Seven Signs It May Be Time For a New Job
Unhappy at the Office? How To Know When You Need to Start Looking For a New One.
Fri, 17 Jan 2014 09:00:00 GMT | By Gordon Powers, MSN Money
According to staffing agency Kelly Services' annual survey covering 120,000 workers globally, a surprising 48 per cent of employees are unhappy in their current jobs.
Forty three per cent of them admit they frequently think about quitting their jobs, compared with just 37 per cent last year. In fact, one way or another, almost half of the respondents ended up changing employers in the past year.
If you’re already spending most of your day trolling LinkedIn, you’re probably anxious to be among them. But if you’re still undecided as to whether it’s time to move on, here are a few signs you should be looking for.
Moaning about the same stuff over and over again
Do you find yourself grumbling about the boss, your hours, or the two-faced troll down the hall? Still complaining about the same things you were a year ago?
“In my humble experience, many office relationships are rooted in negativity, which is a problem for everyone involved,” says Andrew Rosen, author of How to Quit Your Job: The Ultimate Guide to Leaving a Job Gracefully.
In many cases, this behaviour starts with small work cliques – the lunch table where everyone gets all quiet when others come by. Over time, each member works the other ones up on how horrible everything job-related is. Ironically, most people end up feeling isolated and miserable, Rosen maintains.
His suggestion: If you don’t have sufficient influence to change whatever’s bothering you, it’s either time to decide that you can live with the status quo or to move on.
Never hearing that you’re actually doing a good job
Managers are regularly reminded to reinforce good performance with positive feedback. But many don’t. If you think you’re getting the job done but simply aren’t receiving the right sort of recognition, then something is obviously missing.
If your workplace culture seems a bit light when it comes to positive reinforcement it might well be time to move on, says Jill Geisler, author of Work Happy: What Great Bosses Know. But make sure you’re actually hearing what others are saying.
“It’s easy for any of us to miss or to misread the feedback we receive,” she warns. “We may view an interaction with the boss as just passing conversation while she’s presuming she’s delivered a memorable message.”
Your own insecurities can lead you to focus on the negative and forget the positive, as in, “The only time I hear anything around here is when something goes wrong,” she cautions.
Watching too many people get promoted ahead of you
Take a look at the people higher up the ladder. Did most join the organization after you? If so, that’s a clear sign you’re not performing as well as you could, or at least that your managers really don’t appreciate your efforts.
And while that may mean it’s time to go, perhaps you’re just not trying hard enough, suggests Tag Goulet, co-founder of FabJob, a publisher of career guides.
It's not enough to do a good job, she maintains. People need to know you have leadership potential. When something you've worked on goes exceptionally well, write a memo to management praising the team you worked with. You'll get your name out there and be seen as a leader, she says.
Don’t be shy, adds career coach Jennifer Gresham. Most workers go into their appraisals talking about features – “I did this, I developed that.' But it’s critical you follow up such achievements by tying them to the ultimate benefits. Be specific, she suggests: “This resulted in, the company earned.”
Make sure you're visible in other ways too, such as volunteering to lead committees, contributing articles to the employee newsletter, or chairing the United Way drive in your company, Goulet suggests.
Tuning out more and more during staff meetings
Team meetings can be dreadfully dull, and most people tune out at some point – but not all the time. If you find that you’ve heard it all before, or that what’s going on simply doesn’t interest you, then it might well be time to look elsewhere.
But, unless you’re going to set up a trap line somewhere, you’re probably going to face the same problem wherever you end up. So, perhaps you should try to turn things around.
“As a member of a team, you have a responsibility, not only to add your full value, but to make sure that others can add theirs too,” says Liane Davey, author of YOU FIRST: Inspire Your Team to Grow Up, Get Along, and Get Stuff Done. “You need to amplify other voices to help the team access the value that’s not being brought out.”
Get engaged. Don't allow others to block out or brush off different points of view – including your own. If someone does belittle or downplay someone’s comment, counteract their impact by asking to hear a bit more, she suggests.
You’ve simply stopped listening to colleagues
Canada’s workforce is getting older, resulting in shifts in the workplace that many people are ill-equipped to handle. Do all the people working beside you suddenly seem younger than your children? Is this becoming a problem?
For many boomers, “the same millennial traits of self-assurance and eagerness that were cute in their kids have become annoying in their teammates,” notes career coach Alexandra Levit, author of New Job, New You: A Guide to Reinventing Yourself in a Bright New Career.
Be sure to open yourself up to new voices, she suggests. When a younger colleague asks why something is happening, the last thing he or she wants to hear is: “Because that’s the way we’ve always done it.”
If a less experienced co-worker comes to you with a technique for doing something more efficiently (or even just differently), don’t shut it down immediately. Think it through first, Levit advises.
If you simply can’t, then maybe it’s time to work as a consultant.
You expect every single project to be perfect
Do the words “good enough” make you cringe? Are you simply too demanding for words? If you have deeply ingrained perfectionist tendencies, is a change of scenery really the answer?
Your goal at work should be to handle tasks that are satisfying to you and anyone they’re for, but sometimes good enough is actually sufficient – particularly if you’re working with limited resources, Levit suggests.
Perfectionists spend so much time stewing about irrelevant details that they often lose sight of the big picture, which is project completion and strong (but not perfect) results,
“A project that never gets off the ground because its owner won’t leave the weeds and move on will fail,” she maintains. “Also, if you encourage others to believe that your end product will be perfect, they’ll naturally assume that anything less is not good enough.”
You think you’ll be happier in a new job
A boss setting goals you can never meet, or not setting goals at all, can be frustrating enough to make you miserable. Never hearing a kind word will do that too. Even the uncertainty of a lengthy commute can add enough stress to your life to make you unhappy.
But a job can’t make you happy, warns Penelope Trunk, the author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success.
“Happiness doesn’t come from making more money or creating the perfect design or being right about the marketplace. Happiness comes from the relationships you make with other people. So work doesn’t make you happy, but it can make you unhappy.”
Have a closer look around you. If you have a job where you have challenging goals that you’re able to meet, ask yourself if you should be changing your personal life and not your job, she suggests.