Dive Brief:
- Digital workers — those with jobs in information technology, automation, analytics or digitization — are eager to find a new job, according to Nov. 30 survey results from Boston Consulting Group.
- Seventy-three percent of worker respondents said they plan to switch positions in the next two to three years, the survey found, while 40% are currently job-hunting. Most (63%) said they were looking due to wanting "better career opportunities in other roles," while the desire for a new challenge (49%) and feeling undervalued in their current role (36%) were also big contributing factors. Nearly all (95%) wanted to work remotely full or part time.
- BCG surveyed 9,900 digital workers for the survey.
Dive Insight:
The Great Resignation has given way to what many are calling the "Great Reshuffle," a term coined by LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky to describe workers "rethinking not just how we work, but why we work." The Great Reshuffle has led to workers reconsidering what they expect in terms of not just traditional draws like benefits and compensation, but also job role, flexibility and company commitment to values like diversity and environmental protection.
Anthony Klotz, a business administration professor who studies resignations and coined the term "Great Resignation," recently shed insight on this turn in workers' lives during a Q&A with HR Dive. Due to the death and illness brought by the pandemic, he said, people have been taking stock of their lives. For Americans, whose life satisfaction is particularly tied up in work, that means evaluating more closely whether or not their jobs are fulfilling in the way they expect. Digital workers' first two reasons for seeking a new job seem to align with this broader phenomenon.
The third reason — feeling undervalued in their current role — is no particular shock, either. In a recent survey, the Society for Human Resources Management found that more than half of workers reported taking on more work in recent months, presumably due to co-workers' resignations. More than half also reported wondering whether they were underpaid.
Digital workers, particularly those in support-heavy roles like IT, have been in high demand over the course of the pandemic. A McKinsey report from February noted that COVID-19 would likely "propel faster adoption of automation and AI" and that the popularity of remote work and virtual meetings is likely to continue into the future, even if usage subsides a bit from the pandemic's peak.
If they're looking to stay in the same field, tech workers who are job hunting are in a good position to find something that matches their requirements; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data recently showed that demand for tech workers is high, with 360,065 job postings for such workers in October, "an increase of nearly 76,000 from the previous month and the highest monthly total since September 2019," according to CompTIA.
