The Great Resignation and the future of work is just one indicator of something larger happening in a post-pandemic society – we are undergoing a Great Reframing of life’s choices and behaviors redefining how we view work and everything else.
Keith worked for the same real estate firm for many years. “I was their numbers guy. They developed projects and I forecasted costs,” he recounts. Keith goes on to say, “During COVID I worked from home. I was able to do my work and found out that I can have a life too. Then they told me they wanted me back in the office next month, like nothing ever happened. I started to think, there has to be more to life than swimming in a sea of cubicles — no matter how much they pay.” With a grin he says, “I fired him. I fired my boss. I quit. My wife, kids, and I are moving to do something, anything, different.”
Keith is not alone. Texas A&M’s Anthony Klotz coined the phrase describing the evolving post-COVID employer-employee relationship — the “Great Resignation.” Klotz observes that people are suffering from pandemic burnout; many relocated far away from their employers during the lockdown, or have found inspiration from others to simply change jobs, even careers. Klotz is not incorrect, but his focus on work may be incomplete.
Forget the Great Resignation, society is undergoing a Great Reframing.
Framing, in the simplest sense, is the psychological lens by which we look at the world. It includes the conscious and unconscious beliefs and biases that affect, not just our view of how the world works, but also what we believe to be important. A dozen years ago the Great Recession demonstrated the fragility of our financial life. For the decade-plus that followed nearly every lifestyle trend, or deviation from what was once considered normal, was explained by the phrase, “well, since the Great Recession….”
The pandemic is different. Forget fears of financial security, the pandemic threatened our very life. The pandemic’s legacy is a new framing calculus that reinforces the belief that life, and many things in life, are uncertain — causing many to critically reassess how every choice they make affects their quality of life and the lives of those they love.
People, many painfully close up, discovered how fragile life can be. And, like Keith, have come to the realization that it is important to enjoy life now, today. Perhaps equally striking was the collective discovery that, for those that could, working from home, or even working from far away, ‘worked.’ The relative effectiveness of virtual work demonstrated to many that the rules, and routines before the pandemic — seemingly as immutable as the laws of physics — are, in fact, socially constructed ideas from a past era, arbitrary, and therefore entirely malleable. Before the pandemic we believed that we had to organize our lives a certain way, after the pandemic we discovered that was not necessarily true.
The belief that work-life rules can or need to change is not new. Flexibility of where and when to work has been an issue for decades. Throughout the 1990s there was the call for ‘work/family balance.’ Over the last decade, many younger workers were already prioritizing flexibility over finances. A PwC survey, conducted nearly ten years ago, of over 4,000 recent graduates in 75 countries showed that one in five Millennials identified flexibility as the critical element in their choice of employers.
The pandemic did not introduce change, instead it brought once latent values and beliefs people held to the forefront reshaping today’s and tomorrow’s preferences and behaviors. Fifteen months of suspended normalcy demonstrates that work —and life — can be different. Reframing the future of work is just one element of daily life undergoing change.
Our most important relationship is not with our employer but with our spouse or partner. Many are even rethinking these precious relationships. The BBC reports a pandemic “breakup boom.” According to the BBC, a leading UK law firm recorded a 122% increase in divorce enquiries. A United States online legal contract provider reported a 34% increase in downloads of basic divorce agreements. Perhaps most striking (if not disturbing) was that 20% of the sales of those divorce contracts were to newlyweds. The BBC goes on to report similar increases in breakups in China and Sweden. It would appear that being unhappy, even if it is for just a short period of adjustment, is no longer acceptable.
If work and relationships are in flux, how we think about retirement cannot remain the same. MIT AgeLab research with financial advisors in the United States and Canada indicates that many financial advisors are changing their conversation with clients from a singular focus on financial security to a much broader discussion of how to live well in retirement. As one Chicago advisor put it, “our business is now as much about helping clients prepare for their quality of life as much as it is about paying for it.”
Even the healthcare industry is refocusing what it delivers in light of the Great Reframing. While isolation certainly drove demand for mental health services to record levels, the reframing of healthcare from treatment of physical illness alone to services that ‘take care of all of me’ is accelerating. A more holistic approach to ‘wellbeing,’ not simply physical function, is now more important than ever to patient satisfaction as well as health outcomes. Deloitte reports that the future multi-trillion dollar healthcare market is driven, in part, by the pursuit of health of the whole person — and that even includes supporting the pursuit of personal happiness.
Product manufacturers and retailers will not escape the Great Reframing. Consumers are likely to put even greater priority on brands that can demonstrate that they are contributing to everyone’s quality of life. Corporate environmental, social, and governance goals, or ESG, are no longer an investment category or strategy, but are increasingly an everyday consumer value. Firms will have to amplify their brand story and commitment to purpose, values, and support for ethical consumerism — that is buying behavior that focuses on ‘what’s important.’ Consumers, particularly younger buyers, will look to brands and companies that do more than provide a desired product or service, but also help “ease their considerable anxieties” over everything from their personal wellbeing to the wellbeing of their community and sustainability of the planet.
It is tempting to believe that as the pandemic recedes from memory, people, like Keith, will report back to their cubicles, relationships will become more stable, retirement planning will revert to a near singular focus on the practicalities of finance, health will be simply be about health, and retail’s focus to foster ‘good’ buying behaviors will eventually be just another fad. Yes, many of life’s activities will appear to drift back to their pre-pandemic rhythms but not completely. Many now know that things that were once considered absolute and predictable are neither. The pandemic, with far more impact than the Great Recession, has created a new psychosocial equilibrium — a renewed and heightened vigilance and priority to determine what is truly important and to make choices accordingly. Our view of life has been reframed.