No matter what the trend is called – the Great Resignation, the Big Quit – the facts are as follows: an increasing number of people, across the country and here in North Texas, are leaving their jobs in record numbers.
Multiple months in 2021 have set new record highs for people quitting their jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, including most recently in September when an estimated 4.4 million people walked away from their job.
In that same month, there were an estimated 10 million new jobs posted nationwide, according to a representative of the staffing firm Robert Half, which indicates that the demand for qualified workers still exceeds the supply.
That discrepancy alone should be reason enough for employers to get creative, and make retaining their workers a top priority, according to Joe Fisher, Senior Regional Director with Robert Half.
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“Don’t turn your back on it. Don’t ignore the traditional mindset of the 40-hour work week, or [forcing people to work] in the office 100 percent,” Fisher said. “Those days are long gone. And looking towards the future, and the way forward, I would say that the optimum word would be ‘flexibility.’”
There is no "one reason" why people are leaving their jobs, but lack of flexibility may be one of them.
A Human Resources representative from BGSF, a national workforce solutions company headquartered in Plano, told the professionals gathered at a Dallas Regional Chamber event in September that a recent survey indicated as many as 55 percent of people who were considering leaving their job cited lack of flexibility as the primary reason.
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That same survey indicated the term “flexibility” means a hybrid work environment, combining remote work with in-office work, to 54 percent of respondents.
This resignation trend is expected to last into 2022, according to data collected by Robert Half. And that puts workers in a prime position to at least test the waters of making a job switch, or even a career switch.
“A lot of folks have done a lot of soul-searching, so to speak, and reevaluating what is most important,” said Fisher of Robert Half. “Then you get people leaving entire industries that they have made their mark in, or career in, and choosing to do something else. And that is not something we have traditionally seen in years past, particularly coming out of a recession.”
