Less qualified workers in mobility

Why does a worker decide to leave a company? And why, on the contrary, do many stay even when they would have better alternatives? A study just published by the European Central Bank provides a new and very useful answer at a time when the labour supply crisis is one of the main constraints for European companies. The ECB researchers systematically analyse job transition rates, i.e. the share of workers who move from one company to another without intermediate periods of unemployment. It is a crucial indicator: the more workers move, the more tense, dynamic, negotiating the labour market is; on the contrary, when flows decrease, caution prevails and people stay where they are. The results show that workers change jobs to get a better match between skills and tasks, higher pay or more sustainable conditions, from working hours to commuting. There is, however, an even more interesting fact for those who manage people and it concerns the fact that it is the less qualified workers who are the main actors of mobility. In France, Germany and Spain, they account for the largest share of total transitions. Highly qualified ones, on the other hand, move much less and weigh between 15% and 40% of total transitions. The picture overturns a widespread stereotype that it is only high-potential profiles that frequently change jobs. On the contrary, in a climate of sharply increased competition between companies, it is often those with simpler tasks who experience intense turnover, with a direct impact on productivity, training and turnover costs. Mobility then varies markedly over the business cycle because during recessions, flows contract as there is a tendency to reduce risk. During upswings, on the other hand, workers move again, seeking professional advancement. But it is not only the economic cycle that matters, in fact the demographic structure of the euro area is physiologically reducing future mobility. The share of young people, who historically have the highest transition rates, is too small to affect the total and, for example, in Spain they account for only 8% of transitions, in Germany for 11%, in France for 20%. In contrast, the contribution of workers between 55 and 64, who are less mobile by nature, grows year after year. In other words, even without economic crises, ageing makes the labour market less dynamic with fewer job changes, less efficient reallocation of skills, less overall wage pressure. For Italy, a country with the highest median age in the eurozone and a strong shortage of workers in technical and service sectors, this is a wake-up call. Less mobility means less competition between companies and thus less ability of workers to negotiate increases, especially in the lower and middle segments. All this with the risk of a generational rift resulting from the different propensity to change jobs, which could lead companies, as often already happens, to minimise risks by hiring more mature workers and penalising the young. In this context, the study also offers a clear indication to companies. The best way to retain workers would not be to stop them leaving, but to raise their opportunity cost because people stay where they see coherence between skills, growth, pay and quality of life. And when this coherence is not there, especially in lower-skilled jobs, mobility increases because the economic factor, shift patterns, working hours and other extrinsic elements take over, legitimately, in the choices. In an ageing economy struggling to find staff, understanding what moves people, starting with a renewed listening to needs, is the new frontier of competitiveness. It is not enough to recruit, something that is already complex in the current context of scarcity, it is necessary to build contexts in which it is really worth staying, and here elements of an organisational nature, company climate, relations between people, and effective participation in work processes come into play. These are all issues for which there is still a long way to go, but we must get to work.