From Great Resignation to Great Reimagination
Ready to reimagine work, workforce and workplace?
From Great Resignation to Great Reimagination
Understanding how organizations can capitalize on the current labor challenges to rearchitect, recharge, and reinvent how work gets done.
With employees more willing than ever to leave for fresh opportunities, and companies struggling to resume pre-pandemic operations with fewer people, leaders have an opportunity to reimagine the workforce, the workplace, and work itself.
This article is the latest in our compendium of articles on the Great Resignation, where we explore why workers are leaving—and how to rearchitect work, recharge the workforce, and reimagine the workplace.
These insights can help organizations to better harness and leverage technology, empower people, and create a better experience for all employees while delivering superior outcomes for customers and stakeholders.
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Health Care
From Great Resignation to Great Reimagination
Health care leaders are grappling with the unprecedented workforce challenges of high attrition rates, burnout, skills shortages, and unfilled positions. Driven by the explosion of data and the continuing education and health literacy of the consumer, the sector is undergoing fundamental shifts, disruption and new entrants to the market.
It is possible for hospitals and health systems to move from the Great Resignation to the Great Reimagination. However, that won’t happen by itself.
It will require targeted interventions and investment to understand where employees are today and include them in the process to re-imagine health care work. Not being able to address the talent emergency could further impact the financial and cultural bottom line.
It’s time to revisit and rearchitect work, recharge the workforce, and reimagine how care is delivered to better harness and leverage technology, create a better workforce experience, and deliver enhanced patient outcomes. We explore key trends, themes, insights and actions to keep top of mind.
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Life Sciences
From Great Resignation to Great Reimagination
COVID-19 has fundamentally changed the way we work and the way we feel about work. It has compelled the life sciences industry to implement radical organizational changes while under the world’s microscope, as they raced against the clock to deliver life-saving remedies.
Business leaders were forced to navigate the tensions of a partially remote workforce and the surging demand on those who could not perform their essential work from home. The unique pressures experienced by leaders in this space amidst a global public health crisis have made the norms of the pre-pandemic working world a thing of the past.
To be industry-leading, organizations must be prepared to live their values, put purpose at the center of their work, make a positive impact in the lives of their employees, and take a stand on societal issues. While there is no one-size-fits-all panacea, the Future of Work belongs to those willing to take action. We explore key trends and actions to keep top of mind.
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Power, Utilities & Renewables
From Great Resignation to Great Reimagination
The power, utilities, and renewables industry is in a period of extreme transformation as power generation is as the forefront of energy decarbonization.
This seismic transformation of the industry is characterized from a workforce perspective by many forces including a dramatic increase in digital skill needs over the last decade, expected significant job growth due to decarbonization, as well as changes in some core power generation jobs as coal and other fossil-fuel power plants are retired. All this even before we entered the Great Resignation.
Recognizing the impacts not only on business operations but on the organization and even the entire talent ecosystem will help companies prepare and thrive. The power industry is at a truly transformational point in its history. An environment like this leads to unique opportunities to differentiate and improve. We explore key trends, themes and actions to keep top of mind.
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Oil, Gas & Chemicals
From Great Resignation to Great Reimagination
Starting in 2021, the oil, natural gas, and chemical sectors recovered strongly, but uncertainty remains due to changing market dynamics, ongoing geopolitical tensions worldwide, and rising consumer and investor pressures over sustainability.
Demand has started to moderate, producers are balancing supply growth, digitalization has taken out inefficiencies, consolidation has reduced the overall footprint, and weak margins with volatile prices continue to hit the industry. All these factors have led to growth and talent instability in the industry.
With many companies facing significant hurdles on talent acquisition, employee retention and engagement have been exacerbated over the last two years. We explore six practical actions HR organizations can focus on to address the dynamics in the industry.
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Industrial Products & Construction
From Great Resignation to Great Reimagination
The industrial products and construction sector is experiencing a confluence of rebounding demand and recovery with historic labor and supply chain challenges. A combination of high business valuations, strong earnings, and low-cost debt may also encourage companies to add technology capabilities, gain share, and expand in new markets with M&A.
Policy initiatives and infrastructure investment also have the potential to contribute to manufacturing’s recovery. However, workforce shortages and supply chain instability are reducing operational efficiency and margins, along with cost pressure and inflation risk. The industry can expect elevated uncertainty from a range of potential disruptors globally.
The evolution and “hybridization” of jobs due to the introduction of automation into operations is creating a need for tapping new sources of talent as well as upskilling/reskilling current talent. As transformations unfold, we explore practical actions organizations can take to navigate this new landscape.
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Telecommunications, Media & Entertainment
From Great Resignation to Great Reimagination
It is common knowledge that the pandemic challenged every industry to re-think its proposition to its customers and redefine its commitment to the workers.
