By Flo Nicolas, Get Tech Smart

In August 2021, the term that dominated the headlines was Great Resignation. By August 2022, at least 4.2 million Americans had quit their jobs, seeking better pay, flexibility and culture, according to Zippia.com.

For this episode of Get Tech Smart, we meet Career Coach Peter Duffy, owner of Connections Career Coaching LLC. We'll dig deep into the root causes of the 'great resignation' problem and the solutions for tech employers and employees.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Flo Nicholas: Welcome everyone to another episode of Get Tech Smart. I am your host, Flo Nicholas. You've heard of the Great Resignation … also called Quiet Quitting, Quick Quitting and the latest I heard this morning was Let it Rot. Employees are not happy, they're leaving, and they're going to other companies. What can be done? How can tech employers help to make their employees happy so they don't leave? Today my guest is Peter Duffy, the founder and the CEO at Connections Career Coaching of Nashua. So, Peter, what's going on? 

Peter Duffy: My practice revolves around helping people who reach out to me and say, “I need to do better in my job performance,'” or “I'm done here, I'm leaving, I need to go someplace else; can you help me make that move?” Generally speaking, when people call me, the first thing they usually say to me is, “I'm not getting the kind of money that I want at my company,” or “I'm not getting any kind of attention that I need but I want to stay here, how do I do that right,” or “I've had enough, I need a resume.” When I hear those things, I always ask myself, “Why do they really want to do this, what is going on for them?” When they reach out, and we have our discovery call, I constantly peel back the onion to figure out what's behind this, because I know that in order for them to either do better in their current workplace or to move, their “why” needs to be very big in order to get from point A to point B. 

There are a couple of things that I have found for their reasons for wanting to leave. First, they don't feel comfortable talking to their leadership. Many times they’d rather leave their job than have what I call a difficult conversation. In this case, I'll ask them, “Are you running away from your job or are you running to a better job?” Quite often, they'll say to me, “I'm actually running away from my job.'” That's powerful. What I do is help stabilize them in their current job so that if they do want to leave, they leave on their terms. The problem may be that employers are not listening or inspiring their people. So employees are treating their workplace as a commodity, in other words, employees are thinking: This is employment at will and you pay me, I give you my work, if I don't like it I leave. We've created this very sterile commodity environment where people feel like they can come and go as they want to. 

Flo Nicholas: You bring up so many great points, and yes,  people get to a point where they're so frustrated that they don't even want to have that conversation, they just want to leave and find something better. But do you think some of it has to do with the culture? I`ve worked for some people with whom I didn’t really feel comfortable going to voice my opinion because they weren't exactly friendly leaders. 

Peter Duffy: The change in the business culture dynamic is really what's driving this whole thing. It's a culture that used to be what I call “character ethic culture,” where leaders would work for justice, integrity, kindness, compassion, understanding. Leaders would challenge their people but would  listen to their people, understand everything that's going on in their brains so they could help them. Today, the business culture is more of a  personality ethic where the attitude is “do what's good for me, what do I need, what do I want.” That's not only just from the employee side, it's also from the employer side. The culture has been rocked with the COVID disruption of the workplace that exacerbated the whole situation where people are not eyeball to eyeball with their manager. When you're not eyeball to eyeball people feel like they can just quit because it’s not a big deal. A lot of companies have their values on their wall, they talk about their values, but they don't live their values. I think it's imperative from a competitive advantage perspective to go back and live the values which build the culture. The culture then drives mission and inspiration for people to push the pause button and say, “I’m not out of here yet; let me have a conversation.” 

Flo Nicholas: COVID has changed the way we work. For me, it was business as usual because I work from home, but for some people it was, “Oh wow, I like this.” Then came the mandates; now you’ve got to come back to the office. I think the mandates are responsible for people jumping ship to companies that allow for remote work. How can companies in New Hampshire, tech companies, be flexible because we know that there’s the office vs. work-from-home debate going on?

Peter Duffy: Changing the work site has had a profound impact. Working remotely is a whole other paradigm. In order to maintain that connection with people, even though they’re working from home, I have clients who reach out in different ways, through a  personal letter, or a gift card, or something else that will reach them humanly,  show compassion or kindness or a job well done. In this way, they’re still reaching them, and that makes people “sticky.” These leaders continue to find ways to inspire them to stay around. 

Instead of saying we're bringing people back to the office, leaders need to accept the fact that life is different now and learn to engage people in that conversation, to show your trust for them that they will do the job as well or maybe even better than before; it's just going to be done differently. I talk a lot about character ethic but it's also about displaying trust, displaying faith in your people, letting them know that you're there, and letting them know that they can come forward. The reason why people leave companies is not because their company is saying, “'come back.” People leave because they’re not understood; people leave because they’re not inspired anymore because it’s a commodity workplace.

Flo Nicholas: Right now in New Hampshire, we see a lot of people who want that bigger paycheck, so they cross the border into Massachusetts. That’s the reason why some people leave, they're like “I don't feel like I'm getting paid my worth.” 

