Written by: Anne Swenson, HR Coordinator, MidwestHR
A recent study by CareerBuilder found that a majority of American workers do not aspire to management or leadership positions. At first, these results may seem odd when you think of the “American Dream,” loosely meaning the younger population aspiring to a better life than the generation preceding them. Are American workers giving up on the “Dream” by not striving for upper-level positions? When digging a little deeper on the topic, one starts to see the potential reasons why workers are staying put.
The study noted that participants are satisfied with their current jobs and a third of them do not want to sacrifice work-life balance for anything more demanding. Reasoning for that might have to do with burn-out after the recession. Since so many people lost their jobs and it was difficult to find work for years, that workers just became be happy with having a job and didn’t want to rock the boat. They also might be just as happy to have a job where they can leave at 5 o’clock to spend the rest of their day as they wish. The glisten of the corner office fades when one realizes it also comes with long hours and never truly being away from work (thanks to advancements in technology). Work-life balance seems to increasingly disappear, the higher up you go on the ladder but that balance is increasingly valued by the modern workforce. Many study participants also noted that they feel unprepared for management responsibility, by not having enough education or on the job experience.
Should employers be concerned with the lack of career drive in their employees? Probably not! If your employees are happy in their current roles and are getting the job done accurately, what’s there to worry about? The work is being done and you don’t have to spend time thinking how you will promote certain employees or what you will do when workers leave for a higher level position elsewhere. Don’t get us wrong, turnover will happen at some point, but hopefully at a lower rate than before. Satisfied employees tend to stick around.
Have Americans truly lost the “Dream” or is it just shifting? The “American Dream” has changed over time, so maybe the transformation for the 21st century will be working to live instead of living to work. Bottom line for employers is that it takes all sorts of people to build and maintain a company, making less aspirational employees an essential part of the puzzle
Please contact us to see if MidwestHR, a Chicago PEO, is the right partner for your growing company.
MidwestHR supports growing companies by helping them simplify their business through HR Outsourcing. MidwestHR is a Certified Professional Employer Organization (CPEO) headquartered in the Chicago land area. As a CPEO, we provide business owners, CEO and CFO leaders with relief from dozens of time-consuming HR & employment related functions, while helping protect the business from ever-increasing HR demands and liabilities. In addition, our clients have the ability to offer “Fortune 500 type” benefits, while being able to better control their premiums in the process.
MidwestHR regularly works with all types of businesses, including medical practices, surgery centers, non-profits, professional service firms, technology companies, printing companies, religious organizations, start-ups, manufacturing businesses, trucking companies and financial institutions.