Knowledge Centre | Human Performance Technology by DTS

The Wonderful Truth About a Career Change

Written by Temre Green, PhD | Oct 12, 2020

Many people select a career path or graduate degree early in life… perhaps before they’ve even gotten to know themselves. Generally speaking, what impact might that have on our work lives?

Taking into account the three Gallup measures of employee engagement this year, the overall percentage of engaged workers during 2020 is 36%.

The percentage of employees who are "actively disengaged" -- those who have miserable work experiences and spread their unhappiness to their colleagues -- remained at 14%.

This DROPS the ratio of “engaged” to “actively disengaged” employees from 3.0-to-1.0 to 2.2-to-1.0, the lowest ratio since 2016.

The Truth about Scheduling a Career Change

There are a number of reasons people schedule, plan and make change careers, and the top few reasons that are highly cited are:

  • to increase job satisfaction
  • to increase flexibility with work
  • in need a new challenge
  • personal focus/passion/values have changed.

The average age for a career change is 39 years old, the average time a person spends scheduling the career change is 1 year, and people tend to change careers 5 - 7 times in their professional life.

It’s occurred to many people that the real reason we make multiple career changes is because we’re still getting to know ourselves. In fact, we’re still growing and developing (as we should be). We likely rushed early into a career, and we changed - which is a great sign of growth, learning and self-actualisation. So if your engagement has dropped, and you're planning a career change, the truth is that you're learning more about yourself!

Have you changed this year? Have you considered the reasons people work and previously unseen challenges.

To further support your personal engagement and general engagement with your team, we’ve partnered with TTI Success Insights to exclusively offer you a free Working from Home Report with personalised tips about your remote working style. Complete the free questionnaire in 15-20 minutes and receive your report immediately.

Reference

Gallup research - Findings are based on a random sample of 2,687 full- and part-time U.S. employees working for an employer from June 1-14, 2020.