Peter Duffy: I have a tech client, his name is Joe, and he is from Nashua, and he did exactly what you just said. He went to work for a company in Waltham (Massachusetts). This is a great worker, he's amazing, and the Massachusetts company gave him a $45,000 pay increase right off the top and better health benefits. They also gave him empowerment for his people across the board, gave him money to give them their pay raises, gave him the power to give them promotions if they deserved it. All the things he wanted. The company he left (at which he worked for 17 years) was not empowering him as a leader to give his own people the things they needed to be their best. They were not listening to him and they would not change their MO, and they lost a great worker. On top of that, his former team unraveled after Joe left and probably half of his team are gone because he didn't get what he needed. What needs to happen in companies is that leaders need to listen, they need to change the way they do business, and that starts with how they live their character.

Flo Nicholas:  HR experts say that it costs the company more money when you lose someone because now you have to go through searching for someone to come in. If things don’t change within a company, you could end up with the same results where that new person sees what's going on and leaves, so it can be a vicious cycle where you keep losing people. 

Peter Duffy: They can't get traction after that. It's very difficult, the reputation gets out, and we're not talking about Glassdoor. You don't need Glassdoor for people to communicate in different ways. Glassdoor was created because people wanted to go someplace to complain, but it's a symptom of a bigger problem in my opinion. 

Flo Nicholas: There may be people listening who are probably unhappy with their current work situation. What are some steps these employees can take to help their situation?

Peter Duffy: I always challenge my clients to be fair to their leaders or to have a conversation about what's bugging you, what are you feeling, what are you going through right now, because that helps them grow in integrity. That helps them encourage character. From there I'll even work with the CEO or a CFO who is working with the president. It's the same conversation. To reflect on what is really important to you, what drives you and can you get any of that where you are? If not, reach out to somebody who actually can help you discern that in a very unbiased way so you can make a great decision that you won't regret later on. I think those are the key things. You got to work the inside and then work the outside. 

Flo Nicholas: I think that's a great tip, but I also feel like within companies there needs to be this attitude of, “We are approachable; if you come and talk to us we're not going to bite your head off.” How do tech leaders create that sense of, “You belong, we care about your mental health,  we care about work-life balance, we care about creating an environment where you feel safe, you can talk to us, and bottom line we want you to be happy.” What is the strategy for tech leaders for that?

Peter Duffy: A lot of leaders now are taking their people out on retreat, and they're getting deep into the characteristics of the company and how they are inspiring people in terms of the values that they're living: compassion, of integrity, of justice. We don't need a huge HR rollout of a program, what we need is people who come together and say, “Are we all in on this? The reason why we're here is because of our people, we exist because of our people. We don't exist for our people, we exist because of our people.” It's a different mindset, so I think they have to first get the mindset around character ethic and then demonstrate that every day. Demonstration for a mid-level leader in a tech company is to go to their person, say, “How are you today? What's going on? How's your family? How's everything?” and be totally open to hearing whatever it is that's on their minds. It starts there; that's the connection and I guarantee you that person will go back and say,  “You're never going to believe what somebody asked me today.” Demonstrate the virtue; that will change things almost immediately. 

Flo Nicholas: I think trust is a big element too, and trust is specifically important when you're dealing with the remote employees, because one of the issues that I see that's coming up is surveillance issues, this whole attitude of: Keep your camera on all day, we want to see what you're doing, or be logged in on Skype or some type of instant messenger. 

Peter Duffy: One of the qualities of great leaders -- whether it is Lincoln, Ernest Shackleton, Rachel Carson -- is their incredible ability to have faith in people, to trust them implicitly, because when you're stuck a thousand miles from home, ice-packed in the Arctic, and you got to bring your people back, you have to trust your people and they have to trust you. Without trust you're nothing, so leaders have to embrace this idea that “I'm going to trust you until you prove me wrong.” My father-in-law was famous for that, as the principal of Central High School in Providence. His attitude was “'I'm going to trust every student until you prove me wrong and I'm going to give you every benefit to change it.” That showed people his faith in them as human beings. It's incredibly important; if you can't trust your people, you don't have a company. You've got to get to that place of trust. You've got to let them try a little, you've got to give them opportunities to fail a little bit and then learn from it, come back stronger. I believe in you, I trust in you, let's do it again right instead of just tossing it out.

Flo Nicholas: The other hot issue that I see a lot of tech companies struggle with is recruiting. A lot of people are saying that the recruiting process is broken. With the Great Resignation, before it was recruiters doing the ghosting and now we're seeing recruiters saying, “Oh my God, I'm the one who got ghosted by the job candidate.” How can tech leaders overcome bad recruiting processes? 

