• July 5, 2016

Two million Australians hate their job

Two million Australians hate their job

Two million Australians hate their job 600 397 Forsee

Imagine it’s a Sunday night and before you go to bed, you start thinking about work tomorrow.

Do you smile to yourself and think how much you enjoy it?

or

Do you break out in a cold sweat, shuddering with dread at thought of another work week ahead?

Extreme examples for sure, but research by Right Management implies that 2 million Australians are suffering from the Sunday night shudders as a result of being in careers they hate. They found that 1 in 5 workers expressed a desire to change job function or industry. I think that might even be a bit low.

Only 5% of people pick the right job on the first try

That so many people hate their job shouldn’t really be surprising given that Economist Neil Howe says that only 5% of people pick the right job on the first try. He calls them “fast starters” but says in general they are less creative, less adventurous and less innovative which is probably why a common well trodden career path makes sense for them. Others can bounce around from job to job trying to find something they really like but the problem is that’s a very random process that eats up a lot of time. In addition, job hopping is not looked on favourably by employers (even though historically it makes perfect sense to keep looking until you find a good fit).

We’re not very good at knowing what we will enjoy

One of the problems is that we are not actually very good at knowing what we will enjoy and what is actually involved in a job. There wasn’t really much way of knowing and until recently we have not had the behavioural analytics technology to help us make good decisions. Traditionally many of us are simply socialised into functional silos or job roles for the wrong reasons. Just as organisations now realise that hiring a person who ‘can’ do the job, but doesn’t really want to do it, is worse than hiring the person who may not ‘tick all the boxes’ but has the passion and willingness to learn, so we as individuals need to acknowledge that enjoying what we do is one of the keys to performance in a career and happiness in life.

Behavioural data analytics is changing lives

Like so many other areas of our modern lives data driven analytics is changing the way we gather information and make decisions. Forsee uses behavioural data analytics and takes only 20 minutes to complete. It measures 175 traits and compares them with the key requirements for performance that have been identified by 25 years of research as being crucial across 683 career options. Our own research has discovered that you are 3 times more likely to be successful in a career where you enjoy at least 75% of the main tasks involved.

Help us eliminate the Sunday night shudder 🙂