With Christmas around the corner, the powers that be in charge of television programming tend to 'treat' us to a slew of classic films such as "It's a Wonderful Life," "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" and A "Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens.

Those of you who have also seen the film of Dickens' novel "Oliver Twist" will recall the climactic scene when young Oliver, a growing orphan, asks for more gruel one lunchtime at the workhouse. The result of this audacious request is that he is cast out to starve in the streets, only to fall into the company of thieves and brigands.

This past year in the wake of the recession, a lot of employees felt that 'asking for more' would also risk being cast out into the streets (or guarantee a place in the dole queue at the very least). With redundancies and restructures commonplace across most industries, a pervasive cloud of uncertainty hung over many workplaces. This uncertainty effectively rendered employees immobile and most elected to sit tight, clinging to their jobs for security, as they prayed that the axe would not fall on them.

Pre-recession ideals such as work/life balance and flexible working hours took a back seat in a year when 'flexibility' often equated to bending over backwards like the contortionist in Cirque du Soleil. Wage cuts, job freezes, reduced working weeks and company downsizing seemed like more palatable options compared to redundancy, so workers largely 'grinned and bore it,' electing not to voice any dissatisfaction for fear of rocking the boat.

2009 was the year of 'corporate anorexia: with downsizing and headcount freezes, remaining employees had to take up the slack and increase their workload, often spreading themselves very thin. This was particularly true in the business support area, where professional administrators often found that their "personal assistant' job title morphed into something distinctly less 'personal' and they found themselves supporting a team rather than an individual.

So, for employers, the upside of the downturn was a relatively stable workforce with low attrition rates. After many years of candidates calling the shots in a talent-poor market, power shifted from the candidates to the employers. Those companies who still had a recruitment budget had greater access to top talent as these candidates could no longer pick and choose due to less roles being available.

However, as the New Zealand economy tentatively goes into recovery mode, the tide is turning. According to a recent Employee Insights Survey conducted by Robert Walters across the Tasman covering disciplines including accounting banking & finance, information technology human resources, sales & marketing, secretarial & business support and supply chain & procurement, there are a lot of disgruntled people out there with, 40 per cent of overall respondents thinking of trading jobs in the next few months. 67 per cent of respondents in secretarial and business support roles were keen to move on and 62 per cent of respondents working in sales, marketing and communication expressed a desire to look elsewhere. The key drivers stated for switching jobs are career advancement, followed by a better pay and bonus structure.