The great resignation is a buzzphrase that first appeared in May 2021 , and has struck fear into the hearts of employers ever since. Coined in the US, the term refers to the unprecedented rise in the number of workers resigning from their jobs following the pandemic.

There has since been a huge amount of research trying to work out why this has happened. Are workers quitting work entirely, as the pandemic makes us reevaluate our priorities? Or are they quitting to pursue their dreams in a different career ?

We’ve been looking at to what extent this great resignation narrative holds true in the UK using data from the Labour Force Survey by the Office for National Statistics. “Great” of course has two meanings and we’ve looked at both the magnitude of changes in resignations and whether these changes were a positive force for workers’ career progression. We also looked at whether any rise in resignations may have worsened the labor shortages faced by firms.

The rise in resignations

There was indeed a great resignation in the UK, according to the data. The chart below shows that resignations rose sharply from the end of 2020 and significantly exceeded their pre-pandemic levels in the final quarter of 2021.

However, this is not because workers decided to abandon work and leave the labor force. Instead, we are seeing a rise in workers resigning primarily to start new jobs for other employers. The only age group where there has been an increase in people leaving the labor force has been among the over-50s, who have been retiring in larger numbers than normal.

UK resignations 2019-21

So, why have people been resigning to work for other employers in above-average numbers? Some commentators have suggested that the rise has been propelled by individuals looking to make drastic career changes, as workers reevaluate their lives after the pandemic. In fact, this is not borne out by the data.

The next chart breaks down UK resignations in 2021 into workers moving to higher-skill occupations (upgrading), lower-skill occupations (downgrading) or staying in the same occupation. As you can see, the rise in resignations was driven overwhelmingly by workers resigning to move sideways into new jobs in the same occupation.

Occupation changes, 2019-21

Even if workers did not substantially alter their career trajectories with these moves, it has been good news for their wages. Workers moving jobs within the same occupation have historically achieved higher wage gains than those staying at the same employer, and sure enough in 2021, workers moving to new employers saw higher gains than those that did not move.

For workers that have changed jobs, this will be providing some respite against the rising cost of living. Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of workers have stayed in their job and will therefore suffer more from the cost of living crisis as wages fall in real terms.

The employers’ perspective

Could the rise in resignations be contributing to rising labor shortages? The latter half of 2021 saw many reports of firms facing difficulties filling vacancies, raising the possibility that rising resignations could be causing these recruitment difficulties. We found that there was a higher rate of resignations among workers coming from the five “shortage” sectors finding it hardest to recruit people: construction, manufacturing, accommodation, health, food, administration, and support.

However, most workers were resigning to go to new jobs within the same industry, so they are unlikely to be the root cause of employment shortages within their sectors. Instead, the reasons for recruitment difficulties differ by sector. For example, the manufacturing sector has been hit by early retirements, whereas the accommodation and food sectors are suffering from a lower inflow of younger workers.

Instead of being the cause, the increases in resignations in these five sectors are more likely to be a symptom of their labor shortages: employers “poaching” staff from rivals by offering better conditions as the economy rebounded from the depths of the pandemic. Losing staff will obviously have created additional pain for employers who were already struggling to recruit.

In sum, contrary to what some might be hoping, the so-called great resignation of 2021 has not significantly improved the career paths of workers. Workers who have been willing and able to change employers have been rewarded with improved pay, while wage growth for those who have stayed put will be slower and insufficient to offset large increases in the cost of living.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the rates of vacancies, resignations, and wage growth all slowed in the fourth quarter of 2021, which is a signal that the rebound in labor demand has faded. So if you weren’t part of the great resignation, you may already be too late.

This article by Carlos Carrillo-Tudela , Professor of Economics, University of Essex ; Alex Clymo , Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Essex , and David Zentler-Munro , Assistant Professor in Economics, University of Essex is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

10 UX lessons I learned building my product from scratch

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This article was originally published by Built In .

In 2016, I recognized that I wasn ’ t achieving my goals, learning new skills, meeting new people, getting in shape, or focusing on my mental health not because I wasn ’ t motivated, but because I wasn ’ t tracking it. Peter Drucker said “what gets measured gets managed.” This maxim became the cornerstone that I used to transform my life. With that quote in mind, I decided to outline my goals and then break them down into simple habits that I could achieve in bite-sized amounts daily.

