Confidence among Australian employees in their ability to secure a new job has fallen to a three-year low, with little indication of improvement in the near future. <\/p>\n
Speaking with HR Leader, Neal Woolrich, a director in the human resources advisory team at Gartner, revealed that Australian employees\u2019 confidence in landing a new job has plunged to a three-year low, according to Gartner\u2019s monthly Global Talent Monitor survey.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we found in the most recent survey is that confidence in job availability has fallen to a three-year low. It actually rose a bit in 2023, and it peaked in the second quarter of 2024. But in the year since then, it\u2019s fallen about 5 per cent,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Although the decline might not appear dramatic, Woolrich warned it is a red flag, highlighting growing unease as \u201cemployees are quite concerned about the state of the labour market at the moment\u201d. <\/p>\n
Woolrich explained that the workforce\u2019s confidence has plunged to a three-year low due to two major factors: rising unemployment and growing uncertainty around artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe unemployment rate\u2019s been ticking up. But the other thing that\u2019s really on their mind \u2026 is the impact of artificial intelligence. There\u2019s just a lot of uncertainty about what the impact will be, and of course, will people\u2019s employment be affected by the impact of artificial intelligence?\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Interestingly, the survey revealed a paradox in employee sentiment. While confidence in securing new jobs has declined, Woolrich noted that employees\u2019 intent to stay with their current employers has actually risen over the course of the year.<\/p>\n
He explained that this trend isn\u2019t driven by loyalty, but rather by employees feeling \u201cstuck\u201d in their roles, with few attractive alternatives available. <\/p>\n
With fewer job opportunities available, Woolrich highlighted a worrying trend of employees\u2019 discretionary effort and willingness to go above and beyond steadily \u201cfalling\u201d, a development he warned is particularly concerning when occurring at the same time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got two things working together. Employees are staying with their employers, but at the same time, their discretionary effort is falling,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not a good combination for employers because you\u2019re likely to see people staying in their jobs, feeling trapped and not really having the confidence to move, but at the same time working less than what they might otherwise do.\u201d <\/p>\n
So how do these findings impact employees and employers?<\/p>\n
For employees, Woolrich explained that the declining confidence is affecting their willingness to ask for pay rises, meaning companies may not need to offer as large an increase to retain staff or attract talent from competitors.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really telling us that employees are probably not that confident in their ability to make a move. So that might have a moderating effect on things like what we call the compensation switching premium,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cHow much of a pay increase do employees want if they were to leave their current employer and go somewhere else? So that might moderate that. Employees would need to temper their expectations around any pay rise from changing employers. On the flip side, now that\u2019s a positive for employers. They might not have to pay as much of a premium to entice people across.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Woolrich cautioned that declining discretionary effort presents a significant threat to productivity, workplace culture, and overall organisational performance, making it a critical issue for employers to address.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut that other factor that I mentioned, discretionary effort, that\u2019s one that employers will need to monitor and make sure that they\u2019ve got a plan for that. We call that \u2018resenteeism\u2019. Employees sticking with their jobs but resenting it because they feel they don\u2019t have,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Confidence among Australian employees in their ability to secure a new job has fallen to a three-year low,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[114,85,46,265],"class_list":{"0":"post-958","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-jobs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}