Poll Shows Over Half of U.S. Employees Are Job Hunting

By Sarah Lynch, Inc. (TNS)

While the Great Resignation might be in remission, employees are still scanning job sites. But company leaders can take steps to halt employer turnover in its tracks.

Fifty-one percent of U.S. employees “are watching or actively seeking a new job,” according to a new report from Gallup—the greatest percentage since 2015—echoing other recent reports from the likes of LinkedIn and PwC.

Workers’ itch to switch jobs isn’t new. Voluntary turnover reached record-breaking heights in recent years, and in the spring of 2022, 4.5 million workers were quitting their jobs every month—the height of a period that became known as the Great Resignation.

At the time, these moves paid off for many job switchers who were “more likely than not” to say their new job had “better pay, more opportunities for advancement, and more work-life balance and flexibility,” according to a 2022 survey from the Pew Research Center.

As hiring and wage growth gradually cooled, though, employees grew less likely to leave. In May, the quits rate remained at 2.2 percent for the seventh consecutive month, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, marking a return to pre-pandemic levels.

But that doesn’t mean workers are happy about staying put. Now, as Gallup reports, many employees are actively seeking their next step as their “long-term commitment to their organizations” declines.

If these workers do leave, company leaders will pay a hefty price: Gallup estimates that replacing “frontline employees” costs approximately 40 percent of their salary. For leaders and managers, it’s around 200 percent.

In many cases, though, these departures are preventable, Gallup found. Forty-two percent of “voluntary leavers” in the past year indicated that their manager or organization could have made a change that would have convinced them to stay.

Most commonly, that change was greater compensation or benefits. But 70 percent identified more managerial factors, including better interactions with their manager, remedying organizational issues, and more opportunities for career advancement.

But if “managers wait for their employees to initiate these discussions, it may be too late,” the report states. Indeed, more than a third of voluntary leavers surveyed said that they didn’t speak to anyone about leaving before making their decision.

Therefore, the report concludes, “managers should take the lead to foster a proactive dialogue that simultaneously prevents turnover and boosts team engagement.”

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