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Louise Thomas
Editor
A few months ago, a friend was pondering whether to look for a new job. She’d worked for her current employer for five years and knew the role inside out. She liked her team, had fairly high job satisfaction, and was well compensated for her work. But she thought perhaps her tenure had run its course. There was little challenge left; she had no more worlds to conquer.
And yet she didn’t fill out a single application, or send out a CV. She didn’t even indulge in a cursory search for job openings. When asked why, she shrugged. “It’s just easier to stay where I am,” she said. “And things could be much worse somewhere else – better the devil you know, I guess.”
This lackadaisical energy is seemingly everywhere at the moment when it comes to work. We have shifted away from the post-lockdown era of frenzied change, dubbed “The Great Resignation”, and into something decidedly more cautious and staid – a period some experts are referring to as “The Big Stay”.
In the UK, the quit rate – the proportion of people leaving their jobs voluntarily – has fallen from its peak of 3.6 per cent in the first quarter of 2021 to 2.3 per cent in the same period of 2024, according to data from consultancy firm McKinsey. In the US, it hit the dizzying highs of 3 per cent per month at the tail end of 2021 and beginning of 2022; it has now fallen to 2.2 per cent in Q1 of 2024, reports the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Rather than throwing in the towel – and their notice – to pursue pastures new, more employees are staying put than during those peak pandemic months. But is it because people are more contented in their jobs? Is it because ambition has given way to stagnation? Or are workers simply scared of making big moves in a lacklustre job market? Job vacancies in the UK reached their dizzying apex of 1,304,000 from March to May 2022; they had fallen back down to 898,000 by February to April 2024, the 22nd consecutive quarter in which openings had declined.
To understand what’s really going on, we first have to look back at what was happening during the Great Resignation. Anthony Klotz, a professor of organisational behaviour at UCL School of Management, who first coined the term, predicted in 2020 that there would be a future surge in resignations.
“We were in the midst of the pandemic – at the heart of it,” he tells me. “I study employee resignations – how and why people quit their jobs. And I was seeing various signs that if the economy opened back up quickly, many things would go back to normal. But the world of work wasn’t one of them.”
He observed a perfect storm of four factors that were likely to lead to a huge shake-up across all industries and demographics: high levels of burnout; the switch to remote work; pandemic epiphanies; and a resignation backlog.
“We know that one of the only ways to cure burnout is to get away from that which burns you out – switching jobs or taking a career break is a pretty normal reaction to that,” he says of the first point.
Second up, while it took workers a little time to adjust to remote working practices, once they had acclimatised there was no going back. “They essentially got used to a form of working where they had higher freedom in how they arranged their work day,” says Klotz. “And if we know one thing, it’s that when we give human beings increased freedom, we don’t give up that freedom very willingly.” He surmised that, when the inevitable calls to return to the office came, some people would quit rather than sacrifice their newfound flexibility.
“Pandemic epiphanies” amounted to workers, stuck at home with nothing but time – and surrounded by news of illness and death – having big, existential thoughts about life, the universe and everything. “It’s a perfect recipe for lots of life pivots,” he observes.
And finally, 2020 was “probably the worst time on record to quit your job”. With the world economy in tatters, most employees, however unhappy, were biding their time and staying put until things picked up. Quitting would have to wait. “There was this backlog of resignations in the economy, which meant that if the economy opened up quickly coming out of the pandemic, a lot of people were going to be ready to enact the plans they’d made over the last year to get a new job,” adds Klotz.
We’re in a period now where there’s a chunk of people who upgraded quite nicely and are pretty content in their jobs— Anthony Klotz, professor of organisational behaviour
His predictions proved particularly canny: the US Bureau of Labor Statistics came out with a report in mid-2021 showing a spike in quitting that hit chart-topping highs unmatched in the 20 years since records had begun. The trend continued for the next 18 months. Things only calmed down last summer; the 2.2 per cent quit rate puts the US back to levels similar to those seen in 2019 and at the beginning of 2020.
In the UK, we’ve started to see the shift towards favouring the first option of the “should I stay or should I go” conundrum over the past 18 months, claims global employment expert Dr Mona Mourshed, CEO of non-profit youth employability programme Generation. During this time, she says, “job vacancies have gone down significantly for a wide variety of professions”.
It’s worth noting that, although resignations have plummeted from their pandemic pinnacle, they’re still high relative to previous years. Data shows that quitting rates have been steadily rising for the past two decades; this latest drop only puts them back in line with the numbers seen before the Great Resignation’s dramatic jump.
Still, the rate of quitters has undoubtedly dipped – and there are varying reasons as to why. For some lucky, happy staff members, the term “Big Stay” might be apt, posits Klotz: “Work/life flexibility is as high as it’s ever been. And lots of people switched to ostensibly better jobs. So you had this couple of years where wages went up, work became more flexible, and a lot of people voluntarily switched to new jobs – we’re in a period now where there’s a chunk of people who upgraded quite nicely and are pretty content in their jobs.”
