Starting a new role comes with its own thrills and excitement. The expectation are always high with the hope of learning new things, meeting new people, making friends and challenges to tackle. Each passing day either holds something exciting and fulfilling or situations that gives room for doubt and disappointment.
People don’t leave because they dislike their jobs — mostly people feel trapped and not so clear what the future has for them. Desiring to change jobs doesn’t happen overnight, a lot of events would have informed that decision. It is such a tough thing that a lot of consideration is needed. A proper introspection must take place before one finally settle on moving on. Interestingly, people ignore the many signs that clearly indicates that they have outgrown their jobs. Employees get emotionally attached to their jobs and builds strong family bond with colleagues to the extent that it clouds their appreciation of exit signs.
These attachments cannot be overlooked most especially because some of these people have worked with their current employer all their career life – everything about them is centered on what they are exposed to currently. Some employees may have benefitted from scholarships and other learning & development programmes that they are either serving a bond or feel indebted to their employers.
The situation becomes obviously predictable when you’ve exceeded your expectations and do not find your current role challenging enough. This feeling normally happens to those who are overly ambitious and seek to fly like eagles with their career progression.
Let’s consider some signs indicating you have outgrown your job;
# Projects and activities that used to excite you now bore you. You’ve done the same things so many times that there’s no challenge in them anymore.
# When you look ahead at your goals for the year, you can’t see anything intellectually stimulating or creatively satisfying on your agenda. In other words, there’s nothing in your job to look forward to.
# People ask you for advice on how to get things done at work, but you have no one to ask for advice. You’d love to know the answer to questions like “How can I enlarge my role to have more influence on the company’s results?” or “What are the major strategic priorities for the firm this year and how can I help us reach them?” but no one wants to have those conversations.
# You find yourself looking at the clock constantly, hoping the work day is almost over.
# You know you can contribute more to your employer or some other organization than your current job allows you to do.
# You propose ideas and projects and they always get shot down.
# You don’t see anyone around you at work who inspires or whom you can look up to and learn from.
# You dream or daydream about cool, out-of-the-box things you could be doing but your job doesn’t allow you to do any of them — and at this point you’re afraid to even mention them.
# You’ve learned not to say anything that would startle or alarm your coworkers but the effort to stay in your little box is killing you.
# When you listen, you can hear your trusty gut screaming “This is not the place for you anymore!”
You don’t need to make any rash decisions on your exit plan, diagnose the situation to establish whether or not you have outgrown your job. The debate with yourself on whether to stay and get things working or simply pack and leave will rage on until you figure out exactly what you want to do.
If your company does not evolve with the emergence of technology, it clearly limits you on what you can do, it hurts the brand in its position especially when your competitors are busily taken advantage of it. This becomes a hindrance to your innovation and stifles growth.
This challenges can be placed at the doorstep of leadership, they need to encourage and support innovation that result in change – it bring efficiency and increases productivity. Expanding the frontiers of business operation will always come with job enlargement – where employees will always have something challenging and meaningful to do.
People feel indebted to their current employers because they enjoy a nice blend of accommodating work and life. It is an incredible feeling but the question is – is that enough to stay on even if you don’t get job fulfilment? People enjoyed a lot off time of during early motherhood or a very disturbing and life threatening situation. I can presume you are grateful and will forever appreciate it but what you do when you find yourself practically stucked. Take it easy with your stealth job search so you don’t land yourself in a rather worse employment.
The disconnect between leadership and the entire business on career development should be addressed with intervention programmes to avoid people outgrowing their jobs. When nature knocks on your door, it’s a signal that time is up to move on.
Source: BrightAmpaduOkyere/Forbes | Tel. #: 0244204664 | Email Address: hrtoday@gmail.com