I began tracking my learning, fitness, and mental health with a piece of grid paper and the days of the week. I tracked my habits religiously for years and saw my life incrementally transform into one where I no longer saw the goals I wanted to achieve as unobtainable. I saw every objective as something that I could achieve by staying consistent and chipping away at it day by day.

After years of tracking my habits on paper because I couldn’t find a product that met my needs, my co-founder Wilson and I resolved to upgrade my habit tracking . We built a free web app and Chrome extension called Confetti — a colorful daily habit tracker that launches confetti for every completion to celebrate your daily accomplishments.

In my four-plus years of product design, this is the first product I’ve designed from start to finish entirely on my own, which taught me a lot. In this article, I’ll be sharing those insights, UI & UX lessons, and things I wish I’d done differently.

1. Define features for launch

At the outset, my co-founder and I had a rough prototype that I designed for the three main screens. We didn’t have the foresight to envision all the ideas and revisions that would morph the direction of our product though.

We eventually took a step back and decided that we needed a launch date and a core set of features for our MVP. We created a board on Notion and started managing what features were must-haves and which ones were nice-to-haves. For example, sign in, sign up, and onboarding were must-have features. We decided, however, that re-ordering habits was a nice-to-have.

We settled on these features based on what we believed would make the product fully functioning and easy to use. By prioritizing a core set of features and setting a launch date, we alleviated ourselves from distractions and becoming overwhelmed with ambitious features. This also gave us an incentive to build must-have features first so we could tackle the nice-to-haves.

2. There are a lot of flows and states

When designing this product, I was frequently reminded that every edge case needed to be solved, and every hole needed to be filled to complete the experience. Building a product from the ground up was a double-edged sword: envisioning the entire product with my own imagination was thrilling, but I was often operating outside my comfort zone.

I’m accustomed to working on existing products in my current role at the product design agency Skookum . I typically work within the constraints of an existing product, which has its own unique set of challenges. Usually, though, I don ’ t have to create everything from scratch. Generally, I’d be working on a product that already has a design system, established design language, various components, UI states, and so on. Without this infrastructure, I frequently had to account for several edge cases, flows, and states that a user may encounter in our product.

The signup flow, for example, had default, disabled, active, filled, error, and hover states. In addition to sign up, I also needed a password reset experience with similar UI states and six screens:

Enter email

Reset email sent

Email notification design

Enter new password

Error

Success

All of this got confusing very fast, which leads me to my next point….

3. Make a user flow

I quickly encountered an organizational problem. Because I created this product in my free time, I made the mistake of neglecting to follow my traditional approach, which led to problems down the road.

My standard workflow generally starts with a user flow to define the different paths a user could take and outline the necessary screens. I neglected that approach initially because I made the incorrect assumption that this would be a very simple product with only a few screens. As I started designing the numerous states and screens, however, the user flow became chaotic, and I had difficulty pinpointing the holes in the experience.

I eventually stopped kicking the can down the road and created a user flow in Whimsical . This allowed me to decipher which screens were missing and where someone would go when they clicked certain options.

It’s easy to forget how all the states and screens fit together and how one state impacts another. I found solace when I organized my screens in a user flow diagram and could visually see the missing screens and state s. Creating a user flow was critical to maintaining the structure and organization of the product as it grew.

4. Interactions should inform UI

It’s true that you shouldn’t start adding animation to your project until you’ve completed the UI design. But actually adding animation or micro-interactions and planning how elements will be affected by animation is not the same. Considering the animation, motion, or micro-interactions while designing the UI saved me from unnecessary adjustments to the interface when interactions were included later in my process.

For example, when I designed the “Mark Complete” experience for completing a habit (as seen above), that experience needed to be designed with UI and interaction accounted for simultaneously. To do this, I designed the UI to my liking then dragged it to a corner of my design file and began messing with how the elements would interact when clicked. The interactions forced me to tweak parts of my UI design which saved me from a headache that I would’ve had to address later in the process.

I thought it was important to account for UI and interactions in tandem because their influence on each other was imperative to creating the experience that I envisioned. If I’d designed the UI and then later decided how the elements would be animated, the whole thing would’ve become a confusing mess. By doing interaction and UI design side by side, I was able to create interactions that fit nicely into my interface.

5. Get feedback early

This was another mistake I made: waiting too long to get feedback.

I worked on this project on nights and weekends and didn’t really tell anyone about it. It was a hobby project that I planned to unveil eventually.