Peter Duffy: That's a complex question. I know it really is a complex question because all this that we're talking about is the result of a population that has lost their sense of what is right and what is wrong. Sometimes I get ghosted; they don't call me at a certain time. I think it's a function of a population of people who think, “It doesn't matter if I don't show up.” There's no integrity there; it doesn't matter one way or the other. I think that's the first thing that we as a society have to overcome, beyond tech companies. People just don't show up for meetings in general. They don't feel like they have to apologize for it, and it is something that needs to be dealt with. I worked for a tech company a while ago in Nashua, they never had any problems recruiting people because their people were the best recruiters. You build a culture and that culture attracts talent. People hear about it and want to work there, and that's the difference. The best recruiters are your people. If you treat your people like we've been talking about then they will go out and recruit for you.

The second thing, recruiting is just a numbers game. You do have to get a pipeline where your internal recruiter or external recruiter has to work diligently to identify the best and brightest and find ways to incentivize them through inspiration by being happy and sharing great things about the organization. In terms of talent, you have to look hard for the really good people but it's possible when your universe attracts good people. It's all about the universe. 

Flo Nicholas: One thing I want to make sure we touch upon is employee reviews. This is a great time to voice your opinions. How often should companies do reviews? There are some that do them once a year, there are some that do them twice a year; is there a sweet spot of when these should be done?

Peter Duffy: My philosophy around performance reviews is when performance review time comes, it shouldn't be a surprise about anything. Performance reviews should take place every week. There should be a direct connection between the leader and their leader or leaders and subordinates to say, “This is what our goals are, this is what you've done great that you can improve on, do we have agreement?” “Absolutely, great, talk to you next week.”  It's about coaching your people and if you're a great coach, you're there to see them with the good things and the things that they're not doing so well; identify the things they're really good at, continue to fan the flames of those things but have it every week or every two weeks. It's all performance-based and that's where you actually learn the little things, because they get comfortable with you and they share things with you they normally wouldn't share if you just talk to them once a year about their performance. 

Performance is a system. It's a process that takes place every single week of every single year so people always know where they stand, so when you come to the final review there are no surprises: “This is what we said, this is what you did, congratulations you can have a 15-20% pay raise because of the great work you did, or, I'm sorry, because your performance is not what we thought and we've talked about this every week, what can we do, does that make sense?” You as the employee should be documenting what you're doing. If you're given feedback where you're told to work on this you should make sure that you work on it and have documentation to show that you're improving as a leader. It’s documentation that incentivizes great performance. It's not a carrot and a stick, it's proactive leadership.

Flo Nicholas: I had a manager who called them “the good, the bad, the ugly,” and we would do this every week through email. It was a chart with: What did you do good? Do you need any help from me? And, what really went wrong this week? It was great for her to know when she needed to step in and give assistance. I found that that was so great and why it was awesome was that when it came time to write up my performance review for the end of the year, I had all the stuff I needed and I just cut and pasted. No surprises. 

Peter Duffy: No surprises, and it's a really great celebration at the end of the year generally speaking, or if a person is not performing they probably know it and they're probably going to leave because they're not performing but the leader gave them every opportunity to perform. Where I came from in leadership, it was always when I said, “Look, this person's not performing,” they'd say, “What have you done to help them?” They would always push back on me as a leader and I would be forced to go and help them, and if I helped them from my heart and they still didn't come around, then yes, off you go. When they left, they went somewhere better. That's the key. As leaders we owe it to our people to help them the very best we can, to be the best people they can be, then they will stay or even if they leave they'll say, “Great company, they gave me every chance to perform.” 

Flo Nicholas: This has been a great conversation. I would keep talking forever with you. I would appoint you to the task force of helping to stop people and not leave their jobs. 

Peter Duffy: I do it every day. I have helped more people stay at companies than I have helped people leave. 

Flo Nicholas: That's fantastic, and that's good to know. So there's hope. 

Peter Duffy: There is great hope to settle people down, rebuild their foundation, help them to see what opportunities are there, how they can grow in both skill and character. I have a client, Becca from Boston with a tech company, who was going to leave. She stayed there for another two years, and she gained great respect and admiration from her boss and his boss. She's happy she stayed but she was ready to say, “Help me with my resume, I'm out of here.” It happens all the time. You've got to meet them where they are. I've done a lot of great work, I think, for New Hampshire tech companies that actually keep people with them rather than leaving them.

Flo Nicholas: I think there's more work to be done and I'm glad you're here to be able to do it, because I think the future looks brighter based on what we've discussed. There are some strategic plans that can be put in place for both the employee and the employer, but I think the shape of tech in New Hampshire looks good. 

Peter Duffy: I think it's great and I just want all the leaders to take heart and get into character ethic, live it every day. Inspire your people and they'll have your back. 

Flo Nicholas: This has been another great episode; from Great Resignation to Quiet Quitting to knowing your worth to being ghosted. Thank you so much for tuning in, stay tuned for more episodes of Get Tech Smart and thank you for being here, Peter.

Flo Nicolas is a technologist, lawyer, speaker, mentor, writer, tech startup founder/CEO of CheapCheep & Director, and creator of Get Tech Smart. She is a dedicated professional with a passion for technology and creative innovation, intent on helping her community to become more tech-savvy and forward-thinking. Get Tech Smart is being shared with members of The Granite State News Collaborative.