investigation
The great resignation: Why Australians will soon start quitting their jobs in droves

It is a little known phenomenon that physical proximity to a cemetery can affect how willing one person is to help another. Faced with a reminder of our own mortality — all those gravestones — people are more likely to help a stranger out. At least that was the conclusion of one social psychology study that tested a person’s willingness to retrieve a stranger’s dropped notepad. What does a social experiment at a cemetery have to do with a health pandemic, a seismic shift in the global jobs market and Yellow Wiggle Emma Watkins’ surprise decision this week to bow out of the kid’s super group? Only this: that research project represents one small rock in the mountain of scientific evidence that, when people are reminded of their own mortality, it changes their behaviour. And as the world slowly emerges from the great COVID-19 social experiment — a pandemic that has brought life and death to everyone’s door to varying degrees — parts of it are witnessing a particular kind of change in human behaviour. Dubbed “the great resignation”, in the US it’s seen a record-breaking 4.3 million people quit their jobs in the month of August alone, while in the UK job vacancies have hit an all-time high of one million. One global survey suggests 41 per cent of all workers are considering leaving their employer in the next year. Driving the change appears to be a degree of pandemic soul-searching, as those who can afford to do so re-think their career, work-life balance and how they want to spend the rest of their lives. Anthony Klotz, the Texas psychologist who coined the term the great resignation described the experience as “pandemic epiphanies”. One Australian who appears to have had her own pandemic epiphany is Watkins, whose plans to pirouette off the stage at the end of the year have presumably devastated both her legion of child fans and any parents who just bought their child an Emma Wiggles costume for Christmas. “Like many people around the world, the pandemic has given me time to reflect on what is important in life,” Watkins said, explaining her decision. “For me, that means spending more time at home, something that I didn't realise I was missing out on being away eight months of the year on tour. “I'm really looking forward to devoting more time and energy to focus on completing my PhD which incorporates my ongoing passion for sign language, dance and film editing, and to having more time to work with the deaf community.” In Australia, the great resignation is — so far, at least — more like “the great reflection”, according to Sydney-based behavioural scientist Aaron McEwan, as many grapple with whether they can ever go back to their pre-pandemic working life. That could change as cities emerge from lockdown and interstate and international borders re-open. Mr McEwan, from global research and advisory firm Gartner, said the seeds for the upheaval have been growing for years as work increasingly encroached into people’s lives, thanks to technology that makes it not just possibly but expected to be perpetually available. When the pandemic arrived, he said, “for the first time life was encroaching onto work”. “Out of that came two things,” he said. “First we realised we can work really, really well from home. Secondly, at least in some cases, we realised our organisations weren’t changing the way they worked and we had to do back to back Zoom calls while trying to home-school the kids. “So where we’re at now is that there’s a lot of people that are very exhausted and tired but they’ve had time to think about what’s important to them and what they’ve realised, perhaps, is that work is not as important as they thought it was.” Mr McEwan has first-hand experience of this change of mindset, having only recently emerged from Sydney’s lockdowns. Before the pandemic grounded him — in every sense of the word — his second home was a Qantas airport lounge. “Now I can’t imagine a world where I don’t walk my kids to school,” he said. “It’s this great reflection on ‘what’s the importance of work?’” “Work was slowly killing us and then this event happened and it gave us time to think about it.” Mr McEwan said if Australia is heading for its own wave of resignations he expects it to arrive around March 2022, after people have had a chance to receive end-of-year bonuses — or not — and for employees to get a sense of whether their bosses will to continue to embrace more flexible ways of working. At the same time many Australians are desperate to travel, so when the borders re-open he expects to see those who have saved money and accrued house equity during the pandemic to consider an extended holiday away. “I’m telling business, yes, you should be concerned about the great resignation but you should also be concerned about ‘the great leave’,” he said. ABC Radio’s Robbie Buck is one of those eyeballing a big break. Buck, who along with co-host Wendy Harmer recently announced he would be leaving their popular Sydney ABC breakfast show, now plans to “take a year away from the mic and see the world”. The experience overseas offers some clues to what Australia might expect from its own big quit. Surveys suggest more than half of Americans looking for a new job plan to prioritise flexible working hours and remote work, suggesting working from home during the pandemic may have given some the taste of a work-life balance where life has its thumb on the scale. Resignations were highest among mid-career employees between the age of 30 