When I finally got fresh eyes on the product from family, friends, users, and anonymous internet people (shout out to r/UI_Design), they noticed glaringly obvious things that I’d become blind to. I realized that I easily became engrossed in isolated parts of the experience, so I occasionally missed bigger-picture problems.

In retrospect, I wish I had shown the designs and prototype to people sooner because their feedback added extra time to development later down the line as we amended issues that friends and users found.

6. Being inspired is OK

Designers often think that all their ideas must be original, or they’re a fraud. Imagine that you’re looking at another product. You find a color palette that you like, an interaction that feels just right, or a pixel perfect layout for a landing page. You might be tempted to think, “Well, too bad because someone’s already beaten me to it.”

That mindset is incredibly flawed and limiting to creativity though.

Occasionally, when I was stuck on a missing piece of the design, I would browse the internet for inspiration. I observed how other companies had designed their onboarding flow or how they managed user profiles. I never copied the entire experience, but every so often I would find myself appreciating little details that I would then include in my own designs.

My favorite example is the rotating exit effect that we use in our modals. I found a feature like this on a random website and thought it looked unique, so we decided to add it to Confetti. I also did this for our landing page’s button hover effect and the typeface that we used for the site.

The truth is, everything is a remix . That doesn’t mean you should be blindly copying other people’s work, but don’t be afraid to find bits and pieces that you appreciate and work them into your own projects: a cocktail, if you will.

7. Wear your hats well

As we were designing the product from scratch, my co-founder and I were required to wear a lot of hats. I had to be the UI, UX, interaction, motion, graphic, and marketing designer, as well as taking on all the other roles required to manage and launch the product.

With so many responsibilities, I inevitably ran into aspects of the design that I didn’t have the skills or time to focus on. In these scenarios, I had to admit I was out of my depth and seek outside resources to do the job.

For example, another artist created most of the illustrations, and the iconography is also the work of another designer. I see no issue with focusing on what I’m good at and using resources or hiring outside help to finish the job. Ultimately, I would prefer the product to look and work well than to have inconsistencies because my ego has gotten in the way.

Don’t get me wrong: I used designing this app as a learning opportunity and frequently stepped outside of my comfort zone — but some parts of the experience I didn’t want to stretch too far.

8. Simpler is better

Although having a defined MVP and launch date prevented our scope from being overwhelmed with ambitious features, it didn’t guard against scrupulous refinement to the features we did have.

There’s a Reid Hoffman quote that people like to share: “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, then you’ve launched too late.” We didn’t think we needed to be embarrassed to launch our product, but we decided that having a simplified version was far better than spending months developing ambitious features.

To launch our product, we had to contemplate two questions:

Do we believe what we’ve built provides value to the user?

Is what we’re shipping our best effort?

These questions allowed us to stay aligned with our goal and launch date while avoiding distractions. By focusing on delivering value and giving our best effort to what we deliver, we were able to ship a high-quality product without overloading our scope with features. We had to strive for perfection but be satisfied with great.

9. A good handoff saves time and headache

One thing that I did right from the beginning was managing and organizing design assets for development. I can’t take too much credit, though, since I used Zeplin, which made handing off designs and assets to my cofounder effortless. Zeplin ensured I wasn’t wasting time redlining the designs with specs, measurements, and style guides.

Some steps I took to ensure a clean handoff:

Organize all screens into sections in Zeplin and same accordingly .

Name all artboards appropriately .

Mark assets for export in XD .

Keep an archive of old screens and ensure all new screens are up to date.

The copy for our product was all written ad hoc while I designed the UI, which resulted in annoying disorganization and inconsistencies in our messages.

I wish I had created a document where I wrote all of the alerts, messages, modals, and explainer text in one go. Since I quickly created messages in my UI design while I was working, the copy in our product lacks quite a bit.

This overall lack of cohesion in our copy led to mixed tones throughout the product and little consistency. We have been doing patch-work on the copy since launch.

Conclusion

I believe that our product would not have reached its full potential had we not addressed mistakes early or prepared in advance to avoid problems down the road. As Giacomo Casanova once said, “One who makes no mistakes makes nothing at all.” I hope you’ll learn from my lessons and avoid my pitfalls in your next design project.

How startups should navigate the business travel shutdown

COVID-19 has left few industries untouched. For startups, these are uncertain times and with the outlook changing daily, it can be hard to know what course of action to take.

One of the sectors to have been most comprehensively stopped in its tracks is travel. While many businesses have adapted well to the need to work remotely, the inability to travel is impacting many international startups, which – like my own business – typically rely on in-person meetings to drive growth and maintain company culture.

