- NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -- Ready
to quit? You have plenty of company.
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- Many employees are overworked, stressed out, fed up --
and eager to quit their jobs once the economy picks up. In fact, worker
angst is so pronounced that it has surprised even the most tuned-in human
resource professionals.
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- Consider, for example, that more than eight in 10 workers
plan to look for a new job when the economy heats up, according to a survey
by the Society for Human Resource Professionals. While there's a difference
between looking for a new gig and actually jumping ship, that kind of number
is "very, very high," says SHRP spokesman Frank Scanlon.
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- How did things get so bad?
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- To be sure, the economy hasn't helped. Cash-strapped
employers have been cutting back on benefits like health care, paid vacations
and retirement benefits.
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- Belt tightening is one thing; greed is another. In an
era of Enron, mutual fund scandals and ludicrous CEO pay packages, employees
know the difference, says Jeff Taylor, founder and CEO of Monster.com.
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- "Companies behaving badly" have been all too
common during the downturn, according to Taylor.
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- "You have the greed of executive management and
great inequities from your lowest-paid worker to your highest-paid worker,"
he says. "Companies are not giving out raises. Benefits have been
cut. That's an environment where the employers call the shots."
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- The threat of pink slips has prompted plenty of people
to work scared and to give everything to their jobs. Overtime isn't that
uncommon anymore. Nearly 40 percent of all workers spend at least 50 hours
on the job per week.
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- "Employees have hunkered down through the downturn,"
said the SHRP's Scanlon. "They're going to start looking aggressively."
Heading for the door
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- Take the case of David Garrison, 40, a facilities manager
who worked for an oil company for 20 years before he finally called it
quits.
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- Pulling 60-hour weeks was normal for the Los Angeles
father of two. That's because he was expected to do much of the work of
five other peers who had been fired. The message: Don't complain or you'll
lose your job, too. So Garrison kept his mouth shut - and paid a price.
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- By the time he did quit a little over a year ago, he
had to swallow anti-anxiety prescriptions to get through the day. When
he did care for himself -- and took a second sick day within a six-month
period -- he was called in for a "counseling" session by his
employer, who warned him not to take too much time away.
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- "It was infuriating," he recalls.
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- Infuriating but not uncommon, judging by the e-mail postings
on worker-geared Web sites like Ihatemyjob.com that have flourished in
recent years as a way for beleaguered employees to vent.
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- Meanwhile, labor-friendly movements ñ such as
the Center for a New American Dream's effort to simplify lives and the
Work To Live Web site, which exhorts workers to lobby lawmakers for change
ñ are gaining momentum.
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- "I get flooded with e-mails from people, and you
get a sense of the desperation," says Work to Live's founder and author
Joe Robinson. "People have been traumatized by the last 15 years of
downsizing and the last few years of recession. Everyone's afraid they'll
be next." The high cost of desperation
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- "In the last 15 years I've had a total of four weeks
of vacation," writes one woman in a typical posting found on the Work
to Live site. "We receive no paid vacation, no paid holidays and no
paid sick leave. . . .I used to have three people in my office doing what
I do. Now there is just me. . . . I can't keep going like this."
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- Now there may be a glimmer of hope for some. The most
recent job report from the Labor Department shows that employers are finally
adding to their payrolls. And human resource managers are bracing for a
stampede.
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- Gerald Ledford, senior vice president at Sibson Consulting,
notes that if 16 percent of workers do leave their jobs ñ as his
firm predicts ñ that will match the high turnover rates of the late
1990's, when employees hop scotched from job to job.
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- "It's a very expensive problem," says Ledford.
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- For example, a national clothing chain must sell 3,000
pairs of $35 khakis to cover the price of replacing a salesperson who quits,
including recruiting, training and lost productivity.
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- The tab to replace a typical white-collar middle manager
runs about $100,000.
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- "We're a few good breaths away from being back at
a lower unemployment rate," says Monster's Jeff Taylor. "Companies
can limit their exposure by saying 'Thank you' and recognizing the good
work people have done for them.
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- "But I think generally this is where companies have
a pretty big miss in this area."
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- http://money.cnn.com/2003/11/11/pf/q_iquit/index.htm?cnn=yes
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