On one hand, the media and entertainment industry was challenged with driving innovation and changing business models to break generational norms of entertainment experience from the traditional outdoor to an in-person digital home set-up. On the other hand, the telecom industry continued to make progress in augmenting its network capacity with additional fiber and wireless deployments to meet the constant demand for higher-speed networks in 2021.
Looking ahead, in 2022, we can expect to see a new set of opportunities and potential challenges presented by a dynamic technological, regulatory, competitive environment, and changing customer behavior that may influence the sector’s progress. We explore key trends, themes and actions for every organization to keep top of mind.
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Sector report coming soon
Technology
From Great Resignation to Great Reimagination
When the pandemic began over two years ago, it catapulted many organizations into the future, rapidly accelerating their digital transformation. Work environments changed overnight as remote work became commonplace and market demands evolved.
As organizations transition from the urgent, crisis-driven reaction of the recent past, to a more stabilized and purposeful roadmap for the foreseeable future, the year ahead holds significant promise for the technology industry with an exciting agenda.
Tech players will be seen bringing predictability to the future of work, by serving up new technological models, meshing dispersed elements of tech infrastructure and informing and enhancing customer experience while securing the systems and information to drive it.
It will be important for tech leaders to keep a pulse on the industry landscape and evolving trends, to deploy mitigation strategies and stay ahead. We explore key trends, themes and actions for every leader to keep top of mind.
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Insurance
From Great Resignation to Great Reimagination
The pandemic’s impact on the workforce has exacerbated longtime talent challenges facing insurers, requiring significant reinvention of the industry’s approaches to recruitment, retention, training, and the future of work itself.
Even prior to the coining of the term “The Great Resignation”—the insurance sector faced a growing talent problem. With an aging workforce and increasing demand for more highly skilled workers in IT, cybersecurity, and data science, organizations struggled to upgrade and upskill their talent base. With advances in data analytics and emerging technologies, it has been an ongoing challenge for organizations to leverage the new data into actionable insights.
The opportunities to reshape and reconfigure the insurance sector are endless, driven by the rapid embracement of technology and continued consumer pressure for services and products. We take a look at five practical actions for organizations to keep top of mind.
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Banking
From Great Resignation to Great Reimagination
The banking industry is facing a monumental hiring challenge. With record level job openings being seen in the market, banks simply cannot hire fast enough.
With fierce competition for skills and the diminishing power of compensation, there is an opportunity to look for new and innovative ways to attract and retain talent.
While banks are set to continue performing well as 2022 unfolds, a reimagination of the sectors’ approach to compensation, skilling, mobility, adapting to change, and overall culture, values and purpose is necessary to maintain momentum and continued growth moving forward.
We explore five practical actions to keep top of mind.
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Government
From the Great Resignation to Great Reimagination
In November 2021, the United States “quit rate” reached a 20-year high as workers left their jobs in search of higher pay, better opportunities, and greater job satisfaction.
While the Great Resignation may not be as pronounced in the public sector, government executives still have an incredible opportunity to fundamentally rethink their work, workforce, and workplaces.
The Great Reimagination is certainly here: harnessing it will help government prepare for—and overcome—future challenges.
Governments can look to capitalize on today’s worker-driven talent market by strengthening certain elements of its talent model to attract, hire, and retain workers searching for a new job more aligned to their interests and needs. We explore five talent opportunities and key next steps to keep top of mind.
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Defense, Security, and Justice
From Great Resignation to Great Reimagination
The unprecedented labor dynamics catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic have forced industries into a crossroads: return to the pre-pandemic state of work and risk losing a significant competitive advantage in the labor market, or invest in a longer-term reimagination of work, workforce, and workplace to attract and retain the best talent.
Defense, Security, and Justice (DS&J) organizations are faced with the same disruptions as private industry and will need to sustain the transformation ushered in by COVID-19 to provide a flexible and personalized talent experience.
DS&J organizations can look to their very own sector to see successful transformation—the Department of Defense (DoD) is in the process of implementing significant shifts to their work, workforce, and workplace and are seeing a positive impact on their people and their mission success. We explore three key actions to keep top of mind.
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Sector report coming soon
Federal Health
From Great Resignation to Great Reimagination
Leaders are struggling with an urgent talent crisis, rating labor and skills shortage as the top issue expected to disrupt their business strategies within the next 12 months. Public health care organizations are no different as the COVID-19 pandemic has called attention to the forces of change affecting the dimensions of work, workforce, and workplace.
Talent is scarce. Federal health agencies face considerable barriers to filling open roles and adapting to a changing environment. There’s an opportunity right now, for leaders to rearchitect how work is done, reengage with new talent pathways, and reimagine the workplace to enhance the workforce experience.
We explore how leaders of federal health agencies can take a holistic approach powered by three key actions.
