Finding the right fit for a job opening is time-consuming and expensive. Companies invest a lot of money and effort into soliciting and interviewing applicants and onboarding new hires, but despite all this money and effort, there’s no guarantee a new employee will work out. This means it’s in an employer’s best interest to do what it can to retain its existing talent.
However, this strategy is becoming increasingly challenging because of both the tight labor market, in which workers have relatively high leverage compared with employers, and the generational shift in attitudes around loyalty to employers.
Data and anecdotal evidence from sources like social media suggest that younger workers in particular are more than happy to switch jobs to find better pay or a better fit for their interests and have few qualms about leaving an employer after a relatively short stint on the job.
Younger Workers More at Risk of Exodus
“As the pandemic-era Great Resignation continues, Gen Z and young millennial workers are job-hopping—leaving roles after a short amount of time for others that are higher-paying, have more opportunities for advancement, and are more in line with their interests,” writes Chloe Berger in an article for Fortune. “Along the way, they’re climbing the career ladder, proving their parents’ advice wrong—and really freaking out employers who find themselves in a war for talent.”
Although it’s currently more appealing in today’s job market to look for another job, Berger says it’s young people in particular who seem most fluid with respect to employment.
She points to 2022 data from LinkedIn Labs that indicates that the percentage of U.S. LinkedIn users changing jobs was up 37.6% since 2021 (up 29.6% since 2019). The tendency was highest among Gen Zs, who had a 59.6% increase in job hopping. Millennials were at 34.8% and Gen X at 26.5%, while boomers were the least likely to leave at only 7.4%.
Don’t Take Your Workers for Granted
All of this means employers shouldn’t take their younger workers—or any workers, for that matter—for granted. Even after the job market eventually cools off, younger workers are proving to be less loyal to employers than their parents and even their older siblings. Therefore, employers need to pay attention to what these workers want and need from a job and do what they can to provide it to them. They can be almost certain this group will be ready to take advantage of a better opportunity if it arises.
Lin Grensing-Pophal is a Contributing Editor at HR Daily Advisor.