But the “Big Stuck” might be a more accurate label for those left behind, he says, pointing to a poor labour market and the recent so-called “white collar recession”, in which numerous organisations have quietly laid off tranches of their primarily desk-based workforce.
Technology and media companies have been among some of the hardest hit, with firms whose business models benefited from lockdowns – thanks to a captive market of millions stuck at home glued to screens – now forced to “right-size” and scale back on staff after a pandemic overhiring frenzy. Facebook owner Meta, for example, called 2024 “the year of efficiency” (and we all know what that means).
Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is also having an impact. “As AI tools have become more prevalent and employers are rolling them out, they’re anticipating even more gains in productivity,” says Mourshed. “You may have previously needed 10 people in a team; now you may only need six. But companies are still figuring out what their hiring pattern should look like with these tools in their workplace, and that has resulted in a decline in job vacancies, because of that uncertainty.”
The lull in staff turnover, therefore, doesn’t necessarily mean workers are fulfilled and enthused about their current positions. According to McKinsey’s chief economist, Tera Allas, “the broad evidence in terms of UK workers’ job satisfaction and employee engagement suggests no significantly positive trend since the pandemic”. While people are much more likely to say they want to quit (and to actually quit) if they’re unhappy in their jobs, when labour markets are less buoyant, many of those who are unhappy “feel constrained”. Moving on is seen as too risky.
“The main reason people are staying longer in their current jobs is the increasing labour-market uncertainty, which is most visible in the decreasing number of vacancies and the growing unemployment figures that are now starting to show up in slowing wage growth,” Allas adds. “There is some evidence, also, that the continued cost of living crisis, and in particular the very high housing costs facing families, are contributing to people’s inability or unwillingness to move locations for work.”
Employers need to keep a constant eye on their competitiveness in the job market— Tera Allas, chief economist, McKinsey
Such circumstances – workers being unhappy but feeling forced to tough it out – can be a breeding ground for “quiet quitting”. Another catchy buzz-phrase of the last two years, this refers to people not, as it might suggest, handing in their notice in silence, but rather opting to stay and coast in their current job. They might work to rule, arriving at 9am and leaving at 5pm on the dot, regardless of workload; they might intentionally do the bare minimum to get by, never putting in extra effort or helping colleagues.
“When the job market gets bad for workers, less people will quit. But that doesn’t mean it’s less of a problem for organisational leaders,” agrees Klotz. “It means, instead of dealing with turnover, you’re dealing with what we often call withdrawal, or what’s become known as ‘quiet quitting’ – workers who would rather not be at work.”
He’s asked numerous business leaders over the years whether they would rather have 20 per cent of their workforce resign, or 20 per cent of their workforce wanting to resign but staying put even though they have no desire to be there. “Most leaders would say, you know, I’d rather have people leave than be here, disengaged and not performing at as high of a level,” he says.
This matters because, in times of higher staff retention, some employers can have a tendency to get complacent when it comes to treating employees well and valuing them. But there couldn’t be a worse time to take the foot off the gas, say the experts – and failing to reward and motivate staff now is simply storing up HR problems for further down the line.
“Employers need to keep a constant eye on their competitiveness in the job market,” says Allas. “If more and more employers offer higher job satisfaction and better employee engagement, then even in a relatively stable labour market, it is the more enlightened employers that will win out.”
“Incentivising” doesn’t necessarily have to equal “paying people more”, either. If you’re an employer who wants to get the best out of employees, “that only happens when employees are motivated and see there’s the possibility for upskilling and new growth opportunities in terms of roles or activities,” argues Mourshed. It could be additional formal training or exploring leadership potential; it could be the chance to experience another role across the business via a secondment, or being granted a certain number of hours to work on projects with another team.
In addition to offering development opportunities, research by McKinsey suggests that worker satisfaction and productivity go up when employers encourage openness and provide regular feedback, recognise achievements and acknowledge hard work, support work-life balance with flexible working, and foster a positive workplace culture.
While some businesses have stepped up following the Great Resignation, plenty of the more “traditional” firms are proving slow to adapt. So if you’re a victim of the “great stuck” – too scared to jump ship but too demotivated to enjoy your job – consider taking matters into your own hands.
“There are ways we can challenge ourselves, or grow or develop and gain skills – and even become more employable – while staying where we are,” advises Mourshed. “AI is a good example, right? We’ve seen that employees have been self-teaching themselves these tools, way ahead of employers actually rolling out mandatory training.”
She also recommends taking the initiative and raising your hand – “saying, ‘You know what, I see an opportunity here.’ Demonstrating that proactive leadership, creating your own opportunity, as opposed to waiting for it to be defined and put on a piece of paper for you. But these things were true before the Great Resignation and before the Big Stay. They’re just true of work life.”
Should you stay or should you go? That’s up to you – but either way, you don’t have to settle for stagnation.
