The Great Resignation — or more recently, the Great Reshuffle — is here, with no end in sight. If you think your marketing team will be untouched by this ongoing phenomenon, think again. According to PwC’s new global survey, one in five employees say they’re likely to switch roles in the next year.
It’s a question of when, not if, your marketing team will lose talent. This raises the question: when a marketer leaves, will your systems, processes, and culture be able to handle it? Will one employee’s sudden departure throw a wrench in your marketing outcomes, or have you built a resilient system to weather the storm?
In this blog, we discuss why the Great Resignation is happening, how it’s affecting marketing teams, and why using a third-party now is a good idea to help you mitigate issues that unexpected understaffing can create.
The Great Resignation
Since early 2021, the Great Resignation has been making headlines as a record number of workers have quit their jobs for better pay, more flexibility, and improved work-life balance. In fact, last November the United State’s “quit rate” reached a 20-year high. There’s nothing quite like a global pandemic to make you reconsider your priorities in life.
Why are employees leaving, you ask? A 2022 Pew Research Center survey found that the top reasons Americans quit their jobs in 2021 were:
- Low pay
- Lack of advancement opportunities
- Feeling disrespected at work
Other common reasons included child care issues, not enough flexibility, and working too many hours. As Thrive Global CEO Arianna Huffington put it, employees are changing the narrative around what it takes to succeed in today’s world.
“People aren’t just quitting their jobs, they’re rejecting the idea that burnout is the price they have to pay for success,” Huffington said.
Even if your company has the best benefits and pay in the world, it’s unlikely that your marketing team won’t be affected by the Great Resignation in some way or other. As we’ll discuss below, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
How a Sudden Resignation Affects Marketing
When a team member suddenly resigns, the effects ripple throughout the whole marketing team. Sudden resignations can lead to volatility in staffing, management upheaval, and, in some cases, the loss of legacy knowledge surrounding key processes and systems that directly impact business outcomes.
Case in point? Let’s say Susan is the resident expert on your ABM-enabling technology tool. Well, Susan just found a job out of San Francisco that pays 30% more and is fully remote. If she leaves without training anyone else on your expensive and precious ABM tool, your ABM strategy (and budget) goes kaboom in a matter of two weeks. Yikes!
The Great Resignation is showcasing just how dangerous it is for marketing leaders to rely on one or only a few employees as knowledge depositories. After all, when any employee could leave at any moment, putting all your eggs in one basket is the worst strategy to adopt.
How to Build a Resilient Marketing Organization
How can marketing leaders avoid the potential calamity or losing top talent and important legacy knowledge along with them? The simple answer is to prepare for the inevitable by re-examining what’s under your control and what needs to change.
Now more than ever, marketing leaders need to lead the charge of prioritizing effective data management through more strategic and organized approaches. Here are three ways to mitigate issues when a marketing team member resigns:
- Bring in an unbiased third party to audit your existing marketing operational structure.
- Avoid data silos by re-organizing your existing martech and processes.
- Conduct a data “exit interview” with former employees to ensure nothing gets lost in the mix.
At Inverta, we offer marketing consulting help to B2B marketing leaders to help solve challenges like understaffing, organizational problems, and martech nightmares. We offer operational consulting, strategy and planning, and campaign management. Learn more about our services here.
