Over the past several months, we’ve witnessed an unparalleled number of voluntary resignations as gainfully employed individuals leave their jobs in numbers never seen in our history. “The Great Resignation,” a term coined by Anthony Klotz, a professor of management in Texas, began in May 2021 and continued through the summer, with the “quits rate” hitting an all-time high this past August when an astonishing 4.3 million people — or 2.9% of the entire workforce — quit their jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Several articles offer reasons for this phenomenon, which Klotz attributed to “people digesting the lessons of lockdown and reimagining what normal life should look like.” In the case of those in the leisure and hospitality industry, which had quit rates in excess of 6.4%, there was a consensus that workers were seeking more predictable work schedules, higher wages and decent working conditions. But as many news reports indicate, The Great Resignation was not limited to entry-level or hourly employees. A range of studies show that resignation rates have risen fastest among mid-career employees, led by those with a tenure of five to 10 years. Surprisingly, employees 30-35, 40-45 and 45-50 have also all increased their resignation rates by more than 38%. And, as was the case before the pandemic, women are quitting at a higher rate than men.
The caregiving fields have been especially hard hit. Nationally, 1 in 5 health care workers quit their jobs since February 2020. VPR reported recently that Vermont finds itself with “a mass exodus” of frontline workers in community mental health agencies, with 950 of 5,000 jobs unfilled. And the regional and national news is full of stories describing how school districts struggle to fill teaching and support staff positions.
The most common explanation for this phenomenon among caregivers is burnout caused by stress from changes in the work environment attributable to the pandemic. But I believe the there is another underlying factor: a subtle but pervasive change in the job expectations of caregivers, a change that is felt most strongly by those who began their careers as caregivers one or two decades ago.
When today’s mid-career nurses, mental health workers and teachers entered the workforce in 2000, they expected to work directly with patients, clients or students. They hoped to motivate their patients, clients and students to help themselves and provide them with the support they needed to live healthy and productive lives. They were eager to offer the personal support and encouragement patients needed to heal and students needed to learn.
Those entering caregiving fields in 2000 never dreamed that, 20 years later, they would find themselves spending hours in front of computer screens entering, reviewing and interpreting data — data that “proved” patients were getting sufficient attention and students were doing the work assigned daily and increasing their knowledge.
When these mid-career caregivers had a chance to digest “the lessons of lockdown,” they realized that their jobs in 2021 are nothing like what they aspired to when they began their careers.
This shift away from personal contact to data analysis began the 1990s, when those who fund caregiving organizations in health and education were no longer interested in “soft” inputs like staffing ratios or time spent interacting with clientele. Funders wanted caregiving organizations to operate more like businesses. They sought to have caregivers make decisions based on hard data gathered as efficiently and quickly as possible and reported in a fashion that might help the funders identify “best practices” that could be replicated.
The result: Over the past two decades, caregivers in hospitals, mental health agencies and schools have spent countless hours learning a succession of “new and improved” software programs, even more hours learning how to interpret the data entered into those programs, and more and more of their time scrolling through screens. Instead of using their time and expertise to interact with and learn about patients and students, caregivers are spending time entering and analyzing data.
When the COVID-19 pandemic created staffing shortages, things got even worse. Caregiver caseloads and paperwork increased during the very time when patients, clients and students needed personal contact.
Given the disconnect between the work caregivers believed they would be doing when they entered the field and the work they do now, is it any surprise that roughly 20% of them are leaving the field?
To reverse the trend and attract more workers into caregiving fields — a necessity if our country hopes to provide universal child care and pre-school — we will need to spend more than we do now. In addition to the money needed to fill existing vacancies, more will be needed to offer competitive compensation to those working in child care centers and preschools, where pay is woefully low.
And still more will be needed to underwrite the training required for the new entrants to the caregiving workforce.
But until we unburden caregivers from the data collecting demanded to “prove” they care and “quantify” the degree to which they care, I would not be surprised to see the vacancies persist. Caregiving and computer screens are at odds with each other, and those who want to offer help and support to their fellow human beings will seldom find rewards in the collection and interpretation of data.
Wayne Gersen lives in Etna.