18th August 2022
What is career wellbeing – and how can leaders facilitate a better employee experience?
What is career wellbeing?
Gallup defines career wellbeing as: ‘liking what you do, everyday’ and in a recent survey, they asked people from around the world what they want the most.
The most common reply?
A good job.
And further analysis revealed that people who like what they do, every day, are twice as likely to be ‘thriving’ in their life overall.
This is because the workplace offers a host of benefits, including:
- Social interaction
- Community connections
- Physical activity
- Financial Security
As Gallup report: ‘Working provides people a wealth of meaning in life. In fact, Gallup surveys in Germany and the US have shown that most employees would continue to work, even if they had so much money that they never had to work again.’
However,
The majority don’t like what they do
The same survey found that only 20% of employees strongly agree that they like what they do every day. And perhaps more concerning: 28% of U.S. employees say they feel burnt out at work very often or always.
Implications of workplace burnout
Burnt-out employees are more than twice as likely to leave their current employer and 13% less confident in their workplace performance.
What is causing burnout?
It’s a long list – poor treatment, lack of direction, misaligned purpose to name just a few – but ultimately the reason for employee burnout boils down to a lack of support and communication from business leaders.
So, what can leaders do to help?
According to Gallup: ‘A good manager is an advocate for their team members — they address unfairness, help manage priorities and clarify expectations. Gallup data suggest that in most cases of burnout, a good manager was missing.’
Read this article from Gallup’s Jim Clifton and Jim Harter for more on how leaders can ‘boost both engagement and wellbeing at work’.
From the article:
Putting Work in Wellbeing and Wellbeing in Work
Although we try to compartmentalize work and life, life inevitably affects our work — and work affects our broader life. Whether they like it or not, employers and team leaders are often at the crossroads of work and life.
Wellbeing is not a perk or benefit; it’s a requirement for high-performing teams. However, by focusing on career wellbeing, managers can boost both engagement and wellbeing at work.
So how can leaders boost their employees’ career wellbeing?
In Gallup’s latest bestseller, Wellbeing at Work, Jim Clifton and Jim Harter offer leaders the following career wellbeing action items:
- Make sure everyone in your organization knows their strengths. Use a strengths-based strategy to design an employee experience — from attraction to hiring to onboarding, engagement and performance — that leads to a culture of high development.
- Remove abusive managers. No organization should tolerate managers who destroy the lives of the people you rely on to get work done. In today’s workforce, bad managers are your highest risk.
- Upskill managers to move from boss to coach. Use proven methods to transition your managers’ mentality from boss to coach. Think of this as a yearlong journey that starts with learning about high-performance teams. Each manager should become an expert at setting goals and providing meaningful feedback at least once a week.
- Make wellbeing part of career development conversations. Once they establish trust, managers and teams can dream big together — not just about career goals and development but about life and overall purpose and wellbeing.
Read the full article, here.
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