Workers who move from the public sector and into the private sector often do so with “unrealistic expectations”, suggests Appleby Associates.

Marcus Alexander, the managing director of Appleby Associates, said that employees from the public sector were tending to have impractical ideas about the levels of pay and the kinds of benefits that the private sector would provide.

Mr Alexander said: “If they think they’re going to get the same as the public sector, that’s where they may need to step back and go, ‘actually is this really going to be the case?'”

His comments follow on the back of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s latest quarterly Employee Outlook survey, which revealed that the desire to increase pay and benefits was the number one factor in motivating people to find work elsewhere.

It has replaced job satisfaction as the key motivator.

Appleby Associates is a team of executive career consultants that helps people to develop their career in the right direction.