WellbeingRewards & BenefitsReward and RecognitionWhy less job-hopping is hurting younger employees

Why less job-hopping is hurting younger employees

The new workplace norm for employees is to pursue a succession of different roles with some even multi-jobbing. But with job switching becoming tougher, how can employers support valued staff?

Younger workers must switch jobs regularly or face becoming stuck in lower paid roles. Ruth Thomas examines how employers can better reward their skills.

 

The new workplace norm for employees is to pursue a succession of different roles with some even multi-jobbing.

Recent surveys have indicated that the UK employee will hold six different jobs in six different companies across a career spanning the ages 18 to 65. The impact on today’s millennial employees, who have only experienced working in this job swapping environment, is that most don’t believe career progression will even be linear.

Instead they seek to pursue a series of different careers, rather than just jobs throughout their working lives.  They also seek to learn and develop new skills all the time, rather than working their way up the ladder in just one particular field.

Slow Recovery

However, job-hopping has been impacted by the slow rate of economic recovery in the UK. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) monitors the rate of job-to-job moves capturing the proportion of employees who change employer between one quarter and the next.

Figures fell from around 2.5% of employees to a low of around 1.7% during 2008 and 2009 as the economic outlook became more uncertain and workers became less confident about moving from one post to another. More recently, although the rate rose in the three months to September 2015 (2.5% of employees), in the following three months to December 2015 this figure had fallen slightly again to around 2.2% of employees.

Analysts have highlighted the impact this has had on pay progression. The Resolution Foundation’s study of the final quarter of 2015 highlighted that the earning potential of young people had been hit most because of a slowdown in the number of times they changed jobs and suggested that young workers’ pay would be 3% higher if job mobility had not slowed.

In the report, Resolution Foundation senior policy analyst Laura Gardiner said: “Frequent job moves are the main route to the rapid pay increases young people should experience as they begin their working lives. So it is a real concern that job switching slowed down for all groups, and particularly for young people, even before the recession hit.”

Job Stayers and Switchers

Moving jobs undoubtedly drives greater pay progression.  So-called job stayers in the demographic saw just a 4.4% median annual pay growth between 2007 and 2014, while job switchers saw 11.8% growth.

Other studies have shown that moving jobs can lead to up to three times greater pay growth than staying put. In the light of the UK’s April employment figures, where wage growth including bonuses fell from 2.1% in January to 1.8%, moving jobs to increase your salary remains an attractive option.

What's Hot

HRD Roundtable Report: Levelling Up Onboarding for the Hybrid World

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Levelling Up Onboarding for the Hybrid World 5 May 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Levelling Up Onboarding for...

Attracting new talent is shooting up the priority list, but also proving more difficult than ever. A...

View event
HRD Roundtable Report: Redefining Company Culture in Hybrid Work Environments

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Redefining Company Culture in Hybrid Work Environments 26 May 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Redefining Company Culture ...

The process of redefining a company culture is a complex one. Culture contributes directly to the da...

View event
Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its people

Whitepaper | Talent Development Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its people

1y

Learning to win the talent war: how digital market...

This report documents the findings of a Fireside chat held by ClickZ in the first quarter of 2022. I...

View resource
HRD Roundtable Report: Strategies For Re-Engaging The Hybrid Workforce

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Strategies For Re-Engaging The Hybrid Workforce 5 May 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Strategies For Re-Engaging ...

We know hybrid working is here to stay, forcing many organisations to experiment with innovative and...

View event
HRD Roundtable Report: Making it ‘Worth It’ – What We Need to Reward, Engage and Retain

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Making it ‘Worth It’ – What We Need to Reward, Engage and Retain 3 March 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Making it ‘Worth It’ – What...

We know the pandemic has caused many people to revaluate their careers and relationships with work a...

View event
Dave Ulrich: How can business and HR leaders simplify complexity?

Leadership Development Dave Ulrich: How can business and HR leaders simplify complexity?

1y Dave Ulrich

Dave Ulrich: How can business and HR leaders simpl...

HR thought leader Dave Ulrich outlines ways leaders can deal with complexity in an increasingly busy...

View article
HRD Roundtable Report: Using HR Data to Inform Organisational Decision Making

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Using HR Data to Inform Organisational Decision Making 5 May 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Using HR Data to Inform Org...

Historically, HR hasn’t been as effective as it could be in sharing and communicating data with wide...

View event
Digital transformation investment grows but critical skills gaps remain - Coursera report

Digital HR Digital transformation investment grows but critical skills gaps remain - Coursera report

1y Leah Belsky

Digital transformation investment grows but critic...

Covid-19 has accelerated the rate of digital learning on a global scale. Coursera's latest report pr...

