Why the Great Resignation is an opportunity for companies to reevaluate their parking lot

A record 4.5 million Americans quit their job last November. The reasons given are varied, and even despite all the data gathered since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, economists still don’t fully agree on the Great Resignation's motivating forces. The likeliest scenario is that the Great Resignation is the result of multiple contributing factors.

Much of the conversation, however, has rightfully focused on the opportunities afforded to employees, but what opportunity does the Great Resignation provide to employers?

It gives them the opportunity to think about their parking lot.

A few years ago, I was working with a client who served as the leader for a nursing association. This particular association was comprised of nurses who worked exclusively for a large regional hospital in a suburban community on the west coast.

This was 2017 or so, and she was already at her wits end. I remember one day she walked in to our meeting looking exasperated. The hospital had just announced plans that the nurses parking lot, located a short walk from the main building, was being relocated to an offsite parking facility, which would require those arriving and departing to rely on a complimentary shuttle. The old nurses’ lot was being replaced with a “VIP” lot of sorts, exclusively for physicians who generated the most annual revenue for the hospital. Her team was apoplectic.

Little did she know that in just three years, the nurses in her association would be pushed to the brink. It was their heroic efforts we applaud – working extended shifts in gear so uncomfortable that it occasionally cut through skin, let alone the fact they were risking their own lives by simply showing up to work.

I had a chance to reconnect with her in early 2020. “Every day, nurses cry in my office,” she told me. “They have nothing left to give, yet this ***** hospital only managed to post a note on our staff bulletin board that it was proud of our efforts.” Many of the nurses, she said, were going to stick it out until the pandemic got under control. They refused to abandon patients suffering with a disease that was still largely a mystery. Once things settled down, however, they were going to look for work elsewhere.

By December 2021, the hospital was severely understaffed, with many vacant spots in the offsite parking lot. I think back to that meeting when my client walked in flustered, because nurses were going to have to take a shuttle just so a doctor who made the hospital bags of cash would have the luxury of walking 30 fewer steps.

By and large, employees don’t leave organizations where they feel valued and respected. If anything, they’re more apt to stick it out and work even harder during challenging times because they want to support the organization that supports them.

Maybe if the shuttle ride was a little bit shorter more nurses would have stayed. Then again, maybe they joined the Great Resignation for reasons beyond the parking lot.

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Co-authored by David Brendel and Ryan Stelzer, Think Talk Create: Building Workplaces Fit for Humans was published by the Hachette Book Group under the PublicAffairs imprint on September 21, 2021. Now available to order!