or expanded remote work/in-office policies?
  
• Has your organization changed or expanded benefits? Paid leave? 
  
• Has your work hours increased, stayed the same, or decreased in 2021/22?
  

The 2020 NCSEA Survey was closed in mid-2020 and indicated that “75% of all respondents indicated satisfaction with their overall career in the structural engineering profession”. If another survey were launched now, would you anticipate this number to decrease, increase, or stay the same? Why?