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When a British pilot named Paul Green lost his job last year, he did what so many other airline workers have done since the pandemic shattered his industry – something completely unexpected.
Green settings a consulting to teach business executives how to use skills he had perfected in the booth to manage stress and make decisions under duress. NHS front-line workers turned out to be their first customers. Like many of the pilots who have suddenly found themselves driving trucks, stacking supermarket shelves or opening in cafes, Green hopes to return to the flight career he wanted from childhood, but not as he did before.
“The flying lifestyle wasn’t nice,” he told me last week. “I’m married, I have two kids and the amount of time I was away from home, in the absence of significant parts of my kids, was a real dilemma.” Ideally, he hopes to find a way to mix part-time flight with the new business he runs from home in Somerset.
“Flying is what I love to do,” he said. “But I think the most important thing for everyone right now is, at what cost do I want to follow that dream I once had, when life can be better on the other side?”
He doesn’t seem to be the only one asking these questions. There are growing signs that employees around the world want a change after 15 turbulent months of a revolting pandemic of working life.
A 4m record Americans quit their jobs in April, most since the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics began publishing that data in December 2000. More than 40 percent of the world’s workforce is ready to resign. sometime this year, Microsoft research has shown. Just under 40 per cent of the UK and Irish say the workers they will do the same this year or once the economy is stronger.
Really? Who knows? Similarly, it is difficult to know exactly what is causing what some call Great resignation. Accumulated demand could be a factor. People who stayed in jobs they hated during last year’s chaos may feel braver when they move this year. Exhaustion may be another reason. Most of the 31,000 workers in the thirty nations covered in the Microsoft study said they felt overworked and 39% felt “exhausted.” They spent more than twice as much time in Microsoft Teams meetings, which lasted an average of ten more minutes and sent billions more emails to customers. It is perhaps not surprising that the professional and business services sector has suffered one of the largest increases in waivers in the US.
The big question is whether these outflows, which add to the widespread labor shortage, suggest that a fundamental shift in power is taking place between workers and bosses.
I am skeptical. The sudden shortage of staff has arisen as restaurants and hotels have reopened at the same time. Let’s see what life is like once the restrictions of Covid-19 end and economic activity returns to a more stable path.
Even in the battered airline industry, enrollment in flight schools is rising again, especially in markets where recoveries are consolidating, L3Harris and CAE aviation training groups told me last week. That is, for all the older pilots who drop out, that is, there is at least one hungry newcomer in an industry that British aviation consultant John Strickland rightly says has an infinite number of people “desperately” looking forward to getting into it.
That said, the airline industry doesn’t look like many others. Employers who think they can ask for staff back at their office counters as if nothing has changed since 2019 can be a shock.
Last week, dating app group Bumble said it was giving its staff a week off to recharge. The US software group HubSpot is planning a Global Rest Week for its workers from 5 July. Many employers introduce hybrid and flexible work systems as they reopen. This is smart.
Many executives have just spent 15 months building what McKinsey senior partner Bill Schaninger calls “a deposit of goodwill” with employees. As he told workplace conference last week, this reservoir should not be wasted with “a senseless desire to return to what it was.”
Twitter: @pilitaclark
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