"It was like I had these people on the phone who loved me, who loved my kids, saying they wished they could help and they couldn't."īennett sits at the kitchen table at her home in Vancouver, Wash. Their family's world "got very small very quickly," Bennett says, adding that there were days that passed without her talking to another adult except through screens. All of the resources that she had previously relied on as a stay-at-home mom - library story time, playgrounds, babysitters - were gone. She retreated inside with her two kids while her husband, an intensive care unit nurse, was thrust onto the front lines and put up in a hotel room between shifts. She was gearing up to reenter the workforce right as the pandemic hit. She became a hospital chaplain during the pandemic.Ĭati Bennett, 36, left her job in university administration when her second child was born in 2019. She says she feels the need to explain what she used to do, in part because she doesn't fit the stereotype of a typical engineer.Ĭati Bennett, a chaplain resident in the VA health care system in Portland, Ore., stands in her backyard in Vancouver, Wash., on June 23. Still, Stickler says it doesn't yet feel totally natural to introduce herself to people as a software engineer, as opposed to a Broadway singer. Then she landed a remote software engineering role. ![]() They bought a house in Chicago to be closer to their families. "It gave me the opportunity to feel safe and secure in a time when the world was a mess, and it allowed my husband and I to both realize that we did not want to live in 650 square feet in Brooklyn anymore," she says. While it wasn't the job she had in mind, it gave her health insurance and stability. She ended up taking a customer-facing role for the first year. So Stickler took the leap and applied for tech jobs. Stickler was initially hesitant to tell her theater friends and co-workers about her coding pursuits, as she wasn't ready to fully commit to leaving the arts and didn't want to be labeled a failure if she did.īut when COVID-19 hit and Broadway shut down, everyone was suddenly in the same boat - forced to find other work. ![]() But they all have one thing in common: Their stories illustrate how the pandemic has been a personal and professional turning point for so many people, many of whom are unlikely to look back. Their journeys are as varied as the individuals themselves, from a stay-at-home mom who became a hospital chaplain to a Broadway performer-turned-software engineer. NPR's Morning Edition spoke with five people who reinvented themselves amid the challenges and opportunities presented by the pandemic as part of its Work Life series. "For me, the 'change' is actually about reconsidering work, leveling the playing field between worker and employer, and being able to make demands on work conditions," Waheed tells NPR over email. That said, according to Saba Waheed, research director at the UCLA Labor Center, the pandemic ignited conversations around work and working conditions across many sectors - discussions about livable wages, accessible child care and family leave, for instance - that she hopes will continue even as many industries return to pre-pandemic operations. Of those who changed jobs, one-third said they took a pay cut in exchange for better work-life balance.īusiness The pandemic has changed workplace fashion. And a Prudential survey conducted in February found that 22% of workers switched jobs during the pandemic, with another 50% actively looking for a new job. Catalyst/CNBC poll said they intended to make career changes as a result of the pandemic, with most citing the desire for location flexibility. had been steadily increasing over the past decade, a combination of factors - including burnout, the autonomy of remote work and the existential reflections wrought by the pandemic - pushed many people to reevaluate what they were giving and getting from their jobs.Īnd Klotz would know: He's credited with predicting the Great Resignation and coining the term last May.Ĭonsider: Half of employees surveyed in a fall 2021 U.S. Anthony Klotz, a professor of management at London's UCL School of Management, says that while resignation rates in the U.S.
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