Great Resignation hits Adelaide: How SA workers embraced global trend

Covid-weary workers worldwide are throwing in the towel in droves to chase new opportunities. Now the trend is hitting Adelaide, local workers reveal why the Big Quit’s a hit.

They’re calling it the Great Resignation, a once-in-a-lifetime employment event that has rocked the United States and, according to the experts, could be coming to Australia.

Also known as the Big Quit, the phenomenon has seen between two and three per cent of the American workforce quitting their jobs every month to begin new careers.

In a LinkedIn survey of more than 1000 Australian workers, 58 per cent said they were looking to switch jobs.

It’s being driven, like most things in the world these days, by the pandemic.

The lockdowns and travel restrictions have obviously disrupted many industries and some have been forced to re-skill and find new work.

A shortage of overseas workers has also shifted the power balance slightly back in favour of workers, giving them more bargaining power to leverage their skills. But the Great Resignation runs deeper than that. There has been a deep psychological shift, employment experts say, in the way people view work.

Former professional figure skater and airline manager Josef Milano’s dreams of becoming a police officer are a step closer, following his most recent appointment. His diverse past has seen him win gold at the Australian Figure Skating Championships in 2016, but Mr Milano said he has wanted to work for SA Police since he was a teen. “There’s a lot of development opportunities within the PSO title, so even though I haven’t applied to be a police officer, going down the PSO path will have opportunities of its own,” he said. Picture: Brenton Edwards

For Angie Bignell, the pandemic was the catalyst for a major life change. The Eden Hills woman was the office manager at a busy renewable energy storage company when Covid hit. It was the push she needed to start a project she’d been thinking about for some time – an online vintage store where she’d source unique products for clients. Ms Bignell used her redundancy payment to take a few weeks to research the business and sourcing opportunities before she launched Three Oaks Vintage in September 2020. Picture: Matt Loxton

Many people were freed from the shackles of their desk for the first time in their careers and enjoyed the flexibility that working from home gave them to spend more time with their families.

Others, burned out by slugging on through the pandemic, are re-evaluating what the very concept of working means to them and seeking new, rewarding challenges.

Demographer and economist Bernard Salt said that while there wasn’t enough data to officially declare the Great Resignation an Australian phenomenon yet, the anecdotal evidence pointed to it being in full swing.

“The Australian Bureau of Statistics released a one-off data set in July this year where they measured the job mobility … and found there was actually a decrease in job mobility in the first year of the pandemic,” Mr Salt said.

“The issue is that I think that American data is more current, and the second year of the pandemic is a very different kettle of fish. People are making different choices now. My view is that there is a great resignation under way, but we don’t have the data yet to prove that.”

Mr Salt said he thought white-collar in sectors like IT, and perhaps tradespeople, were likely to be the first to embrace the trend in Australia.

The Covid pandemic turned Charmaine Pavia’s job in the events industry completely upside down. Working at the Adelaide Convention Centre, Ms Pavia’s role was attracting major business events. From 2018, she was studying a degree in Computer science on the side – and when Covid hit in 2020, it changed her career course into the burgeoning cyber industry. Ms Pavia joined IT company Hastwell as a Business Development Manager and is responsible for developing new cyber security business opportunities in defence and the public sector. Picture: Michael Marschall

Despite some uncertainly surrounding submarine projects, experts agree that there are still huge opportunities for South Australian jobseekers in the defence industry. “There’s never been a better time to consider a career in the defence industry,” a BAE spokesman told The Advertiser. And Ashleigh Bryans, who traded a 16-year career in middle and high school teaching, for a life in defence couldn’t agree more. Mr Bryans, who joined BAE in September last year, is responsible for leading the firm’s newly-created early careers program, which helps link the company with schools and apprentices. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

And he said the movement went beyond employment as people used the pandemic to examine their entire lives.

“I would argue that it’s more than a Great Resignation, it’s more like a great reset, a ctrl+alt+delete moment,” he said.

“People have had two years to contemplate life, their job, where they live, their financial situations and maybe even relationships.”

Working from home has also changed the workforce forever Mr Salt said.

“The number of people working from home before the pandemic did not shift from five per cent, and one of those five per cent were farmers who obviously had to work from home,” he said.

“Upwards of 50 per cent of the workforce was working from home during parts of the pandemic, and I can’t see that figure ever going back to five per cent. Maybe it will go back to 10 per cent.”