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With Australian employees’ confidence in finding a new job plunging to a three-year low, an HR expert has warned that the outlook shows little sign of improvement. So what steps can workplaces take to safeguard culture and maintain productivity?
Gartner’s monthly Global Talent Monitor survey has recently found that Australian workers’ confidence in landing a new job has plunged to a three-year low, declining by 5 per cent over the past year.
Speaking with HR Leader, Neal Woolrich, a director in the human resources advisory team at Gartner, warned that Australian employees’ confidence in landing a new job is not just falling – it’s expected to stay low for the foreseeable future.
“I would expect over the longer term, job availability confidence is probably going to continue to decline or at least say sort of at the level it is at the moment,” he said.
Woolrich points to rising economic uncertainty and the growing influence of artificial intelligence as key drivers behind the drop in job confidence, creating a labour market where employees feel stuck and employers face fresh challenges.
“Probably will stay low primarily because of the impact of artificial intelligence. That’s just causing so much uncertainty about the labour market,” he said.
“Also, the economy here in Australia and globally is just in a low-growth environment that we seem to be struggling to get out of. There’s still uncertainty around things like geopolitics and tariffs, so not many employers are really investing with great confidence.”
The consequences for organisations run deep, reaching far beyond recruitment hurdles. Woolrich stressed that the biggest fallout from low job confidence hits organisational culture.
“Culture is probably the one to look at. That’s probably where this is going to have the most corrosive effect. If people don’t feel willing to put in that discretionary effort to go above and beyond, that’ll affect the organisation’s ability to achieve their goals,” he said.
He explained that disengagement can ripple through a workplace like wildfire, quickly undermining culture and eroding morale.
“It could have that corrosive effect on culture where people see others not going above and beyond, and so they sort of mimic that behaviour as well, and you can get in a downward spiral where it tends to accelerate pretty quickly,” he said.
To address these challenges, Woolrich stressed that the first thing that organisations need to do is to get the “basics of engagement right”.
He added: “Rewards are number one. A lot of organisations might be constrained in whether they can give pay increases or bonuses. But you know, rewards are often the number one driver of engagement that is linked to recognition. Recognition is a good one because it’s often no cost or, you know, usually low cost.”
Another key strategy Woolrich emphasised, often overlooked by organisations, is smart work design – shaping roles and processes to remove obstacles and empower employees to perform at their highest potential.
“But the other one, which is really impactful at the moment, is looking at the work design itself. Again, this is something that a lot of organisations miss because they just get too caught up in the day-to-day,” he said.
“But looking at the way that they design work, and are they actively removing all the barriers that get in the way of people being effective? So just having those conversations with employees to identify those barriers or pain points is a good driver of engagement in itself.
“If you actually do that effectively, you should have a more productive and more motivated workforce and help be more effective in achieving your goals as an organisation as well.”
