GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — There's nothing like a world health crisis to make you reexamine your priorities. At least, that's what a survey says that was conducted by staffing agency Robert Half. About 70% of correspondents indicated they were reassessing their career and their life, as people continue to work from home. Neal Gilbert, the Grand Rapids Division Director spoke with us about some of the other trends his company saw in the responses.
He says it isn't just young people thinking about making a change in their career, but older adults as well. In fact, 40% of people over the age of 55 who responded to the survey indicated they were considering a change. Gilbert says many people he has worked with in the past have been asking him about different kinds of positions, wondering if they will get more fulfillment out of them.
One of the things people are really considering is how their job and career fit into their life outside of work. The instability this pandemic has created as businesses remain closed, or have temporarily laid off workers, has put a new emphasis on stability, and job security.
"That’s one thing that we clearly got a really good indication of during this whole pandemic is how stable your career is, how valued you are as an employee," Gilbert says. "Were you one of the first ones who were kind of considered to be considered a furlough or a layoff or something along those lines?"
The answers to those questions have inspired many people to think about what they want from their job when all of this is over. If you lost you job during the lockdown, do you still consider it to be a stable position? Would another position work better for you in the event something like this happens again? How have you adapted to working from home, or for that matter, can you work from home at all?
The work for home solution many businesses have implemented has also created an opportunity to consider change. People are asking if they need to continue working 9-5 if they can accomplish the same amount by working for a few hours at a time at their kitchen table, even while their kids are running around in the background of their meetings.
Work-life balance has taken on a whole new meaning, and it's caused a lot of people to question what they want to continue to do once the country opens back up completely. "It was a thing before this whole thing came into play, but it’s even more of a thing now because we are all just re-configuring our schedules and how we do things and where we go to do things, and everything that really had kind of come into life and career coming into this has now been reshuffled and we just kind of gotta reset the game, I guess, as to what it is that we consider to be something that we want to do moving forward."
But, Gilbert says there is hope for people thinking about changing course in their career. He says, despite the high unemployment rate, there are still opportunities available.
He says, businesses need to be careful, or they may lose their most valuable employees. "There’s still obviously some employees out there that are really the engines that make the company go," he says. "Those are the people that you really need to make sure that are continuing to be satisfied with their position because if they’re not, then they could potentially be looking elsewhere."
Other companies that can recognize the talent will snatch up those essential employees looking for a bit more flexibility when it comes to their position. Things like flexible hours, different responsibilities, continued benefits, and a different work-life balance are all things people are looking for in the workforce now.
The pandemic has shone a light on the costs and benefits of many people's current positions, and highlighted a needed change in priorities for many families.
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