The coronavirus pandemic has forced Americans to reassess their relationships with work.
The Labor Department's most recent Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary suggests that roughly 4 million Americans are quitting their jobs each month in a trend that has become known as "The Great Resignation."
Today, CNBC and global gender equality firm Catalyst released a report titled "The Great Work/Life Divide: How employee desire for flexibility and employer concern is driving the future of work">Flexibility remains a top priority
"Over half of the employees want to leave [their jobs], and there's really two reasons that came out of the survey," Catalyst President and CEO Lorraine Hariton tells CNBC's Julia Boorstin.
"One is if they felt that their employers did not understand them, that they weren't providing empathy. This is especially true for working parents, male or female. They didn't feel good about the experience, and they're looking to leave. The second thing is that people are really leaning into flexibility, whether that's flexibility by location, by when they work, or how they work. They want to leave if the employer is not providing that."
Approximately 41% of those surveyed say they are considering leaving their job because their company has not cared about their concerns during the pandemic and a whopping 76% say they want their company to make work permanently flexible in terms of schedule and/or location.
Of the roughly 50% of employed Americans who intend to make career changes because of the COVID-19 pandemic, 41% are seeking flexible and/or remote work, 39% desire a raise and/or promotion and 33% are interested in changing industries.
"I think of this as the great reimagination of work, especially for office workers," Hariton says. "And companies really have to respond to that."
Almost one-third of employees who intend to make a career change because of the pandemic (32%) say they're going to look for another job in the same industry, while about 1 in 5 (22%) are going to quit their current job and start their own business.
