Explained: Why millions of white-collar employees want to switch jobs

Having hunkered down at home and clung on to his job through the 2020 lockdowns, Dutch IT worker Benito Castillion is now on the hunt for a career-enhancing move — and it’s a shift of perspective he shares with millions of white-collar staff worldwide.

Based in Prague, the 46-year-old had updated his LinkedIn profile and started attending virtual job fairs.

“If the pay is right and there is a good opportunity to switch jobs I’d be willing to take the risk,” he told Reuters.

“Now I see companies are willing to pay a bit more. That is important now.”

That mindset is driving what one US management pro­fessor has dubbed the “Great Resignation” and a US recru­iter the biggest move­ment of human capital for decades, as skilled workers start to re-eval­u­ate careers and life choices.

Having spent more than a year living with the stresses of the coronavirus pandemic, many now find themselves able to call the shots on pay and conditions as companies compete for staff amid labour shortages created by fast vaccine-led recoveries in rich-world economies.

In Europe’s largest, Germany, more than a third of companies complained of staff shortages last month, the highest rate for three years, an Ifo institute survey showed.

Lockdowns have meanwhile shone a harsh light on employers who failed to support and motivate staff working remotely for the first time in their careers, often under difficult conditions.

The Microsoft 2021 Work Trend Index showed 41 per cent of the global workforce is considering resigning this year — a near doubling of job-switching intent on the two years before the pandemic.

“I’ve spoken with around 20-30 companies who all say the attrition of candidates leaving is skyrocketing,” said Blake Wittman, European Business Director of recruiter GoodCall, which lists L’Oreal and Nestlé as clients.

“It feels like the world is not going to implode and therefore candidates finally have this confidence (to say) ‘I’ll go see what’s out there’,” he told Reuters of a surge in activity dating back to the second quarter of this year.

Arran Stewart, co-founder of US recruitment portal Jobs.com, said what he called the “largest shift in human capital in our lifetime” had potential major repercussions for both workers and companies.

The lure of flexibility

Jon Hill, who specialises in IT and digital recruitment across Europe, said a backlog of 18 months of resignation intentions was coming onto the market at once.

“People are actively applying and looking for opportunities. They are a lot braver about being more direct,” said Hill.

Employers are racing to keep up. Second quarter reve­nues at Randstad jumped at least 20 per cent year on year as coronavirus lockdowns were eased across the globe, the global staffing group said last month.

Also in July, Christoph Catoir, president of competitor Adecco told Reuters that some US sectors were seeing one-off wage increases in excess of 5 per cent, with Europe close at around 3-5 per cent.