Did you hand in your notice during the Great Resignation and move on to pastures new, work-wise?

After the rush of hitting ‘send’ on that email giving notice to your boss has dissipated, and after the honeymoon period positivity of your first few months in a new role has worn off, you might have found yourself questioning your big decision. Would things have been better if you’d just stayed put? Will you ever properly bond with your new colleagues beyond the obligatory small talk about the weather and weekend plans? And why have you found yourself with a whole new set of work woes when this one was supposed to be the dream job?

After the Great Resignation, it seems, comes the Great Regret. In a survey released in January, US company Paychex found that 80% of employees who left their jobs during the Great Resignation were having second thoughts about their decision, with Gen Z workers experiencing the most regret; 68% even said that they had tried to get their old jobs back. A 2022 study of 2,500 respondents by careers website The Muse, meanwhile, found that 72% had experienced a phenomenon they’d dubbed ‘shift shock’ – the sinking feeling you get when you start a job and realise that you were sold a very different role or work culture during the interview stage.

So, when that regret starts to kick in, what should you do? First of all, it’s important to remember that having doubts about your job – especially a new role, when you’re still trying to orient yourself in a new company and figure out your goals – is totally normal. “As we try to process something that hasn’t worked out how we wanted or imagined, we move into counterfactual thinking,” says Rachel Schofield, career coach and author of The Career Change Guide. “Your brain paints – sometimes vivid! – ‘what if’ pictures of possible alternatives to the real past or present.” Our tendency, she adds, is to dwell in “upward counterfactual thinking”, ie mulling over all the ways that things would be so much better if only we’d stayed put. “No wonder we beat ourselves up and feel lousy and powerless.”

Are you part of the Great Regret? Here’s what to do if you’re having second thoughts about your job move