By now you will have seen it in the news, but have you really thought about what the Great Resignation means and what it might mean for you?

Australians have had a hard few years. For those of us who have been lucky to remain in secure jobs throughout the pandemic, we have marked ourselves as blessed and have done our best not to complain. Let’s be honest, we have been lucky compared to so many.
But now we are starting to feel the impacts of the hard work we have put in.

To start with, our work and home life and managed to merge into one and the same. Our work is in our kitchens, lounge rooms and bedrooms. Our colleagues have all managed to peer into our homes via our virtual meetings, met our family as they have interrupted our sessions and gotten to know our pets as they bark at yet another delivery driver knocking at our front door. While we are further apart in distance, we have become closer to our work mates than ever.

Then there’s the additional hours we have been putting into our job because, well… we can. We are saving so much time without having to commute, that it does not seem an imposition to use that time to catch up on emails. We don’t have to rush off to pick up the kids, so we can just run a few more reports. Dinner is in the oven, so we can just make one more call. All this extra work ads up and takes a toll.

Now we are all exhausted from the additional work we have been doing, but is anyone taking annual leave? No. Why take time off to sit around home doing nothing? Aussies have a great love for travel, and we value our annual leave so that we can take our big overseas holidays. Since we have not been able to travel for some time, we are banking up the leave so that when we can finally safely jump on a plane to some overseas location, it will be worth the wait. And while we have been putting off our overseas travel, there has been one upside, our bank accounts are looking healthier than ever.

For those who have been blessed with having continuous employment during this period, we have seen savings increase. While our Uber Eats and Netflix charges are up, we have not been spending our money on holidays, new clothes, dinners out, five-dollar coffees or $18 espresso martinis. We are saving our money because we know that the future is uncertain, and we could find ourselves out of work.
We have been putting our all into work and now we are exhausted. And what do we get in return? If we are lucky, we will be sent a bottle of wine if we can’t have a Covid-safe Christmas party and then a request to head back into the office full time in the new year.

If this sounds all too familiar, you will be spending the Christmas break like many Aussies – thinking about what’s next for you. This will lead to our great resignation. People will be looking for what’s next for them, whether it’s a change for something different, changing industries, taking a step back to reduce stress, reducing hours to spend time with our families or going out on our own to become our own bosses – there will be a lot of movement in the market.

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