The workplace accreditation body found that 24% are actively looking for a new role, while 32% are considering a move.
Its survey revealed that almost two-thirds of employees go to bed on Sunday night feeling dread about going to work the next day.
A quarter are unhappy in their current role, up 10% on last year, while 77% are stressed at work.
Employees cited three main reasons for looking for a new job, highest of which was money (30%), followed by not feeling valued (23%) and wanting a better work-life balance (22%). Fourteen percent said a ‘thank you’ would encourage them to stay in their current position.
Almost two-thirds of staff said that stress around work was affecting their sleep, and a similar proportion felt as though they were always on duty, even at home.
Friendship at work influenced how happy employees were in a role, according to Investors in People. Fifty-four percent said having friends at work was important to them, while a quarter said they stayed in a job because of friendships rather than enjoying the work itself.
Almost half (47%) would rather have a friendly workplace than a 3% pay rise.
Around a fifth (19%) said they had gone through the motions of resigning so they could get a pay rise from their current employer. However, 20% of those employers did not follow through with the rise.
Paul Devoy, CEO of Investors in People, said that – over six years of carrying out research into employees’ intentions – it continued to hear from employees simply wanting a thank you from their employer.
“Thank you [is] something so simple, so consistently important and potentially the best retention tool we’ve got,” he said.
“Doing your best work, knowing you’re in a place where you can grow. To get to the end of the day and feel like you’ve achieved something that is what it means when we invest in people.”
This article first appeared in Personnel Today under the title More employees will look for new jobs in 2020 on 6 January 2020.
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