Possible Reasons for Leaving a Current Job
Thirty years ago, it was not unusual to find people who retired after spending their entire working lives with the same employer. These people typically started in the lower echelons of the business and worked their way up to a level that they felt comfortable and capable. And there they stayed until retirement. There was job security and that bought a considerable degree of staff loyalty. The work environment generally had to be very bad to make someone want to change jobs.
The main reason tended to be lack of promotional opportunities thanks to a little thing called seniority. Also known as experience, this was the principle that someone in a job for a long time would know the job better and perform that job more capably than someone who had not been there as long. In extreme cases, you could find yourself stuck on the corporate ladder waiting for those higher up the ladder to die before you could move up a rung.
How things have changed.
Having a job for life is very much the exception rather than the rule nowadays. The average employee now will work for 8-10 different employers over the course of their working lives. Some of the job changes will be forced upon us, as the last 20 years or so has been an era typified by company mergers and re-structures. Jobs come and go as the tides of these changes occur. Duty statements are similarly fluid. Where once they were as immutable as though they were chiselled in stone, yet now you are lucky to even have one. The duty statement is more often than not a vague list of mutually agreed items, meaning you are told and asked to sign off on, that set down the broad scope of your duties.
To be fair though, the economic landscape has changed considerably during this time. Companies need to maintain sufficient flexibility in their operations to manage the endless changes to the environment in which they operate. Companies are much more aggressive in acting on opportunities and threats. It seems the only constant in this ever changing world is change itself and this flows down to the reasons why people change jobs.
There are hundreds of possible reasons why people do change jobs; however they usually boil down to one of the following:
1. Better remuneration
Money. It is often considered the root of all evil, but many of us will jump ship for the chance to earn a few extra dollars. This also includes benefits or perks - better office, free parking, company vehicle, study assistance or allowances, health insurance, child care - the list of possible extras is almost endless. But they are benefits that usually have a dollar equivalent and so it all boils down to a question of the total package of salary plus benefits.
This can be a very good reason to change jobs. House prices over the last ten years or so have risen to historical highs and housing affordability is at record lows. This has eased off a little with the global financial crisis; however the ready availability of credit up until around 2007 helped create this bubble and commit people to record levels of debt. Banks relaxed their lending criteria in terms of acceptable repayment ratios and many of us interpreted the banks' approval as somehow meaning that we would have no trouble meeting repayments. Worse still, that we would be able to do so without any tightening of our belts in other areas.
A better paying job helps ease the financial pressure and, if managed correctly, provides a buffer in the event that things turn sour. What many people fail to realise is that our lifestyles tend to become more expensive when our incomes increase, the "have money, will spend" principle that is the cornerstone of the international stimulus payment strategies to manage the global financial crisis.
Even for those of us able to do the right thing and use the extra funds to either pay more of our mortgages or put it away for a rainy day, our mortgages commit us to acting in a fiscally responsible manner for 25-30 years. A lot of things can happen in that time and the assumptions we made in signing up for the mortgage are unlikely to remain the same. Kids, illness and divorce are all major hurdles to overcome and there are many other circumstances that can come out of left field to wreak havoc on our capacity to repay.
Once we change a job for the sake of more money it is like uncorking the genie from the lamp and we will tend to look for the next better paying job. And so the cycle continues.
2. Job security
As we have already pointed out, job security is very much a thing of the past. Jumping ship for reasons of job security is more about jumping before you are pushed. What tends to happen is that there is talk of a major restructure or acquisition and some people prefer to be masters of their own destiny than face an uncertain future. In some organisations, generous redundancy provisions may prompt people to take the money and run. They are happy to use the funds to take a break, treat it as an opportunity to completely change careers, take up the offer of a job elsewhere and/or take a punt that they will be able to find at least an equivalent job elsewhere.
Restructures have a habit of creating a lot of uncertainty. It is often the case that many or all jobs in an organisation are declared "open" and we need to essentially re-apply for our own jobs in a musical chairs type exercise. As such, it is understandable that some people will prefer to not wait until the music stops to see if they are going to have a chair. In many cases, restructures mean that job requirements are going to change. Why restructure of they are not? Some people are resistant to change and will undertake the seemingly congruous effort of leaving to find another job that is similar to the one they are leaving in order to stay within their comfort zone.
3. Job dissatisfaction
This is probably the most common reason for leaving a job. Within this category can be a plethora of reasons for the dissatisfaction. Something that was once a challenge and rewarding has either changed in scope or lost its gloss through repetition or because there is nothing new to learn. Some of us don't mind that, as becoming an 'expert' in a particular job can be enough prestige to offset the boredom. Many will seek greener pastures and try to find a new challenge and this doesn't necessarily have to be outside the organisation. Job rotation can be a useful tool to overcome complacency and help preserve the gloss.
