The Permanent Postponement: Why the "Tough Year" Narrative is Failing

    There’s a particular kind of denial that seems to set in once you get a title with “Head of” in it. Numbers start to feel abstract. Percentages become something you nod at in meetings, then quietly ignore while approving another “people initiative” that involves a fruit bowl and a new Slack channel.

    But the recent Perkbox/YouGov data isn’t abstract. It’s not even subtle. If 61% of Australian employees are planning to look for a new job, that’s not a “trend.” That’s a quiet exit sign blinking over half your workforce. And when 37% say their employer has done nothing about cost-of-living pressure, that’s not a perception gap. That’s a decision.

The COVID Script

    Let’s drop the polite language for a second. People aren’t job-hopping because they’re restless. They’re not “exploring opportunities.” They’re doing the maths. And the maths has been getting worse for a while.

    During COVID, the message was clear: times are tough. Businesses are under pressure. Revenue is uncertain. Everyone needs to tighten their belts. Salary increases? Not realistic right now. Fair enough. People accepted it. There was a shared sense that the world had tilted sideways and everyone—employees, employers, governments—was just trying to stay upright. There was a kind of reluctant solidarity in it.

The Crisis Carousel

    Then COVID eased, and the script didn’t change.

Now it’s inflation. Cost of living. War in the Middle East. Oil prices. Global instability. Supply chains doing whatever supply chains do when they’re unhappy. And once again, the message lands in employees’ inboxes, dressed up slightly differently but meaning the same thing: Times are tough. We can’t increase salaries right now.

    And again, people accept it. Mostly. With some grumbling. A bit more cynicism than last time, but still—acceptance. Here’s the problem: there is always something. There will always be a crisis, a disruption, a geopolitical mess, a market correction, a once-in-a-generation event that somehow happens every three years. If salary growth is permanently tied to “when things are calm,” then salary growth is permanently postponed.

The Asymmetry of Sacrifice

    Employees are starting to notice the pattern. It’s not that they expect businesses to be immune to global events. It’s that the burden of those events seems to land in one very specific place: their pay packet. The company absorbs pressure by… not paying more. Convenient, if you’re on the company side of that equation.

    Meanwhile, rent doesn’t pause for geopolitical nuance. Groceries don’t offer a discount because oil prices are complicated. Interest rates don’t come with a note saying, “We understand your employer is having a difficult quarter.”

The Quiet Recalibration

    So people adapt. Some leave. That’s your 61%. Others stay—and this is the more interesting group. The “job huggers.” They’ve heard the message enough times now to understand the deal: when things are bad, salaries freeze. When things improve… well, something else tends to come along.

    So they adjust their effort accordingly. Not dramatically. No big resignation. No confrontation. Just a quiet recalibration. They do the job they’re paid for, and not much beyond it. The extra energy—the initiative, the creativity, the willingness to go the extra mile—gets quietly withdrawn. It’s not rebellion. It’s accounting.

The Shelf Life of Solidarity

    And here’s where employers should start to feel a bit uncomfortable.

Because the tolerance that carried businesses through COVID—that “we’re all in this together” mindset—has a shelf life. You can only ask people to absorb so many “temporary” sacrifices before they stop believing they’re temporary.

    The next time a “difficult situation” rolls around—and it will—there’s a good chance the response won’t be the same. People might not nod along. They might not accept another year of flat wages and upbeat internal comms about resilience. They might decide that if the downside is always shared but the upside is always deferred, the deal itself isn’t worth it. And that’s when the quiet exit becomes a loud one.

Beyond the Pizza Lunch

    What’s striking is how fixable this is—and how often it’s missed. This isn’t about throwing money around recklessly. Most employees understand constraints. They’re not expecting miracles. What they’re looking for is some evidence that the pain isn’t permanently one-sided.

• Pay that at least acknowledges reality.
• Transparency that doesn’t sound like it was drafted by legal.
• A sense that leadership is dealing with the same world everyone else is, not a slightly more comfortable version of it.

    Perks won’t bridge that gap. Nobody is staying for a pizza lunch when their weekly shop costs 30% more than it did two years ago. A wellness app doesn’t offset a rent increase. These things aren’t insulting—they’re just beside the point. The point is trust.

The Final Warning

    Right now, that trust is being chipped away, one “tough year” at a time. Employers don’t need to panic. But they do need to recognise the pattern they’re part of. Because from where employees are sitting, it looks suspiciously like a system where there’s always a reason not to pay more—and never quite the right moment to fix it. And people are patient. Until they aren’t. Those numbers in the report? They’re not a blip. They’re a warning. The kind you only get a few times before it turns into something harder to ignore—like an empty desk.

Those “numbers” in the report? They’re not numbers.

They’re your staff. And they’re already updating their CVs.