The Great Resignation: can you feel the winds of change?

Post-lockdown, a great reappraisal is underway. Are you in a job you like? Are you in the right city, house, relationship?

If two years of reflection is sufficient to prompt a rethink about the job you’re doing, why wouldn’t this logic also apply to other aspects of life? Are you in the right relationship?

It is said that in the post-lockdown era the workplace will be beset with what has become known as The Great Resignation. This is the idea that because of the pandemic, and a two-year stoppage in immigration causing a skills crunch, the skilled workers of the world are now primed and ready to resign en masse in order to take up better, more lucrative, offers.

Part of The Great Resignation is likely to comprise pent-up demand by workers who would have made other arrangements anyway over the past few years. But there’s another component that will add momentum to a powerful job-exiting movement in the coming months: the pandemic has delivered a control-alt-delete moment to a workforce unused to economic uncertainty on a grand scale and for a prolonged period.

Spending two years on and off at home, cut off from family and friends apart from Zoom, prompts reflection about where you are in life. Are you in the right job? Are you working for a business whose management you respect and whose products and services make a contribution to society? What is the effort-reward equation you are locked into?

For skilled workers in particular – for it is they who have the most job options – these almost philosophical questions are likely to lead to post-lockdown job-hopping. Add in the effects of fewer skilled immigrants and foreign students, as well as heightened demand for workers in logistics, technology, healthcare and agribusiness, and it’s no surprise that skilled workers are most likely to lead the charge into The Great Resignation.

But wait, if two years of reflection is sufficient to prompt a rethink about the job you’re doing, why wouldn’t this logic also apply to other aspects of life? Are you in the right house, city, state? Should you do a seachange or treechange? Do you want to remain in Australia? Are your finances being properly managed? Are there toxic people in your life? Are you in the right relationship?

These questions go beyond the New Year’s resolution genre of self-improvement – those pledges that rarely make it to Australia Day. These questions are so big, they often remain unaddressed, lost amid the everyday stuff of life. Not because they’re unimportant but because to resolve them requires action that can be painful to implement. And yet it is resolution of these questions that shape your chances of happiness throughout life.

The coronavirus circuit-breaker is a unique time in our history. As a nation we’re coming out the other side with bruises and scars but, thankfully, basically intact. And as individuals, we now have decisions to make: if there are better options out there for us, let us not resume the way things were.

It’s a delicate balance, of course. There are times when workplace circumstances can be unsettling, even unfair, but my experience is that if you’re in the right place and focus on the good bits, eventually the other bits fall into line. Making the call to stick with a job early in your career can be a tough decision. And it’s harder to switch jobs later in life when there may be a partner, kids and a mortgage.

Use the next few months wisely to weigh your options, to improve the model of where and how you want to live and work. And remember, of course, that opting to remain in situ is an equally valid choice.

When it comes to career planning, my advice is to not be guided solely by money (although it is important) but to do what makes you happy. For it is happiness that is the yardstick by which you will come to judge your career and life.