U.K. Firms Brace for a Great British Resignation in 2022
U.K. Firms Brace for a Great British Resignation in 2022
(Bloomberg) -- U.K. businesses were hit by rising numbers of staff leaving their jobs voluntarily during 2021, with many employers facing the prospect of more resignations and a hiring crunch going into the third year of the pandemic, new research shows.
Voluntary departures between April and December this year were higher than in the same period in 2019, according to 45% of managers surveyed by the Chartered Management Institute for Bloomberg News.
More managers at large organizations saw staff leave than those at smaller companies. In addition, 60% of managers in the private sector said it is now harder to recruit for job roles than it was pre-Covid-19.
The poll of 1,226 U.K. managers, conducted between Dec. 9-14, points to a profound shift in the labor market that’s become known in the U.S. as the “Great Resignation.” People from Asia to Europe have been walking away from jobs as they re-evaluate their work-life balance amid high levels of burnout.
Most firms have already drastically altered their working practices since the coronavirus swept the U.K., the research showed, with 89% of organizations now offering flexible working arrangements. That compares to 58% before March 2020.
But there are major challenges over recruitment: Almost nine in 10 managers (89%) said their business currently has vacancies and more than half (55%) said finding new staff is harder now than before the pandemic hit.
Excluding those who said they didn’t know, some 45% of managers said more staff had been voluntarily leaving this year compared to 2019, while 39% said the level was about the same. Just 16% said fewer staff had left.
One in five managers also reported an increase in the number of staff moving from full-time to part-time since March 2020, compared to just 3% who said this had fallen.
Ann Francke, chief executive officer of the CMI, said the January job market would become “even more fierce as employees seek out new roles that meet their changing demands and aspirations.”
“Just offering big budget salaries isn’t cutting it anymore,” she said. “Managers who aren’t adapting their working models will be left wanting - and their organisations will pay the price.”
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