At TravelPerk, we have seen the near shutdown of global travel up close. Our company manages the travel of thousands of companies; in Europe, which is now the epicenter of the pandemic, bookings are down by more than 90% across the board.

Startups are having to handle the movement of their employees being severely restricted. These limitations can leave founders feeling like their startup has lost its momentum, and the brutal truth is that for some, that will be true. But there are steps you can take right now which will protect your business, ensure your staff remain not only productive but healthy and socially engaged, and help you pick up when the dust settles with energy and optimism.

Safety-first, always

Countries including Italy , France , and Germany have largely closed their borders in response to COVID-19, while the UK has advised against all non-essential travel abroad . Governments are taking these decisions in the interest of public safety. It sounds obvious, but it is vital that you prioritize above all else the safety of your employees and do your bit for the wider public good.

As we adjust to lockdown across Europe, keep paying attention to local and national advice on COVID-19. The past weeks have shown how rapidly the situation can evolve. Keep your own internal travel guidelines updated based on that public advice. And don’t let any of your team, no matter how senior, be exempt from these guidelines. At TravelPerk, we’ve built our own internal “Corona Dashboard” for employees to check, and we’ve launched a COVID-19 portal with a series of articles providing a range of practical guidance.

If you have members of staff that are still abroad your priority should be to help get them home. Expert providers like International SOS can help with repatriation and provide up-to-date information to keep them safe.

Keep going even through lockdown

Humans have a basic need to meet in person in order to build meaningful relationships, and this is not going to change. As we’ve found out in the last week or so, near-universal remote working is very different in its rhythm, its demands on us as individuals, and its challenges for businesses as a whole to what we are used to.

I am really proud of how well the TravelPerk team has adapted to 100% remote working. I’m not concerned about productivity, but as a leadership team, we’re well aware that over time there is a risk that employees will begin to feel cut off and isolated.

Founders should lead by example and encourage regular check-ins, via video call, for internal teams and clients. Try to provide a surrogate for face-to-face socializing too – whether it’s a happy hour via Zoom or a communal lunch hour from everyone’s kitchen table. You’ve no doubt been using some kind of video conferencing service already but, if you haven’t previously, now is the time to invest in a paid license.

For many startups, I know this period may feel like stagnation. Your pipeline may have been affected, and you are likely to have closed down your offices. However , as long as your business is on a firm footing in terms of cash and runway, this difficult time can also be an opportunity. Invest in R&D. Refine your strategy and offering, or add new features to your product line, so you can come back even stronger once this crisis ends. Because it will end.

Control your runway

More than one politician has compared the current situation to being at war. For a business, it really isn’t very different. Cash is king and you must protect your business by making sure you have enough of it.

Right now you need to do some basic things.

First up, review your Opex budget, all of it. Cancel or pause any recurring spend that you don’t 1 00 percent need. Renegotiate your contracts with suppliers. They won’t want to lose customers during a crisis, so they may well be open to better terms. Take a look at every big spend, and consider pausing it until the crisis is over. Also, don’t do an out of home campaign right now. No one is leaving their home for a while.

Next up, do what you can to extend your runway. Go back to your investors to see if you can negotiate a new internal round. If you have less than 12 months cash in the bank, you’ll need to address this now, before it becomes an issue.

Looking to the future

Going forward, companies should continually review their COVID-19 crisis plan. This could be a regular leadership conference call or a company-wide discussion to gather employee feedback. The situation is moving fast; make sure you are too.

On an encouraging note, we have started to see some recovery in the number of business travel bookings in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, where the pressures of COVID-19 are easing by comparison to some European countries. These are early signs, but they remind us that sooner or later, this crisis will pass.

In fact, although this might sound crazy, now could actually be a smart time to start thinking about booking future business travel for later in the year. Travel prices right now are at the lowest they’ve been in decades, so if you have a big conference or company event in Q4, now could be the time to book it. Of course none of us know when normality will resume but there are tools available that can give you the flexibility and reassurance if you do need to cancel – we’re seeing a lot of demand for exactly this from our customers.

Meanwhile in Europe, disruption from COVID-19 is the new normal for startups, at least for now. This is a tough period, but there are steps you can take to ready your business for when the virus retreats and restrictions are lifted. When COVID-19 passes, demand for your services could increase to an even greater level than before – make sure you’re well placed to take advantage of this and hit the ground running.