Combatting The Great Resignation With Workplace Well-Being

Putting Turnover Into Perspective

Let’s start from the top: turnover. The challenges of turnover are no secret. It's expensive and exhausting at the best of times, but it can create a substantial strain at every level of an organization if it begins to spiral out of control.

But, there is another challenge with turnover that is rarely discussed: it can be incredibly difficult for leaders to accurately gauge whether an employee is considering leaving their job at any given time (something that I’ll refer to from this point on as “turnover risk”). The potential ramifications of an employee telling their leader that they might leave are scary – and understandably so. It can threaten their role and their relationships, and this means that employees are very rarely comfortable expressing these intentions until they already have a new role secured. And by then, it’s usually too late for the current leader or organization to do anything to keep them. Even anonymous engagement surveys are unlikely to collect accurate feedback if employees know that their leaders will receive this type of data. This means that turnover intentions can be very hard to accurately measure.

That means that anonymous community-level data can be incredibly valuable to understand turnover trends. Why? Because responses aren’t tied to any one organization, so respondents can be fully transparent about their intentions without fear. It’s what makes this next figure so telling.

Specifically, we asked all respondents: Do you intend to be working at your current organization in six months?

And remember: I am going to present this data as if you are the leader of a 200-person organization and these responses represent your employees' turnover intentions. I'll walk you through what that looks like in Figure 1.

Of the 682 responses we received, astonishingly, 34% were either expecting to leave or open to leaving their current role in the next six months – that has increased 36% from the responses to our 2021 Workplace Well-Being Report.

Now let’s take another look at Figure 1 and put that into perspective for your organization of 200 employees. Each blue dot represents an employee that is considering leaving their role in the next six months – that is 1 out of every 3 employees, or 68 people from your 200-person organization that will need to be replaced in some way in the next year.

Importantly, responses also suggest that this is a consistent threat across the entire organization. Front-line staff (36%), managers (34%), directors (32%), and executives (33%) all followed a similar trend: 1 in 3 are considering leaving their role. Think about what that would mean for your current organization: three people from your 9-person executive team leaving, fifteen of your 45 managers, fifty-five of your 155 front-line staff. Now, consider trying to replace every person in every role. Think about the amount of organizational knowledge that leaves with each employee and a cost of tens of thousands of dollars per every employee that leaves. When you start to think about the implications of it all, you can understand why The Great Resignation is being treated as one of the biggest workforce shifts of our generation.

So where does employee well-being fit in? Our 2021 YMCA WorkWell Workplace Well-Being Report highlighted burnout, workload, and a lack of appreciation as the biggest challenges to employee well-being in our communities. In the following section, we’ll make a case for just how important employee well-being really is to understanding, predicting, and preventing turnover in your organization.

Appreciation: The Reason Why Your Employees Choose to Leave or Stay

Regardless of our role and our background, we all want to feel like we are a valued member of our organization. We want to feel included, we want to feel like our leader believes that we are an important member of their team and recognizes our efforts when we excel in our role, we want to feel like our organization cares about our well-being, like our team has our back, and like we are adequately compensated for our contributions – both financially and emotionally.

This is where appreciation is so critically important and it’s important to distinguish how appreciation differs from recognition. Unlike recognition, which is usually top-down and highlights what someone has done, appreciation flows from all directions, is personal, and highlights who someone is and why they matter. Unlike recognition, which is usually tied to a discrete event or task, appreciation exists in the little moments – a leader checking in to see how an employee is doing after a tough week at home or knowing that they like to be thanked in private instead of a public forum. Building a culture of appreciation is one of the clearest ways to create a healthy and positive workplace culture; however, despite its importance, many leaders and organizations continue to fall short on employee appreciation. In fact, a need for more personal appreciation has been one of the most cited needs in 2022 when we ask employees what they need more of to feel like they can be at their best at work.

This should be a particularly notable concern for you as a leader, because appreciation becomes increasingly important as burnout continues to rise. Employees want to get back as much as they put into their role, and with so many employees being asked to do more with less, their expectations of how they want to be appreciated have also grown. And, rightfully so. They want to feel like the extra energy, time, and skills they have had to devote to their role during the pandemic is being adequately recognized and valued by their leaders.

So, just how appreciated do employees feel? We asked respondents: “Thinking back on the last three months, I feel as though I have been appropriately appreciated for my contributions to my organization". Figure 5 illustrates these responses.