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Sector report coming soon
Higher Education
From Great Resignation to Great Reimagination
Higher education is a sector rooted in tradition. Organizational structures and roles have remained largely static, and the work has taken place almost exclusively on physical campuses. Even as remote education became commonplace, most of the labor making those experiences possible happened during standard workdays in campus offices.
Few people questioned this model because there was little reason to imagine a different set of circumstances and the sophistication of remote team collaboration tools was not yet compelling. Further, people who work in higher education historically tend to have an affinity for the purpose of the institution, which centers on interacting with students, and the attraction of campus life.
Given such a history, the immediate shift to online learning and operations in 2020 demonstrated a previously unrealized capacity for higher education to evolve purposefully and respond to profound environmental pressures. We explore four key actions for leaders to keep top of mind across this new landscape.
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Retail
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How global labor markets are recovering from COVID-19
Canada
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After losing 3 million jobs at the start of the pandemic, the Canadian labor market rebounded strongly last year, with employment surging above pre-pandemic levels in September 2021. However, the recovery remains uneven across industries: Employment in educational, professional, and financial services has picked up, while employment in accommodation and food services, transportation, and construction lags.
In 2022, there are two pressing labor market issues to watch for: labor supply and unequal labor market outcomes. The government will need to monitor the lagged recovery for some vulnerable groups; if this recovery doesn’t pick up, policy interventions might be required. The labor market cannot be deemed to be truly recovered if the most vulnerable are left behind.
Germany
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The labor market was an important stabilizing factor during the pandemic in Germany. Thanks to a wide range of policy measures, employment was kept largely stable, with positive effects on consumer spending and the economy. The economic outlook suggests that this positive trend is likely to continue for the time being. However, the long-term outlook for the labor market will be shaped by demographic and technological change, with possibly surprising effects: Despite the vast potential for automation, the demand for human work is likely to rise.
India
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India’s biggest economic asset is its young population. However, tapping into this demographic dividend has been a challenge. Lack of employment opportunities has been India’s Achilles’ heel for decades. The pandemic has worsened the labor market and made it highly fragmented.
India faces the challenge of creating broad-based jobs—for younger workers as well as across sectors—and the government will have to build both physical and digital infrastructure to create these opportunities. Offering labor-intensive jobs to absorb India’s low- and semi-skilled population will be difficult given businesses’ increasing adoption of labor-saving technologies.
Japan
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So far, there are few signs that Japan is experiencing the type of labor shortages seen in Europe and North America. Job openings and wages are lower than their pre-pandemic levels. However, Japan ended its state of emergency only in September 2021[1], far later than the lockdowns in Europe were lifted. The labor market turmoil associated with the reopening of the economy seen elsewhere has likely only just begun in Japan. Only a few industries had experienced labor shortages as of December 2021, but more may be on the horizon as the economy picks up and demographic challenges persist.
[1] Isabel Reynolds, “Japan ends virus emergency nationwide and looks to boost economy,” Bloomberg, September 28, 2021.
Mexico
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During 2020, the temporary or permanent halt of many economic activities led to a sharp drop in the level of employment in Mexico. Mexican labor markets have yet to recover to pre-pandemic conditions, which has led to the early exit of older generations from the labor force and higher female unemployment. The number of unemployed older adults more than doubled, from 22,200 in Q3 2019 to 44,800 in the same period of 2021.1 As economic activities gradually reopened, workers started returning to their jobs, and, as of Q3 2021, the labor force participation rate stood at 59.6%, very close to the pre-pandemic rate of 59.9%2.
[1&2] INEGI; Deloitte analysis.
Spain
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Employment levels fell sharply during the COVID-19 recession, but they also recovered much faster than after the 2008 financial crisis. Spain’s employment reached pre-pandemic levels in less than two years, compared with the 12 years it took after the previous crisis. Employment in the public sector, notably health and education, has contributed to the swift recovery of aggregate employment levels in 2021. Despite the recovery of aggregate employment levels, structural problems persist in the labor market.
United Kingdom
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The UK labor market has been resilient during the pandemic. Unemployment rose from 4% before the COVID-19 crisis to peak at just 5.2% in November 2020 and has since fallen back to just above pre-pandemic levels. Remarkably, the sharpest squeeze in economic activity in more than a century has resulted in the lowest recessionary peak in unemployment in decades. As the economy recovers from a deep downturn, three features of the post-pandemic labor market stand out.
United States
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Even before Omicron started spreading in mid-December 2021, tight labor market conditions were holding back US job growth, even as the number of job openings remained at or near all-time highs[1]. Many employers have been concerned about the scarcity of workers, yet employment remains substantially below pre-pandemic levels. Something odd is happening in US labor markets—but what?
One issue appears to be a substantial mismatch in the type of workers businesses need and the availability of employees with the skills or interest in taking those jobs. Examining labor force participation by gender and age could provide clues as to what might attract these workers back. A resumption of work-eligible visas might also offer some relief to employers.
[1] Unless otherwise noted, all data is from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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