and 45 years old, according to the Harvard Business Review. The industries most affected by resignations in the US were tech and healthcare but the departures were across industries and not limited to white collar jobs, with companies like McDonald’s and Amazon struggling to fill positions after an exodus of retail employees. In the UK, one survey by HR group Personio found that more than half of those who were planning to quit in the next six months were motivated by a reduction in benefits, a bad work-life balance or a toxic workplace. Curtin University John Curtin distinguished professor Sharon Parker has spent much of the pandemic researching how people’s work has been affected. “In our research of more than 500 people working from home during the pandemic, in which we measured people up to 15 times over many months, we found that most people's work was affected in quite profound ways,” she said. “However, the exact way in which work was affected very much depended on people’s circumstances: were they in a small business and struggling with uncertainty about the future? Were they quite secure in the work, but having to do their work at home, despite having small children in the house? Were they a frontline worker dealing with the threat of getting COVID?” Professor Parker said the research suggested about 20 per cent of workers experienced a “high level of psychological distress”. And although WA’s experience of the pandemic was very different to NSW and Victoria, West Australians have still suffered, including fly-in-fly-out workers who have struggled with the additional separation from their families required by extra-long COVID-19 rosters. Professor Parker said the relationship between work and mental health was significant. “We’ve known for many years that work has a profound influence on people's mental health and well-being,” she said. “Having autonomy over your work, some variety and challenging, clear goals you're aiming for, good interpersonal relationships, and a manageable work load increase worker well-being. “Conversely, having a boss who micro-manages every second of your day, boring purposeless tasks, a confusing and inconsistent set of responsibilities, no opportunity to connect with other human beings, or long work hours or other intolerable work demands are all well-known causes of work stress and impaired well-being.” Anecdotally, working from home during the pandemic has meant different things to different people. Some workers were given a high degree of autonomy, while others were subjected to micro-managing and constant Zoom check-ins from distrustful bosses. Ivana Zoric is one Australian who did take the resignation plunge during the pandemic, quitting her full time job and striking out on her own to set up the Ivana Creative copywriting agency. “Because of the pandemic, I got to focus on projects that stimulate me and make me want to get out of bed every morning,” she said. “I was so over being dictated by managers on a power trip, which is what motivated me to be my own boss in the most uncertain time Australia has ever seen.” The idea that pandemics change society is as old as, well, pandemics. The Black Plague of the 14th Century ended feudalism and laid the groundwork for modern western democracy and the rise of the middle class. The AIDS crisis not only devastated a generation but changed future generations’ attitudes towards sex. The exact nature of the shadow that the COVID-19 pandemic will cast on the world, Australia and WA is still a work in progress. WA workers who do want to join the great resignation may find it easy to waltz into a better role, given that a lack of overseas workers is already leading to shortages in many industries. In the hospitality sector restaurants and cafes are having to slash hours because they do not have the staff to stay open, while at the top end of town WA executive recruitment firm, Lester Blades, is busier than it has ever been. Director James Fairbairn said in 27 years “I have never been busier”. Mr Fairbairn said there were already signs the great resignation was “definitely happening here in Western Australia” and said employers should be doing everything they can to retain staff. That did not necessarily mean bigger pay-checks so much as a better work-life balance or educational opportunities. “You will lose some but you want to lose fewer than other people,” he said. For some West Australians, pandemic life still looks a lot like pre-pandemic life. Others have lost work or been separated from loved ones and support networks by closed borders, which could see them surging for the exit once borders re-open. Some will have experienced a pandemic epiphany, whether that’s the realisation they never again want sit in traffic commuting for two hours a day or that a taste of the slower life has motivated them to make a permanent change. A Microsoft report that surveyed 30,000 people in 31 countries — including Australia — and found that 41 per cent of the global workforce was considering a move in the next year, put it like this. “With so much change upending people… (they) are revaluating priorities, home bases and their entire lives,” it said. “So whether it’s due to fewer networking or career advancement opportunities, a new calling, pent-up demand, or a host of pandemic-related struggles, more people are considering their next move.”

investigationThe great resignation: Why Australians will soon start quitting their jobs in droves

investigation
The great resignation: Why Australians will soon start quitting their jobs in droves