Great Resignation Dilemma: Should Companies Outsource or Fight to Retain Employees?

• Americans are changing jobs in record numbers, which has caused HR leaders to face the daunting situation of how to increase benefits in order to retain an employee who may shortly resign. Wishup Founder Neelesh Rangwani suggests using outsourced virtual assistants to help with the employee retention problem.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 4.3 million American workers quit their job in December 2021,(1) a decrease from the record 4.5 million who quit in November of 2021. A recent survey indicates that most of these workers are leaving their jobs in search of better pay and benefits.(2) This mass exodus, says Neelesh Rangwani, founder of Delhi-based virtual assistant provider Wishup, is creating both financial and administrative issues for employers, with no end in sight. “By all indications,” says Rangwani, “the so-called great resignation is not a temporary blip. It is causing, and will continue to cause, employers to re-examine their entire approach to building and maintaining a workforce.”

The Great Resignation, notes Rangwani, began in April of 2021, when a then-record 3.8 million US workers left their jobs in a single month, most of them looking for higher pay, better conditions, a healthier work/life balance, or some combination of all of these factors. The movement, which has persisted, has changed the employer-employee dynamic and redefined employee expectations at every level.(3)

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Talent, says Rangwani, is increasingly difficult to retain. For one, the internet is a great equalizer; employees can see what benefits other people are receiving, and they want the same. Also, the COVID pandemic has acclimatized workers to the flexibility and balance of an altered work/home environment. Remote work has become a bargaining chip—people don’t want to go back to the office. “Why are companies offering more and better benefits,” asks Wishup Co-Founder Vivek Gupta. “Because it has become the norm. Company growth goes hand in hand with employee remuneration.”

The statistics, notes Rangwani, bear out this assessment. According to a recent survey, almost 50% of all US workers describe their companies as understaffed. However, when compared to workers who do not view their workplace as understaffed, the same 50% are nearly twice as likely to say they have considered leaving their jobs in the past three months.(4)

One factor often contributing to a sense of too few hands on deck—both on the part of management and the overall workforce—says Rangwani, is an overburdening of employees at all levels with essential but not business-defining administrative chores. An increasingly attractive solution to this problem, according to leading human resources experts(5), is the use of technology to access a growing, well trained global talent pool. India, for example, says Rangwani, a widely English-speaking nation with a highly skilled workforce, is a prime source of college-educated, skilled executive assistants.

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The Great Resignation, Rangwani says, will resolve itself in time. In the process, he believes it will create a somewhat transformed American workplace in which internet-based outsourcing plays a major role. Talent is expensive, he notes, and global economic conditions make it possible to provide highly competent executive assistants at an overall rate significantly below what the same level of skill would cost in the US.

India, he says, provides the opportunity to engage experts trained and ready to handle recurring and specialized tasks such as social media maintenance, online research, invoicing and payment, ecommerce assistance, and other functions that can keep business managers—especially leaders of small to medium-sized companies—from being able to concentrate on growing their businesses.

“We understand what is happening in the US workforce,” says Rangwani, “and how it needs to change and grow with the economy. Outsourcing to India can be an important part of that change and growth, especially since American companies do not have to ‘break the bank’ to gain and retain employees.”