The great resignation was the most significant workforce event in modern history. First, nearly 48 million Americans quit their jobs voluntarily in 2021. Then similar patterns emerged across the UK, Australia, Canada, and Europe. And third, most organizations responded by doing the one thing the research shows did not work: offering more money.
If you are in HR, in management, or just trying to understand what changed and why it still matters in 2026, this article explains what actually happened and what you need to do about it.
When Millions of People Said Enough
In 2021, something happened that nobody in the history of the modern workplace had seen before.Nearly 48 million Americans quit their jobs voluntarily in a single year. Not switching employers with another job lined up. Walking away. Resigning without certainty of what came next. Choosing the discomfort of unemployment over the discomfort of staying.
The media called it the great resignation. Business leaders were confused. HR teams were overwhelmed. And many organizations reached for the standard retention tool: compensation increases.For most of them, it did not work.
Why the Money Fix Failed During the Great Resignation
Here is the thing that confused so many organizations during the great resignation.The assumption was straightforward. If employees are leaving in record numbers, they must want more pay. Increase compensation and the problem resolves.
However, when researchers started actually asking people why they left, the picture was very different. Pay was a factor for some. However, for the majority of people who resigned during this period, the real drivers were something else entirely.
According to Pew Research Center data on the great resignation, the top reasons people quit were feeling disrespected at work, no opportunities for advancement, and inadequate compensation. However, feeling disrespected was cited more broadly than just pay.
So the great resignation was fundamentally about meaning, respect, flexibility, and the quality of people’s daily work experience.
What Actually Caused the Great Resignation
At this point, most people either think the great resignation was about money. Or they start understanding the deeper forces that were actually at work. Here is what the evidence shows.
Burnout Hit a Breaking Point
First, burnout had been building for years before the pandemic. Healthcare workers, educators, service industry employees, and knowledge workers were already running on empty. Then the pandemic pushed many people past their breaking point.
When burnout reaches a certain threshold, the usual coping mechanisms stop working. The great resignation was, in many cases, the relief valve for years of accumulated exhaustion.
Remote Work Redefined Expectations
Second, for workers who could do their jobs from home, remote work shifted the reference point for what a reasonable work arrangement looked like. Commutes disappeared. Schedules became more flexible. When employers pushed for full office returns, many employees weighed the trade-off differently than expected.
People Reconnected With People Reconnected With What They Actually Valued
Third, lockdowns forced a level of reflection that normal busy life made difficult. Questions that had been easy to defer became impossible to avoid. People looked at their jobs and asked seriously whether the exchange was worth it.
For tens of millions of people, the answer was: not anymore. And the great resignation followed.
Poor Management Became Impossible to Ignore
Finally, the pandemic was a stress test for management quality at scale. Managers who relied on surveillance, control, and physical presence as proxies for productivity struggled. And their teams noticed.
The great resignation in many organizations was simply people deciding they were no longer willing to manage upward indefinitely.
What Came After the Great Resignation
The great resignation gradually slowed as labor markets tightened and economic uncertainty increased. However, two successor phenomena emerged that HR professionals need to understand.
The Great Detachment
Research from Gallup identified what they called the Great Detachment in 2024 and 2025. Employee engagement reached an eleven-year low. Large numbers of employees felt disconnected from their organization’s purpose and unsupported by their manager.
Unlike the great resignation, where people were actively leaving, the Great Detachment is characterized by people staying physically while withdrawing psychologically.
Quiet Quitting
The phrase “quiet quitting” went viral in 2022. Quiet quitting is not actually quitting. It is deliberately limiting effort to exactly what is formally required. No discretionary contribution. No initiative. No going beyond.
Both dynamics, the great resignation and its successors, are expensive. Neither is visible in headcount data. However, both show up in productivity, innovation, quality, and eventual attrition.
