This summary is provided by the IPR Organizational Communication Research Center based on the original study by UKG
UKG assessed the perceptions of pandemic-era job changers and the managers they left behind.
Surveys of employees and managers in the U.S., the U.K., Netherlands, Germany, and France were conducted from Dec. 23, 2021 – Jan. 22, 2022. The first survey was conducted on 1,950 employees who voluntarily quit or changed jobs at least once since March 2020. The second survey studied 1,850 managers who had at least one employee on their team quit during the pandemic.
Key findings include:
- 43% of employees across the globe said “I was better off in my old job.”
- 41% of global employees said “I left my job too quickly.”
- There was a gap between why employees were leaving and why their managers thought they quit.
- The top three reasons managers thought people quit were: pay/compensation, family/childcare/personal reasons, and too many COVID precautions.
- The top three reasons employees said they quit were: pay/compensation, “did not feel valued or that I belong,” and poor work-life balance/burnout.
- While “boomeranging” (employees returning to a job they previously quit) is not new, record resignations are leading to mass returns and managers are more open to bringing people back.
- Nearly 1 in 5 job changers worldwide have already “boomeranged” back to a job they quit during the pandemic.
