Now, as the pandemic has led people to re-evaluate how they live and spend their time, many are also examining their relationship to work. As a result, and in the context of a recovering U.S. economy, a record number of Americans quit their jobs throughout the spring and summer months.
Lim sees this trend as “a great thing,” noting that people are “standing up for themselves,” their personal values and how they expect to infuse purpose into the work they do every day.
What people are calling the Great Resignation, I’m also saying there’s a Great Awakening here.
I believe the future work is human. There are certain things that will take the place of what we do. But let’s not forget the fact that technology is and should be our friend. It’s coming from humans.
We’ve seen the bad sides of technology, but we’ve also seen the good sides. As long as we make good decisions of what jobs we take, how we run our companies, how we manage our teams, if we keep that in check, the future of work can be about technology but rooted in the core of who we are as human beings.
In the next year or two, I think it’ll be really clear that our human needs must be on the same plane as our technological needs. And the more that we can tap into that, the more successful our organizations and teams will be.
It was a reminder that it’s not just our highs in life that we learn from, it’s also our lows. The way we think of happiness being such a universal term, at the same time, this loss and grief everyone experiences is also a very universal term that is not embraced and explored enough.
Indeed, it is these low times that help us stop and reflect on our lives, giving us the potential to step forth onto a new path that can lead us to better highs in life.
So more than anything, people are the ones feeling empowered and driving this “Great Reset”. It’s not the rich 1% as conspiracy theorist would have you believe but rather the marginalized masses who have had enough and are seeking something better and different.