McKinsey Reveals: Leaders Are Wrong About Why Employees Quit

> The data speaks loud and clear. People are eagerly searching for meaning, belonging, holistic care, and appreciation at work.

> Yet the factors employers think are important are more transactional in nature—things like compensation and flexibility.

Company pays shitty consulting firm to "study" and conclude that they don't need to pay employees more. Shitty consulting firm does exactly that. Pizza parties for everyone!

Nice to see someone calling this out. For my part, I have never quit a job over compensation issues. In fact, a couple of times, I've quit positions in order to take positions at other companies that offered less compensation.

I quit jobs when, for one reason or another, they begin making me actively unhappy even when I'm off the clock, or (more usually) I don't feel that my skills are improving and expanding at my current job.

MISPWOSO: The McKinsey Institute for Slowly and Painfully Working Out the Surprisingly Obvious.

- slightly edited with respect to the late and great Douglas Adams.

if staff are leaving for lack of meaning, there may be a related factor. pandemic policy wiped out an entire layer of the economy, where the only bars and restaurants that survived were polarized between well capitalized franchises and absolute bottom of the barrel money laundering operations, and the part of the service business that was cool and desirable where people wanted to work- and was a source of local belonging and meaning for staff- all went out of business. those businesses were culture.

the people working in indie cafes were not the people working at starbucks, and the people at the fashionable neighbourhood restaurant didn't move to a chain or sports bar, they just left the industry. people who can afford to leave do, and the ones that remain aren't the people owners want to grow a business with.

there are some other elephants in the room that mckinsey is paid so very well to talk around, but even their view comes down to the reason people aren't working in service roles is because there has ceased to be opportunity and dignity in them.

between the general class of recently appointed managers and the increasing social desperation of potential employees, closing all those independent businesses and flooding cities with desperate people has caused the bottom to drop out of the middle class and, yeah, the people you thought wanted to work for you are getting the f' out of dodge.

So people are quitting because of the decisions executives make at the recommendation of McKinsey et al.

I have a hard time believing any study will reliably capture a long-time and competent employee quitting from fear or loss of loyalty after their friends and colleagues were laid off en masse by consulting firm excel formulas.

The way I heard it phrased: "people join a company, people quit a boss".

"By becoming students of our employees’ needs, then devoting ourselves to improving the employee experience."

Management, especially executive management, has no idea how to do this nor do they have the ambition to, same for HR. Years ago you didn't have diverse workforces and you had stability, both as defaults. Now the workforce is diverse as hell and there is zero stability.

My current employer is touting the ESOP as a great benefit. It takes a year to get in, and five more before you vest. The grim reality is that most of the gen-z that get hired in are going to get laid off or move on before they vest. ESOP is a gimmick to make you think your employment is going to be stable. It's a lie.

This is surprisingly honest for McKinsey. You have to pay people fairly and treat them well? Who would have thought that?

I like such studies, a lot.

They state the obvious (like the really obvious anyone working can voice out) but since they come from a consulting company, they suddenly become important and need to be addressed.

Whether the addressing works is another story, but when you say it it has zero value and when they say it it is the greatest discovery after induction plates.

I often use consultants to say the word of god to management - actually the word of me I want to be heard.

It is a pity we trash money this way though.