At first glance, this breakdown feels a little more hopeful, doesn’t it? In your organization of 200 employees, 90 employees feel adequately appreciated at work – almost half of your organization. In an organization where only 38 employees feel like they can adequately manage their workload, this feels like a step in the right direction. On the other hand, you can see that there is still clear work to do. Over half of your employees do not feel adequately appreciated at work, and 68 of them do not feel appreciated at all.

What emerges when you ask some deeper questions, however, is that there are important disparities in these numbers – particularly in roles. For example, at least half of your executives (58%), directors (50%), and managers (52%) agree that they feel appreciated in their roles. However, this culture of appreciation starts to fade as you get closer to your front-line roles, with a smaller percentage of supervisors (33%) and front-line staff (34%) feeling like they are appreciated. This means that in a meeting of ten front-line staff and supervisors, only three of them would feel adequately appreciated. That feels like a clear opportunity area.

Here’s the big question: Why should you as a leader care about creating a culture of appreciation across your organization? Our team at YMCA WorkWell believes that you should care about appreciation simply because your employees matter. They deserve to feel valued at work. Period. That should provide enough justification for any leader. But, if that isn’t enough, let’s return to where we started: turnover.

Before digging in, let’s remember: 34% of all respondents were looking to leave or open to leaving their current role in the next 6 months (Figure 1) – that is 68 employees in your 200-person organization that you would need to replace in some way. When we added burnout into that equation (Figure 4), we saw that nearly half of your burnt-out employees were considering leaving their roles in the next six months, almost double the number of healthy employees.

However, when we add appreciation into the equation, we see just how powerful appreciation can be in managing turnover. Figure 6 illustrates the percentage of employees considering leaving their role in the next six months, only for employees who feel adequately appreciated at work.

Let’s break that data down.

Turnover risk starts to drop substantially when employees feel appreciated at work. For example, turnover risk drops significantly to just 15% when we look at your employees who are healthy and feeling appreciated. Even the nature of the turnover risk is different – the 15% of healthy and appreciated employees were typically only considering new opportunities for personal reasons (e.g., moving to a new region or taking a new step in their career). The data is even more convincing when you consider your burnt-out employees, a group that saw nearly half open to leaving their roles on average (Figure 4). However, the turnover risk of burnt-out employees dropped below 20% when employees felt adequately appreciated – less than half.

This data is telling. It demonstrates how appreciation doesn’t only support employee well-being and mental health, but it can also help employees feel committed to both their organizations and their leaders. The result? A substantial decrease in turnover risk due to a clear and compelling reason to stay in their role.

Importantly, however, while appreciation can give employees a compelling reason to stay, a lack of appreciation can also play a big role in pushing employees out the door. Figure 7 illustrates the percentage of employees considering leaving their role in the next six months, only for employees who feel unappreciated at work.

And this data should set off alarm bells for any leader. Even among your healthiest employees, 1 in 3 were open to leaving their roles in the next six months if they felt unappreciated – more than double the number among employees who felt appreciated.

Here is the truly sobering statistic: 64% of your employees who felt both burnt out and unappreciated were considering leaving their role – 2 out of every 3 employees. That turnover risk is more than four times higher than that seen among your employees that feel both healthy and appreciated. In fact, if this group represented your entire 200-person organization, 128 employees would be looking to leave in the next six months. That should give every leader pause.



As you think about this data, I bet you can think of many people who fit that mold. People who have devoted so much of their time, energy, and effort to supporting their organization over the last two years, and yet, don’t feel like their organization has valued the magnitude of their efforts during the pandemic. They feel exhausted and burnt out, but don’t feel like their leaders have taken the time to check in with them just to see how they are doing and how they can support them. Based on this data, there’s a good chance it might even be you. When you think that 2 out of every 3 people in that group are looking to leave their role in the next six months, you have to say: it’s hard not to see why, and their organizations are certainly going to miss them when they’re gone.

This data demonstrates the true importance of appreciation in predicting turnover. Put simply, employees who feel valued see appreciation as a resounding reason to stay and employees who don’t see their lack of appreciation as a resounding reason to leave. When you see things through that lens, you must ask yourself: If 45% of my employees feel appropriately appreciated at work, is that enough? If 110 employees in my 200-person organization do not feel adequately valued, what else can I be doing to signal how important they are? Your ability to keep your best and most devoted people might just depend on it.