Manpower Study: 84% Of Employees Are Looking For New Jobs...

Across North America, the past few years have been a time of tightening our belts and working extra hard to keep our jobs (with the exception of unionized workers and public sector employees of course). This meant taking on the responsibilities of multiple people at work with no justifiable compensation increase, if you were lucky enough to avoid being let go by your employer.

This also meant wage freezes with not even cost-of-living/inflation increases, no bonuses, and basically the reward you got for exceeding expectations was that you got to keep your job...barely.

While the average workers were being forced to make these concessions, upper management still got their big-time raises and bonuses, and in fact were rewarded for keeping the workers down and having them live in a state of fear for their livelihoods and security.

Well folks, the every day non-unionized worker has had it, and apparently there is now a huge shift coming.

Studies coming out now show that 84% of employees hate their jobs and are looking for alternative work (84%!!), and if employers want to keep their skilled workers (and not have to do some actual work themselves), they better start making sacrifices at their level, because the job search is on and the days of screwing the employee are coming to an end.

Here's the story from CNN Money:

New Year's resolution: I quit!

Employers watch out: Your workers can't wait to quit.

According to a recent survey by job-placement firm Manpower, 84% of employees plan to look for a new position in 2011. That's up from just 60% last year.

Most employees have sat tight through the recession, not even considering other jobs because so few firms were hiring. For the past few years, the Labor Department's quits rate, which serves as a barometer of workers' ability to change jobs, has hovered near an all-time low.

But after years of increased work and frozen compensation, "a lot of people will be looking because they're disappointed with their current jobs," said Paul Bernard, a veteran executive coach and career management advisor who runs his own firm.

Douglas Matthews, president and chief operating officer for Right Management, a division of Manpower, called the results "a wake-up call to management. ... This finding is more about employee dissatisfaction and discontent than projected turnover," he said.

Personally, I made a change a couple of years ago after seeing this trend in my previous firm, and now after another couple of years in my next firm, I'm again seeing this trend.

Let's just say that I too consider myself to be a part of the "maintaining and campaigning" group of workers, where I am maintaining my current job, but I'm also campaigning for my next one. A reality that I'm sure the majority of workers now also fall under.

Hopefully for the employers this new stat will be a wake-up call, and they will again look to rewarding employees for going above and beyond, and not just employing the slave labour tactic that has become a reality across North America.


--jackandcokewithalime


(Image:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/duchamp/16016715/sizes/o/in/photostream/ by Duchamp on flickr
)