Have you hugged your job today?

Forget job hopping ― more people are job hugging in the cooling labour market

SO YOU’VE FISHED around a bit in the job market, decided it seems like tough slogging and are opting to keep the job you have right now. What do you do?

Wrap it in a bear hug and hold onto it for dear life, it seems.

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The consultants at Korn Ferry are minting the term ‘job hugging’ to describe what they’re seeing in the labour market right now, where job hopping has given way to higher retention rates and less turnover.

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“The phrase job hugging just kind of coined itself,” said Korn Ferry consultant Stacy DeCesaro, speaking to Business Insider. The effect is particularly strong among top performing talent, DeCesaro reckoned, with data showing reduced turnover at the executive and senior-level employee level. “Right now, top performers are only leaving if they’re miserable in their roles,” she said in a company blog post.

Really, job hugging is just another term for the dynamics present in a slack labour market, although lower turnover rates in this case are also paired with lower desire to change jobs; after a few years of job hopping, and with macroeconomic anxiety in the air, employees are now more keen to stay put, as opposed to being unable to move.

That presents a different labour market dynamic from the past few years, and Korn Ferry consultants urge businesses to make sense of the current situation. Some will be able to trim recruiting and training costs, and they note that this set of dynamics tends to limit the need for steep wage increases.

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Indeed, for some businesses the stability will be a boon. “It’s great to have a long-tenured workforce and build capacities within it,” said Dennis Deans, a human resources partner with Korn Ferry. But don’t get complacent, experts warn — once the pendulum inevitably swings back in the other direction, businesses can get caught flat footed.

“Firms run the risk of becoming comfortable perches from which workers can jump when the time’s right,” warned Korn Ferry’s Matt Bohn. “That’s the danger of this job market.”