Australian employers face difficulties already floating during a pandemic, avoiding “mass layoffs” that could significantly shift employees from their current job to a new one is needed.
“The COVID-19 pandemic experience gave Australians the opportunity to pause and reflect, and for many they actually chose to prioritize their lives,” McLindle Research said. Managing Director Sophie Renton told The Epoch Times.
“It’s not absolute. Mass layoffs aren’t guaranteed, but there’s an environment that has the potential,” she added. “Therefore, employers have the opportunity to listen to the team, understand where they are coming from, and design the work environment in which people want to participate.”
Renton said Australian companies have been able to stop the start of mass layoffs so far with the ongoing wave of COVID-19 helping to maintain the status quo.
“I think this tension is seen when business leaders try to return to their historic way of working, but employees have experienced different ways of working for almost two years, and mass layoffs are that. It’s time for tension to come, “she said.
Another factor that has given employees great bargaining power is the dramatic decline in immigrants since the pandemic began in April 2020.
“The workforce in Australia is the workforce here, so it’s a bit more in the employee market than in the employer market,” Renton said.
She admitted that Australia is unlikely to experience the same level of mass layoffs as the United States, where millions of people resigned during 2021.
Clinical psychiatrist Tanveer Ahmed said this trend is a “big bargaining tool” for employees.
“Many people don’t always want to quit their current job if they can tweak some of the things they don’t feel like getting,” he told The Epoch Times.
The impact of mass layoffs is “not so noticeable,” Ahmed said, as few Australians were affected by the deaths from COVID-19. This situation requires individuals in the United Kingdom and the United States to reassess their current values and needs.
“Even our economy does not always serve the same level. [of the Great Resignation],” He said.
“It has some middle-class privileges, as it is more prominent in the professional service economy and much more difficult if you are doing a physical job,” he added. “But you’re looking beyond the major regions of Sydney and Melbourne, and it’s not necessarily a big service economy.”
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