With employee burnout, a tight labour market, and talent poaching by private industry or other municipalities, the 40 percent of employees who say they are planning on leaving their jobs cannot be ignored. That does not even take the employees who are not actively looking for another opportunity into account. What will this group do when another opportunity with higher wages and flexible working conditions comes knocking on their door?

Polls show a dramatic increase in the percentage of workers now open to exploring other job opportunities when approached by a recruiter. The cost of losing top talent and essential skills can be very high in terms of lost productivity due to worker shortages, reduced quality or services to residents, and the high cost of recruiting and training new employees.

Pre-pandemic, people were changing jobs mainly because of bad bosses, for higher pay, and better working conditions. Turnover was not typically considered a threat to a successful operation. Today, people are largely focused on having some control over their working conditions and retaining some of the balance they became acquainted with during COVID shutdowns.

If employees are dissatisfied with their employer’s response to the request for hybrid working arrangements, high levels of turnover – often for some of the hardest to recruit positions – could pose a real threat to successfully achieving objectives and meeting service level commitments to residents.