Thinking about quitting your job? So are 39% of US employees - The Hill

A new piece of research has found 39% of employees who have been with a company for less than six months plan to leave within the next 12 months, a six point increase from last year.

With the new-job honeymoon phase well and truly over, employees are increasingly determined to make their voices heard when it comes to ensuring their workplace experience addresses their individual needs. They’re not prepared to hang around in jobs that aren’t working for them.

So why are American workers so unhappy that they are thinking about quitting so soon after starting?

Often it’s a case of finding out that the grass is not quite as green as they might have been led to believe.

That can be because the people who hired them are not the ones they end up working with, and the vague promises and commitments made during the recruitment process fail to materialize once they are in position.

Subtle reasons

It’s not that employers are breaching the terms of the employment contract––it’s more subtle than that.

It might be to do with the corporate culture of the employer, or its attitude to hybrid work or flexibility around working hours. An interviewee may have been incentivised by the prospect of lots of travel, and got none, or vice versa.

It may be something as simple as a personality clash with a manager. As anyone who’s ever had to deal with a boss they found difficult will know, there’s no surer way for what looked like a dream job to turn sour overnight.

Employees want some time in the office, but they don’t want to have to go in five days a week. They are comfortable sharing work emails and chats for an improved employee experience, but not so keen about the sharing of social media posts. And they would prefer AI to assist them rather than evaluate them.

One interesting trend is that a significant number of employees who leave a job are boomeranging back to a previous employer, and companies are becoming increasingly focussed on recruiting alumni as potential rehires.

Employees who return to a previous employer have a much better insight into what their working life is going to be like than those joining a new employer for the first time. They know the questions to ask, and the pitfalls (and people) to avoid.

Sometimes it takes an employee who feels undervalued and under-compensated by their employer leaving for a new job to make the original employer sit up and take notice. It’s only when the employee is gone that the employer realizes what they have lost.

On-boarding new employees is a costly business for employers, and it can be more efficient to rehire someone who already has valuable knowledge that will take a brand-new employee time to acquire.

For the boomeranging employee, this may mean they have the leverage to jump a couple of levels in the management structure to a better-paid position with more responsibility in less time than it would take them to progress if they had stayed put.

If you’ve come to the end of your honeymoon period and things aren’t working out quite as you hoped, there are lots of positions open at companies rating highly in terms of employee satisfaction. Discover those on the The Hill Jobs Board.

PayPal consistently performs well in employee satisfaction surveys, and has a successful executive engagement in a complex solution-selling and competitive environment. Right now, the company has a range of roles available across job functions; discover those here.

Specializing in equity derivatives clearing, providing central counterparty clearing and settlement services, Options Clearing Corporation is a clearing house based in Chicago. OCC provides central counterparty clearing and settlement services for equity options, futures, options on futures, and securities lending transactions, serving 115 clearing members and 15 exchanges including CBOE, Nasdaq, and NYSE. Proud of the collaborative and supportive environment it has developed to encourage work-life balance and employee wellness, you can see open roles here.

The Charles Schwab Corporation is an American multinational financial services company, with offerings across banking, commercial banking, investing and related services including consulting, and wealth management advisory services. The company’s Total Rewards package goes beyond traditional compensation and benefit plans, offering career building options such as a tuition reimbursement program, mentorship and job shadowing opportunities, and academic support with free online tutoring and homework help. See all current opportunities.

For these and other openings, check out The Hill Jobs Board