A recent survey by Grant Thornton LLP found that around 51% of employees in the workforce today are currently not looking for a new job. However, they admitted that they would be open to new opportunities if they were presented with one. The survey also revealed that for employees with an annual salary of $100,000 or more, that percentage rises to 58%. The survey had a total of 5,000 full-time respondents working at various US companies in a variety of different industries.
These interesting statistics show that employees are more than willing to switch to new roles if they are given the opportunity to do so. This likely also requires certain benefits and a competitive salary, but it does show that talented employees are happy to move to new opportunities under the right circumstances. This is great news for new companies that are just starting to grow, but it’s also great for large corporations that are seeking talented individuals to help introduce new concepts and ideas to stale work processes.
The survey also found that around 29% of full-time US workers are actually looking for new jobs. This is down from 33% in a similar survey from the previous year. However, the company mentioned that it’s normal to see a small decrease because it coincides with around 21% of people switching jobs in the past 12 months. This was likely due to circumstances around the Covid-19 situation across the country.
When seeking new opportunities, employees say that base pay, advancement opportunities, autonomy, and a stronger work-life balance are the most important factors when deciding to move. Around 34% of survey respondents said that they took on a new job because it offered a better work-life balance, and 40% said that their new job offered a raise of 10% or more.
“With the pandemic mostly behind us, we’re starting to see talented employees take on a diverse attitude to climbing their respective career ladders,” says Giridhar Akkineni, CEO of AkkenCloud. “The American workforce is waking up to the plethora of career opportunities around them, and we see more lateral career moves than ever before. While salary is still one of the big reasons, people switch jobs, offering more opportunities and respecting the employee’s time is much more desirable at the workplace.”
When it comes to workers that found new jobs in the past 12 months, around 60% of workers had two or more competing offers. The primary reason for declining an offer was the base pay being lower than their needs.
However, around a third of respondents said that some companies took too long to make offers, meaning they went with the business that responded more quickly. Another third of respondents said that the benefits package didn’t meet their needs, and 27% said that the business’s reputation was an important consideration too. A further 21% said that they turned down offers because the company’s beliefs did not align with their own.
