The Great Resignation started at the same time when people all across the world started to recover from the epidemic. People started abandoning their employment and making the decision to pursue their ambitions of becoming entrepreneurs. It doesn’t matter whether you believe that need or adversity is the mother of creation; one thing is for certain: many individuals discover the impetus they need to reinvent themselves during times of difficulty.
VistaCreate has conducted research and produced a report that effectively identifies the reason of the Great Resignation as well as the pattern that is continuing. The following findings from the survey are highlighted in the study:
- Finding Opportunities
- Job Safety is Still a Priority
- Choosing an Industry
- Trying Something New
- Lack of Money
- Following Their Dream and a Better Work-life Balance
- Biggest Struggle is Finding Clients
- The Role of Social Media
What insights can new company owners and those who already have their own companies glean from this research, given that millions of people launch new ventures each year?
In May of 2021, Anthony Klotz, a professor of management at the School of Management at University College London, was the one who first conceptualised the word. “When there is uncertainty, people prefer to remain put, so there are pent-up resignations that didn’t happen during the last year,” said Klotz. “When there is uncertainty, people tend to stay put.”
His evaluation of the circumstance is supported by statistics provided by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. Between April 2021 and April 2022, there will be around 71.6 million workers who will leave their employment. This was a monthly average of 3.98 million people giving up smoking, with the number reaching a high point of 4.5 million in November 2021.
Finding Opportunities
Because of the difficulties that people and companies encountered during COVID-19, the environment was not favourable for beginning a new venture. However, more than half of those who participated in the survey opted to participate in the Great Resignation by either beginning a new business or a side hustle (68% of respondents).
The survey also noted that many people started new hobbies, began acquiring new skills, started finding more time to spend on social media, and started adapting better behaviours as a result of the economic downturn.
According to one small business owner, “The whole sector of remote work, learning etc. truly blew up during the pandemic. Every day you would hear about some new person who was creating their own business or ideas for the market and becoming successful fast.”
Job Safety is Still a Priority
Even though there was a rise in the number of persons starting their own businesses during the Great Resignation, a significant number of people continued to work full-time (24%) or part-time (27%).
There are a lot of individuals now employed who are in a certain business not because it is what they want to do but because it pays well and is thus the only option available to them.
According to the findings of the survey, the industry of business and finance (13%) had the highest worker resignation rate. On the other hand, the fields of arts and design (15%) as well as the creative industry had the greatest increases in revenue.
Trying Something New
People were more willing to start again, regardless of whether it was because of the epidemic or something else.
47% of respondents to the study reported that they had always had the desire to experiment with something new. On the other side, another 34% of people responded that it has always been a desire of theirs to launch their own firm. The most significant factor that led 27% of people to make the switch was a lack of interest in the prior industry.
Lack of Money
Even when the desire to leave their job or launch a new business was present, the most significant barrier that prevented them from taking action earlier was one of the following:
- Lack of money (45%)
- Afraid to take risks (39%)
- Not knowing where to start (37%)
Following a Dream and Work-life Balance
Freeing oneself from the monotony of a 9-to-5 work was an important consideration for many of the responders.
Almost half of respondents (47%) indicated that they desired to have a better work-life balance. In addition, 49% of respondents stated that they were either quitting their jobs to pursue ideas that they had conceived during the epidemic or ideas that they had always planned to pursue (51%).
Biggest Struggle is Finding Clients
Finding customers is tough for any business, but it is that much harder for startups. The top challenges for these new entrepreneurs are:
- Finding clients (48%)
- Cash flow (48%)
- Design-related issues (35%)
Concerning the current state of the digital ecosystem, design-related concerns continue to be a source of contention. Finding services that contain everything a new company needs is one method to manage the expense and the technological difficulty that they face.
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The Role of Social Media
It is not unexpected that social media had a significant influence in the establishment of 64% of people’s businesses given that it plays an indisputable role in both the personal and professional lives of people nowadays. Advertising on social media platforms also had the most beneficial impact (68%) for newly founded businesses, in addition to helping them launch their operations.
The Respondents
The results of the poll were based on the responses of 4,000 eligible respondents who took part in the survey over the course of the previous two years, during the epidemic. This includes 2,000 respondents from both the United Kingdom and the United States.
People who took part in the Great Resignation by leaving their employment and beginning their own companies are referred to here as “Great Resigners.” In addition, those individuals have launched a business while simultaneously maintaining full-time employment.
VistaCreate and the Kantar research firm were the ones that carried out the poll from March 3, 2022 all the way through May 3, 2022. More information may be found in the infographic that follows.
