A new survey by Glassdoor, a jobs and careers community, reveals that the proportion of UK employees who fear losing their job in the next six months has dropped ten percentage points, from 29 to 19 percent since last quarter. The Q3 2014 Glassdoor UK Employment Confidence Survey, conducted online by Harris Interactive among UK employees, monitors four key indicators of employee confidence: job security, salary expectations, job market optimism/re-hire probability and business outlook optimism.
As redundancy fears amongst the UK workforce recede, so confidence is slowly rising – 31 percent of employees and not employed but looking say they would be able to find a job matched to their experience and current compensation levels in the next six months, up two percentage points since the second quarter of 2014. In addition, those unemployed but looking for work are significantly more confident when it comes to finding a job – 41 percent of those unemployed but looking for work report optimism that they could find a job matched to their experience and most recent compensation level in the next six months, an increase of 11 percentage points since Q214.
“At companies across the UK, we are seeing a reduced level of belt tightening, with employees reporting less restructuring, fewer redundancies and a drop in hiring freezes,” said Jon Ingham, Glassdoor career and workplace expert. “Whilst we have not yet seen advances across all job market confidence factors, it does suggest that job search activity may begin to heat up.”
When it comes to how optimistic UK employees are surrounding a pay rise or cost-of-living increase, thirty five percent of employees expect to receive a pay rise in the next 12 months, down two percentage points since Q214. There is a significant difference between the attitudes of men and women when it comes to salary though, as 43 percent of men expect a pay rise, compared to just 26 percent of women. The lowest paid employees in the economy – those in social grade DE – are the most optimistic of a pay rise, with 41 percent reporting optimism that their wages will increase in the next year.
As for how UK employees feel about how their company’s business will perform in the next six months, most employees appear to be cautiously optimistic. More than half of employees (59 percent) believe their company’s business outlook will stay the same, up one percentage point since last quarter. One in three (32 percent) employees (including those self-employed) believe their company’s business outlook will improve in the next six months, which is consistent with Q2. Only one in ten (9 percent) believe it will get worse.
