Dive Brief:
- Workers rate stability over satisfaction, with 93% of U.S. workers saying they’ve stayed in a job they didn’t love because of the stability it provided, according to Glassdoor Community poll results, released Feb. 10.
- The report found that the majority of workers think of their jobs as “situationships,” with 63% defining their current relationship with work as either “complicated” or “ready to break up.”
- Workers are also significantly more likely to leave a job they don’t like, per the report, which found that workers who leave 1‑star reviews on Glassdoor’s website are 81% more likely to switch employers than those who leave 5‑star reviews.
Dive Insight:
The era of the job situationship was first attributed to Generation Z workers but has grown to include multiple generations, per the report, which said the term “can best be defined as a professional state where workplace culture and job satisfaction exist in a murky middle ground between commitment and calling it quits.”
Meanwhile, there are some workers, which Glassdoor called career nesters or job huggers, who prioritize staying in their jobs. Job hugging — mentioned in other reports — could reflect workers’ uncertainty in the job market rather than satisfaction at work, and without HR intervention, could become a problem, experts previously told HR Dive.
Management was the top reason employees stayed at companies, the Glassdoor report said, but it also noted that management is “also why workers’ experiences turn sour.” The report cited another Glassdoor poll that found that job seekers said poor leadership could quickly turn good jobs into bad ones, and lead to burnout and unrealistic workloads.
Workers who switch jobs and move to a company that Glassdoor defined as among the “Best Places to Work” were 22% more likely to give higher ratings to their new job than to their previous employer.