View article
Wellbeing in the hybrid workplace: how to successfully drive engagement

Employee Engagement Wellbeing in the hybrid workplace: how to successfully drive engagement

1y Alara Basul | Sponsored

Wellbeing in the hybrid workplace: how to successf...

Remote working has impacted the way we communicate as a workforce, but striking the right balance be...

View article
How to create a company culture capable of empowering the modern workforce

Culture How to create a company culture capable of empowering the modern workforce

1y Alara Basul | Sponsored

How to create a company culture capable of empower...

While new working patterns that emerged from the pandemic have earned a permanent spot in the w...

View article
WATCH: Connection and collaboration in a hybrid workplace

Leadership Learnings WATCH: Connection and collaboration in a hybrid workplace

1y Amy Kirkham

WATCH: Connection and collaboration in a hybrid wo...

Alison Noon-Jones, VP of People & Culture at Leidos UK & Europe, shares how crucial employee engagem...

View article
Turbulence ahead: Why it’s time to be bold in your leadership

Leadership Development Turbulence ahead: Why it’s time to be bold in your leadership

1y Terence Mauri

Turbulence ahead: Why it’s time to be bold in your...

HRD thought leader and Hack Future Lab founder Terence Mauri sets out why the biggest risk to leader...

View article

This phenomenon brings many challenges for employers set against the aforementioned economic landscape of near stagnating wage growth: how do you retain key employees seeking pay progression externally when internally pay budgets are limited?

Similarly, how can you manage paying market premiums to job movers looking for a raise in order to attract key skills and not end up with pay differentiation issues between newly hired and longer serving employees?

Hot Skills Premiums

In the past companies opted to pay special hot skills premiums to employees whose expertise was crucial and in short supply. These premiums ceased the minute the skills become more readily available on the market or the employer decided that the skills were no longer as important to its business.

More recently some employers have been seeking to tackle the conundrum by turning to a high performance model for pay. This approach seeks to optimise compensation by focusing limited pay budgets on high performers, or key talent, who statistically outperform expectations and whose skills are integral to the company’s strategic direction and future projects.

In this model pay becomes more individualised and market driven rather than spread thinly across all employees. The issue here is that individualised deals always raise fairness concerns, of course.

In response some of the notable organisations moving to this approach, such as Netflix, have adopted a full pay transparency model so employees can calculate why they are paid less or more than their peers.

One thing is for sure. As the long, slow economic recovery perpetuates and the career for life becomes a fading memory, employers will need to adopt ever more creative ways of attracting, retaining and rewarding their talent.

 

Ruth Thomas is senior consultant at Curo Compensation

Was this article helpful?

Comments are closed.

What's Hot

HRD Roundtable Report: Levelling Up Onboarding for the Hybrid World

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Levelling Up Onboarding for the Hybrid World 5 May 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Levelling Up Onboarding for...

Attracting new talent is shooting up the priority list, but also proving more difficult than ever. A...

View event
HRD Roundtable Report: Redefining Company Culture in Hybrid Work Environments

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Redefining Company Culture in Hybrid Work Environments 26 May 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Redefining Company Culture ...

The process of redefining a company culture is a complex one. Culture contributes directly to the da...

View event
Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its people

Whitepaper | Talent Development Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its people

1y

Learning to win the talent war: how digital market...

This report documents the findings of a Fireside chat held by ClickZ in the first quarter of 2022. I...

View resource
HRD Roundtable Report: Strategies For Re-Engaging The Hybrid Workforce

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Strategies For Re-Engaging The Hybrid Workforce 5 May 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Strategies For Re-Engaging ...

We know hybrid working is here to stay, forcing many organisations to experiment with innovative and...

View event
HRD Roundtable Report: Making it ‘Worth It’ – What We Need to Reward, Engage and Retain

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Making it ‘Worth It’ – What We Need to Reward, Engage and Retain 3 March 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Making it ‘Worth It’ – What...

We know the pandemic has caused many people to revaluate their careers and relationships with work a...

View event
Dave Ulrich: How can business and HR leaders simplify complexity?

Leadership Development Dave Ulrich: How can business and HR leaders simplify complexity?

1y Dave Ulrich

Dave Ulrich: How can business and HR leaders simpl...

HR thought leader Dave Ulrich outlines ways leaders can deal with complexity in an increasingly busy...

View article
HRD Roundtable Report: Using HR Data to Inform Organisational Decision Making

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Using HR Data to Inform Organisational Decision Making 5 May 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Using HR Data to Inform Org...

Historically, HR hasn’t been as effective as it could be in sharing and communicating data with wide...

View event
Digital transformation investment grows but critical skills gaps remain - Coursera report

Digital HR Digital transformation investment grows but critical skills gaps remain - Coursera report

1y Leah Belsky

Digital transformation investment grows but critic...

Covid-19 has accelerated the rate of digital learning on a global scale. Coursera's latest report pr...

View article