Anthony Klotz coined the term “Great Resignation” in early 2021 as part of the economic trend in which employees voluntarily resigned from their jobs en masse. The WickedVUCA causes of the Great Resignation include wage stagnation amid the rising cost of living, long-lasting job dissatisfaction, safety concerns of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the desire to work for companies with better remote-working policies. Another way to view the Great Resignation is through Thermodynamics’s Second Laws and Third Laws.
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics – For a spontaneous process, the entropy of the universe increases. The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy or disorder of a closed system is always increasing.
If a process generates entropy, it will happen spontaneously. It’ll be irreversible unless you input more energy when I pour cream on my coffee. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the two liquids mixing and becoming more disordered over time. I would, however, be surprised if the cream and coffee separated again after it’s an ice cube, and the coffee will melt and become a more disordered liquid. But under those conditions, it cannot spontaneously reform itself back into an ice cube.
So you might be tempted to think that if this is true, and if entropy can never be decreased, how can human beings or more complex living organisms even exist? Well, the key here is that humans are not a closed system. We exchange heat with our surroundings, and we’re decreasing local entropy at the expense of the entropy of our environments. So the second law states that a spontaneous process generates entropy and involves heat moving from a hotter body to a colder body.
Let’s apply entropy to the Great Resignation. Applying entropy to the Great Resignation for wage stagnation amid the rising cost of living, long-lasting job dissatisfaction, safety concerns of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the desire to work for companies with better remote-working policies. So the more entropy the Great Resignation generates, the less energy is left over to do useful work. So one way of thinking about entropy is a measure of disorder or chaos in the universe.
The 3rd Law of Thermodynamics – A perfect crystal at zero Kelvin has zero entropy. The third law of thermodynamics helps us understand how the Great Resignation might end. The third law of thermodynamics defines what Absolute Zero is and ties together the concepts of entropy and temperature. It states that the entropy of a perfect crystal approach is zero at a temperature of absolute zero. Hence, an important idea to note is that absolute zero may not be able to be achieved experimentally.
So the object that you’re trying to call to absolute zero will be taking in heat from its surroundings. Despite this, absolute zero is an important theoretical concept. So the lowest possible entropy can only occur in a perfect crystal, which is a structure where all of the atoms that form it are identical and positioned in perfectly symmetrical ways. Any imperfections in the crystal carry energy; entropy will not be minimized. Equally, any residual thermal energy within the crystal will create thermal motion. And again, your entropy won’t be at a minimum. Conversely, if we can’t get to absolute zero min, nothing in the universe will be completely still; it will always have some motion due to thermal energy.
Let’s apply absolute zero to the Great Resignation. We know from the second law of thermodynamics that heat will spontaneously move from a warmer body to a cooler body. The more entropy the Great Resignation generates, the less energy is left to do useful work. The third law of thermodynamics explains the phenomenon of the Great Resignation will attempt but not achieve absolute zero.
What does all of this mean? Back to the second law, humans are not a closed system. We interact and can change the factors that drove the Great Resignation. To reduce entropy, our government and employers must address the underlying issues that caused the Great Resignation. Legislators and CEOs must address wage stagnation, the rising cost of living, job dissatisfaction, pandemic safety concerns, and better remote-working policies.
What will drive government and employers to address great resignations during high inflation aren’t they more likely to hunker down to protect their financial position?
There will be a reversal where the employers will retake control. In such a case, those that have overplayed their hands in the Great Resignation will have lost any negotiating power.