A new survey has revealed that nearly half of all workers are considering leaving their jobs because they feel “disconnected” from the company that employs them.
The survey, which was compiled and published by Workplace from Meta, revealed that 49 percent of frontline workers have plans to change jobs in 2022. At the same time, 47 percent would leave their current position for a job with better benefits and more development opportunities.
A spokesperson for The Workers Union said: ‘These findings reflect what we are hearing from our members. In a story published yesterday, we discussed the “great resignation” and the opportunities it has created for workers in high demand industries such as technology and computing. However, the front line workers we speak to on a daily basis plan to leave their jobs not because they have numerous well paying options on the table; but because they feel like it is the only way they can avoid complete burnout. They are the healthcare assistants, nurses, and others who have worked with such selfless determination throughout the pandemic. When they leave they will become career changers that take a wealth of skill, dedication and compassion with them.
‘As a nation we must be honest enough to say that if we value public services, we must not only pay for them, but prioritise a better deal for the hard-pressed staff that give so much to make them work for the rest of us.’
As well as the startling employee engagement statistics, Workplace also found that senior managers should look to implement policies that help employees with their mental health. The finding was set against a worryingly low percentage of company chiefs who actually plan to make mental health a priority, with only 41 percent saying that the mental health of frontline employees would be amongst their principal concerns in 2022.
The Workers Union Says…
What we’re seeing here is a pattern of employment turnover that benefits workers in certain sectors, but leaves others with difficult decisions to make about their lives, livelihoods and careers. As we argued in yesterday’s leader, our country must engage in a mature debate to consider how the benefits of quality work and opportunity can be encouraged to trickle through the system. To do this we need to abandon the idea that the relative value of jobs can only be determined by how much money they make for someone else.
But we must also remind ourselves that the NHS workers and healthcare staff, the refuse workers, the council workers, the tradespeople and many, many, others did not get the benefit of working from home to leaven the weight of their COVID worries. They had to (and still have to) front up every day without knowing what they’d be exposed to in the process.
So our task is not just to prioritise skills, training and opportunities for working people. Neither must we assume that all these problems can be entirely solved by legislation. Before we can solve any of these issues, we must reorder what we believe to be of value in our society to encompass empathy, intelligence and social progress as first principles. Only then will we start the process of bringing quality work to every sector of our economy.
