Employees might be quitting less, but HR pros shouldn’t get too comfy

Birds aren’t the only creatures that nest…employees are doing it, too.

Employees are likely to “nest,” or hunker down at an employer, when they feel like they have a good gig, Neil Costa, founder and CEO of digital recruitment marketing agency HireClix, previously told HR Brew. And it seems a significant number of employees currently feel this way: The quit rates dropped to 3.3 million in March, down from a historic low of 3.5 million in February, according to the latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But HR pros shouldn’t get too comfy, according to Lauren Geer, SVP and CHRO at holding company IAC, which owns Dotdash Meredith. “You can’t rest on our laurels, that nesting is a thing and people want to stay for longer…We always have to fight for people and [for] making it a positive place to work,” she told HR Brew. 

Geer shared with HR Brew how people leaders can approach this, and other workforce trends.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Do you think employees are “nesting,” or less likely to leave their jobs right now?

We’re seeing that…and I think we’ve had less turnover than other years, but I also think it’s harder [in] the recruiting market. It’s easier to find candidates, but sometimes it’s harder to get them to make the switch over. It’s interesting—in the years like 2020, 2021, in particular, it was sort of a wild recruiting market where people were walking in with offers 50% more than they had, and it just seemed impossible to find people…Now so many people have new jobs since 2021, and it’s not easy to start a new job, even though it’s fun to try out something new, and meet new people, and have new strategy and business goals. It takes you a good six to 12 months to feel comfortable in a new role…So, I think some of it is there’s just so many people in new jobs after that wild 2021 to 2022 that they’re sticking around to have some stability, but I also think hopefully employers are also doing more to have employees wanting to stay and be connected with the culture and also the organization’s mission.

How are mass layoffs impacting employee departures?

Any big layoff is published in the news…I also think there’s been several instances where people had “newsworthy” layoff experiences, so that could be like getting laid off in an email or having your stuff turned off in the middle of the night…We at IAC feel [that] just would never be the way that we would interact with a human being that has put their time and talents into our business…It just does feel like there’s layoffs everywhere, so I think people might be a little bit scared to make a move at this time as well [and] waiting for the dust [to] settle a little bit.

I’m hoping we’re getting closer to the dust settling a little bit, and I think we as HR people need to be really proactive, because there will be a time, I think, where the tables turn back.

You mentioned that you oversee nearly 8,000 employees across IAC’s companies working in different in-person and remote models. What advice do you have for HR pros navigating RTO mandates?

Personally, I think there’s no substitute for seeing people in a human way, face-to-face on a regular basis…You have to look at business- and department-specific goals and objectives, and something that we spend time thinking and talking about here is talent pipeline and the availability of talent in particular areas for particular things that you need. I think there [are] ways to think strategically and it’s not like a one-size-fits-all situation, and I think when you approach it that way, that’s where you get more roadblocks. It takes time to do a group by group, business by business approach, but I think it’s probably better off in the long run.