Why You Should Watch Out for Your 5-Year Job Anniversary

Most of us begin a new position with energy and a desire to impress. Our effort is high. Our passion is infectious. Our enthusiasm helps us to excel quickly.

But for some, work becomes mundane and repetitive. They lose some of their passion, and their work can begin to feel like a chore. Eventually some of those executives who had initially loved their careers enter the dimension we call the “day prison.” As they enter their workspace, they feel the metaphorical bars close around them in a zone where they are unmotivated, dissatisfied, and much less productive than they could be.

To better understand this phenomenon we examined data from 970 such people in a single organization. They were between 35 and 44 years old (the typical range for the onset of a mid-career crisis), and they all rated their engagement at work in the bottom 10%.

How did these “day prisoners” compare with the rest of the organization?

• Compared to the makeup of the overall organization, there were slightly fewer males (-3.7%) and more females (+2.4%).
• There also were fewer high school graduates (-5.9%) and more graduate (+2.5%) and post graduate degrees (+2.2%).
• Thirty percent had been at the company from five to 10 years; 36% had been there between 10 to 20 years, but the age sample spanned all levels and positions in the organization, including executives, and we found people in day prison in all tenure categories. In fact, we found three executives who were in day prison along with their staffs.

What was troubling them? When we performed a factor analysis on the items on their employee feedback surveys that drew the most significantly negative responses, we identified eight critical issues. Here they are, in order of importance:

1. Lack of pride and satisfaction with the organization. The most discontent stemmed from employees’ identifying a situation where the organization mistreated customers in some way that shook their confidence and caused them to feel a loss of pride in their company. These employees were much less likely to recommend the organization to a friend and described themselves as much more likely to leave the organization.
2. Minimal appreciation or recognition. This was not only a sense people had that they had tried their best and not gotten recognition but was particularly strong among those who felt the organization failed to recognize anyone.
3. Absence of challenge and meaning in work. Some jobs are challenging at first, but after the 10,000th iteration have become monotonous and boring. These people felt unable to make use of their skills and abilities in their current roles. They felt that most days they had not achieved anything worthwhile. In these roles, they felt they were no longer on a path to career advancement.
4. Unwillingness to go beyond basic requirements. Every day people make judgments about their discretionary effort. Will they do just the minimal amount of work required to keep their jobs, a bit more than that, or are they willing to give a 100% effort? We were not surprise to see that these unengaged individuals resisted putting forth extra effort. For some, the rationale was this: “I get very little from this organization and therefore I choose to give them only my minimal effort.” Simply put, their built-up resentment resulted in a refusal to accomplish more work.
5. Conclusion that they were not treated fairly. Stuck in monotonous jobs, it’s not surprising that these people now believed they were continually getting the short end of the stick while others received benefits they didn’t deserve. They had become bitter — and sometimes even belligerent.
6. Feeling of powerlessness. Not only did they feel they were treated unfairly but that any effort to point out their concerns would not be heard or addressed. They felt helpless, with no advocates and no influence. The way they saw it, they simply did not matter.
7. The company failed to value and practice values such as teamwork, trust, and fostering diversity. As they observed the organization, what stood out for these people were failures of the organization to “walk the talk.”
8. Minimal opportunities for growth and development opportunities. This disengaged group felt like a pair of hands that were used and abused. Others in the organization had been given opportunities to develop new skills, but they rarely were.

It did not surprise us that many of these factors mirror those we found in earlier research  in which we examined 360 feedback from more than 320,000 employees in a variety of organizations and found that the most unhappy people were mid-level employees and managers who’d been at the their companies between five and 10 years.

In both cases, people felt their contributions were not being fairly recognized and appreciated. In both cases, they reported feelings of helplessness and powerlessness. But in our previous research, most of the grievances focused on feelings of overwork, and problems with an immediate boss, whereas here we see a more generalized discontent with the shortcomings of the company as a whole, and the nature of their work and career opportunities. Far from suffering from overwork, these people are protesting that their talents are being underutilized. They’re complaining of soul-sucking boredom.

While we would make no claims to any universality to data stemming from only one company, these findings suggest some fairly simple steps that would certainly do no individual or organization any harm and might offer the possibility of forestalling a possibly avoidable mid-life crisis.

To the organization we would say this: Over the years, we’ve asked executives to reflect on their own curve of excitement and creativity in all the jobs they’ve done. At what point does the downturn occur? The consistent answer we receive is five years. Asking people to do the same job for years is cruel and unusual punishment. So at the very least, we would suggest that managers be on the lookout at the five-year point for signs of boredom in their staffs, and nip it the bud by giving some thought to assignments that will require new skills and capabilities. Don’t let these people languish just because they are continuing to do a good job for you.

We recognize that managers love to hang on to good people too long. But even the simplest organizational intervention – the requirement that all job assignments be posted – can be remarkably effective. For example, one of the large global consulting firms we counsel was having a turnover problem when project managers resisted supporting their employees in their efforts to take on new assignments because the managers feared losing the assistance they needed for current projects. To solve this, the firm designed a process in which internal assignments were posted and every employee could apply for jobs that interested them. This seemingly obvious, low-cost step gave employees the impetus to take new assignments and while also giving the company a better ability to keep the best talent in the firm.

And to individuals we would say this: If this list of grievances resonates with you, we would direct your attention to point #4 — the impulse to withhold discretionary effort. However justified and natural, working to rule will just feed into your feelings of uselessness, powerlessness, and boredom, not to mention justifying the organization’s view that your contributions don’t deserve special recognition. Before you throw in the towel, consider whether you can escape this prison on your own.

You can try to pull yourself out of the career ditch by shifting the burden from blaming the organization to raising the bar on your own efforts. If the organization won’t help you do it, use your own initiative. Taking on new and important challenges can change the dynamics of the game. Work may not have to be about feeling underutilized and disconnected from the organization. It can be about putting your best efforts to good use and making a discernable difference. That effort may not get the recognition it deserves. But it could bring the satisfaction back of doing important work, and doing it well. At the very least it will set you up for a better position at a wiser organization.

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