By Andy Medici – Senior Reporter,
May 14, 2021, 2:14pm EDT
Source: Houston Biz Journal
It would take just a 15% raise to get 49% of employees to leave their jobs, according to a survey of American employees by Chicago-based Elements Global Services.
For some employees it's even lower, as 15% of respondents said it would take just a 5% raise to leave their jobs.
According to many experts, there's a good chance employees who are looking will get an offer, as the current talent shortage is expected to force many companies to raise wages. They encourage employers to take proactive steps to retain their best workers.
The willingness to leave for a pay raise comes after about 65% of American employees surveyed said their pay fell or stayed the same in 2020, mostly due to the spread of Covid-19 and the economic turmoil it caused across the globe. Out of that 65%, about 39% of those employees said they took a pay cut in 2020, and 29% said they lost their job.
About 55% of Americans who saw their income cut during 2020 said it has not yet been restored in 2021, according to the survey.
Emily Golden, career coach and author of “The New Golden Rule: The Professional Perfectionist's Guide to Greater Emotional Intelligence, A More Fulfilling Career, and A Better Life” attributed the high number of employees looking to leave for a relatively small increase to workers staying put at jobs they didn’t like during Covid — but who are now ready to jump ship.
“People have been sheltering-in-job for the last year and a half through this pandemic. Now that things are starting to open up it's, 'OK, now it's time to look,'” Golden said. “Companies need to be having conversations and need to be getting out in front of this.”
She said companies should have conversations around satisfaction and make sure they identity their top workers to ensure they are happy, stressing that people leave managers, not companies.
If workers are happy, Golden said a 15% bump in pay is usually is not enough to make people leave.
The survey also found a number of other interesting things about employee salaries, including:
That American workers share more about their salary information than most people might expect. About 70% said some or all of their friends know how much money they make, while 65% said some or all of their co-workers know how much they make. About 83% said their significant other knows how much they make, while 65% said their parents do and another 48% said their siblings know how much they earn.
American workers are less open to being paid in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin than workers in other countries. Just 37% of American employees said they would be open to the idea, while 50% in the United Kingdom and 40% in Canada said they would accept at least some of their pay in Bitcoin.
The top industries where American employees feel their owners and CEOs are overpaid are in retail and restaurants, according to the survey, with 66% of workers in both industries saying their owners were overpaid. Another 64% in media and journalism said the same thing, with education at 63% and hospitality at 61% to round out the top five industries.
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