What HR and Managers Must Learn From the Great Resignation
Lesson 1: Engagement Is a Business-Critical Issue
The great resignation made visible what engagement researchers had been documenting for years. Disengagement is a direct driver of financial performance, talent loss, and competitive disadvantage.Organizations that treat engagement as an annual survey exercise are building the conditions for their own version of the great resignation.Lesson
2: Flexibility Is Now a Baseline Expectation
For most knowledge workers, some meaningful flexibility in when and where they work is not a perk. It is a condition. Organizations that refuse meaningful flexibility are making a retention decision, whether they intend to or not.Lesson
3: Manager Quality Is the Deciding Factor
The single variable most predictive of whether an employee stays or leaves is the quality of their relationship with their immediate manager. Investing in how managers lead, not just what they deliver, is the highest-return retention investment available.Lesson
4: Development Is Non-Negotiable
The employees who left most quickly during the great resignation were often the ones waiting for development that never came. People who can see a real future for themselves in an organization are far less likely to leave it.
How to Prevent a Repeat in Your Organization
First, start measuring disengagement before it becomes departure. By the time someone resigns, the disengagement that drove it has usually been building for months. Run quarterly pulse surveys at minimum. Use the free eNPS Calculator to track engagement trends over time.
Second, hold stay interviews with your strongest contributors. Ask your best performers directly: what would make you consider leaving? Then listen without defensiveness and act on what you hear.Third, fix management quality before anything else. Which teams have the highest voluntary turnover? The answer almost always points to specific managers. Address the root cause.
Third, fix management quality before anything else. Which teams have the highest voluntary turnover? The answer almost always points to specific managers. Address the root cause.
Common Mistakes Organizations Are Still Making After the Great Resignation
First, treating the great resignation as history. The underlying dynamics have not resolved. Disengagement remains elevated. Expectations have fundamentally shifted.
Second, mandating full office return without meaningful justification. Requiring presence without explaining why it benefits employees, not just the organization, signals a lack of respect for what employees have demonstrated they can do.
Third, measuring retention without measuring engagement. Headcount stability is not the same as workforce health. Quiet quitters count in your retention statistics. However, they do not show up in productivity or innovation metrics until the damage is already significant.F
FAQ
What was the great resignation?
The great resignation refers to the historically high rates of voluntary employee resignations that occurred primarily during 2021 and 2022. In the US alone, nearly 48 million people quit voluntarily in 2021. It reflected a broad shift in what employees were willing to accept from employers.
What caused the great resignation?
Multiple factors converged: widespread burnout, remote work shifting expectations, employees reconnecting with personal values, and poor management quality becoming more visible. Pay dissatisfaction was a factor for some but was rarely the primary driver.
Is the great resignation over?
The peak of resignation rates has passed. However, the underlying shifts in employee expectations have not reversed. High disengagement, quiet quitting, and the Great Detachment represent ongoing versions of the same dynamics.
What is quiet quitting?
Quiet quitting refers to employees limiting their effort to exactly what is formally required. No initiative, no discretionary contribution, no going beyond. It is not actually quitting. It is disengagement expressed through deliberate minimum effort.
What should organizations do now to prevent another great resignation?
Focus on manager quality, create real development pathways, build meaningful flexibility, measure engagement regularly, and hold honest stay interview conversations with key employees.
Conclusion
The great resignation was not a fluke. It was a signal. The employees who left were responding to real conditions, burnout, poor management, limited development, and the realization that they deserved better.
The organizations that came through it strongest were not the ones that reacted fastest with pay increases. They were the ones that had already built workplaces where people felt genuinely valued, developed, and connected to something meaningful.
That is still the answer in 2026.Use the free Staff Turnover Cost Calculator at eur0salary.com to understand the financial stakes and make the case for the investment in people that prevents history from repeating.
References
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/654911/employee-engagement-sinks-year-low.aspx
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/09/majority-of-workers-who-quit-a-job-in-2021-cite-low-pay-no-opportunities-for-advancement-feeling-disrespected
/https://hbr.org/2021/09/who-is-driving-the-great-resignationhttps://www.bls.gov/jlt/
https://www.shrm.org/executive-network/insights/future-of-talent-retention-report-why-employees-leave