Employees seeking new jobs with better pay, benefits

Employers may want to prepare themselves for employees leaving for better-paying jobs with better benefits in the year to come.

According to the findings from the annual “Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement Survey” conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, 40% of employees reported the possibility of seeking employment outside of their current firm within the next 12 months.

Higher compensation or pay, better benefits, greater job security and additional opportunities for career advancement opportunities were the top reasons for looking for a new job.

Those reasons “were the same as what we found last year,” says Evren Esen, SHRM director of workforce analytics. “In this somewhat positive job market, the balance is in favor of employees. Employees are in high demand.”

She notes that “the 40% figure of employees looking for new jobs dipped slightly over the last two years, but that is still a considerable amount of employees.”

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Esen says employers should consider that it takes 42 days to fill an open position and $4,000 per hire.

Despite the fact that many workers are considering leaving their employer, overall job satisfaction remains high with 89% of employees telling SHRM that they are satisfied with their current jobs. (Thirty-eight percent of employees reported being very satisfied with their current job, and 51% of respondents said they were somewhat satisfied).

Additionally, for the third year in a row, 65% of respondents reported that “respectful treatment of all employees at all levels was a very important contributor to their job satisfaction,” according to SHRM. Seventy-two percent of female employees reported that respect was a very important contributor to job satisfaction than male employees (57%).

“It is more important for women, and it’s not surprising for the things we have heard about sexual harassment, respectful treatment is very important to women compared to males,” Esen says.

SHRM’s findings show mixed signals for the economy, according to Esen. “The survey shows more confidence among employees, but there are also signs of hesitation. We are definitely seeing employees taking the leap, so to speak. We are seeing an increase in employees looking for jobs, and we may be seeing employees getting new jobs.”

The SHRM Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement Survey polled 600 randomly selected U.S. employees in December 2016.

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