Much job dissatisfaction however is caused by poor management. A poor manager will provide little in the way of performance feedback, so employees tend to feel that it doesn't matter how hard they work or strive to do well, their efforts will be unappreciated (or worse, more will be expected from them). Poor managers tend to keep information to themselves, so that information essential or helpful to employees in doing their job is released in dribs and drabs or employees find it necessary to establish their own information networks. People like to have context to their work and to understand how a particular task fits into the bigger picture. Being kept in the dark, particularly on issues directly related to your work, can be very demotivating.
Some people will be happy enough with the work they do but despise the people they work with or the office politics that goes cap in hand with their job. A good manager will recognise this and put an end to any shenanigans. Failing to do so can poison a work environment and provide the impetus for people to leave. A good manager will also empower his employees, delegating decisions where possible and working with them rather than in isolation to them. Lacking the authority to deal with common low risk issues can be frustrating. Failure to delegate is both inefficient and creates resentment as employees tend to feel that they need to run to their manager for the simplest of things, their contributions are not valued and, worse still, that they are not to be trusted. As in relationships, lack of trust is often terminal.
4. Wrong job
At the start of our working lives, many of us have nothing more than a vague notion of what we want to do with our lives in terms of a career. It is more about moving out of home and earning money to buy things. Any job will at first fit the bill. Over time, the simple act of earning an income is no longer sufficient and our motivations change. We realise that we are a square peg in a round hole and either have that light-bulb moment when we have worked out our place in the world. Or we simply can no longer stand the job in which we've found ourselves. Continuing to work in the job reaches the point of being intolerable and we leave.
The sad part of this reason is that unless we know what we want to do and have a good understanding of its peculiar demands and requirements, this can be the beginning of a cycle as we try and find our niche in the world. People who leave a job because they feel that they are in the wrong job will generally go to another one that eventually becomes the wrong job as well.
It could also mean that we are working in a position that is incompatible with our skills and experience. This could occur by way of structural changes to the job over time, gradually changing to something we no longer recognise, or was not the job that we applied for. Recruitment agencies and even employers also often oversell a role, making it sound much more rewarding and challenging that it actually is. Almost everyone is a "manager" or "executive" of some type, yet there are few roles that fit the title in a traditional sense. When the reality sinks in, people vote with their feet and change jobs.
5. Work/life balance
This has taken a bit of a back seat since the global financial crisis kicked into gear. More people are now prepared to put in the extra yards, as in overtime, regardless of whether this is paid overtime or not, if they feel that this additional commitment somehow helps keep them in a job. But beware, if the employer abuses this, as soon as the economy lifts those same employees will be out the door. People don't mind doing that bit extra, however they do understand when they are being taken advantage of and will only put up with that if there is no alternative.
Many of us do have families and regard 'living' as that time we spend outside of work. Work is a means to finance that lifestyle, not an end unto itself. That is not to say that these employees do not care about their work, far from it, it just means that they will work hard on the company's time, but they don't want the company's time to impinge on their own. When it does, that can be sufficient incentive to look for something else. The same holds true for staff seeking to take leave. Tell someone that they cannot take leave when they want to and you are inviting trouble. Most people understand that leave is at office convenience, it's just that the reason needs to be explained and because the boss can't do without you doesn't cut it.
Travelling time also comes into the mix here. Excessive travelling time means that there is less time available for the 'life' side of the equation. Regardless of whether the travelling is the result of a physical movement of the place of work or self-inflicted, say by buying or renting a house further away, seeing a job vacancy at a company closer to home may be all that it takes to prompt a move.
6. Stress
Last but not least. Stress has many causes. It could be because of unfair work demands on employees, say a restructure that involves redistribution of work among less staff, or the nature of the work. Police, ambulance officers, doctors, nurses, essentially anyone dealing with people when they are not at their best, are stressful occupations and sometimes something happens which pushes these people beyond what they can handle. Unless there are appropriate mechanisms in place, such as discreet counselling and supportive management, they will leave. Sadly, it can sometimes involve solutions that are not related to another job.
In the context of work volumes, unrealistic work targets or requirements or an unequal distribution of work will cause employees to think twice about whether they want to continue to work where they are. Sales targets can help to motivate salespeople to lift their performance and step out of their comfort zone to achieve them. Raise the bar too high and it will have the opposite effect, they know they have no hope of reaching them and will therefore not even bother to try or resent being asked to try. The same goes for unrealistic work requirements and an unequal distribution of work and it all boils down to equity and fairness.
In conclusion, people generally don't leave a job on a whim, there is usually a good reason and one that extends beyond the generic 'better job offer'. A good manager will recognise the value of their human capital and serve to maximise the value of this. This does not mean that the manager will flog each employee until they drop in order to derive every possible ounce of work from them. It means that they will put in the effort to understand the motivations of their staff members and ensure the workplace is a fair and equitable place, develop their staff through training and work opportunities, and rewarding and recognising performance. The sign of a good workplace is a low turnover rate and savvy prospective employees will make the effort to research this as it indicates that staff are happy to work there and to continue to work there.
