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Current employees feel confident, want to boost skills

Posted on July 1st, 2014 Read time: 1 minutes

Employee confidence is at a seven-year high, according to research by Randstad, a U.S. recruiting company.  The firm recently did a survey that indicates its employee confidence index reached 46.7, an increase of 2.1 points from last month. Workers' confidence in their personal employment situations increased to 69.4 from 66.4, the highest level it has been since September of 2008. This means employees feel their jobs are secure and they feel  themselves to be making progress in their work.

When it comes to the ability to find a job, 61 percent of those respondents who were unemployed believed they would find work soon.

"We've seen many months of reserved and cautious optimism regarding the sustainability of an economic recovery, but our findings suggest workers now have sufficient evidence to feel the nation is on the right track," said Jim Link, chief HR officer of Randstad North America.

A study by HR Magazine indicates one thing employees are looking for is development. This means not only progress in terms of promotions at certain set points – it means employees want to develop on a skills-based level. In other words, those in the workforce want to gain experience doing many different things and boosting their talents. They may not care about staying in the same line of work for a long time, going down a slow track of progress.

This could indicate an interest in becoming a temporary worker. Temps gain experience in many different fields, and they have been in demand lately because the economy is recovering. Those temps who choose to spend time working for an employer of record will find they gain a number of skills because they are always on assignment, doing many different jobs.

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