Bracing for the ‘great resignation,’ recent diversity failures, and more

Greetings, communicators!

We hope you enjoy this week’s stories—along with practical tips and takeaways—for the week of June 21-25, 2021.

1. Communicating amid historic turnover.

Are your colleagues quitting in droves?

It’s happening everywhere. As NPR reports, 4 million U.S. workers quit in April, which is a record. What’s going on, exactly?

It’s not just COVID fatigue. Something deeper is going on. NPR writes that, “workers now feel empowered to speak up about when, how and where they want to work,” adding: “We have changed. Work has changed. The way we think about time and space has changed.”

Enduring the horrors of a pandemic that’s killed nearly 4 million people around the world has jolted millions of workers into a greater consciousness about the brevity of life. Do we really wanted to spend so much of it sitting in a car or hunched over a keyboard? Increasingly, for many U.S. workers, the answer is “no.” They’d rather quit than go back to the ol’ cubicle.