Education expands your career opportunities and skill set but isn’t exactly a guarantor of success or career satisfaction.
Career satisfaction depends a lot on the environment in which you work
While degrees open doors, they don’t necessarily mean a particular position — or even path — will ultimately prove the most viable, comfortable fit. Some pretty basic factors need meeting before true happiness settles in. There are basic factors that are necessary for you to enjoy and gain career satisfaction.
Let’s take a look at the 12 most important factors that might affect your satisfaction with your career.
Low stress
Many people enjoy touting how much they thrive under pressure. Perhaps they really think they do. But that momentum almost always stalls eventually. And once it does, the stress really starts ravaging your health. A truly satisfying, sustainable career is a career that lessens the risk of heart disease, obesity, depression and other not-so-enjoyable medical conditions. This, in turn, is also good for the company.
Positive work environment
Despite laws protecting against workplace harassment, the issue annoyingly persists year after year. Negative environments compromise career satisfaction for obvious reasons. Most workers don’t enjoy work if they feel unsafe or dehumanized day after day. Filing reports with HR often renders the situation even more desperate if the problem trickles down from higher up the hierarchy. Even genuinely rewarding responsibilities lose spark when you have to put up with humiliation and degradation.
Productivity
Except for the most ardent slackers, most workers like feeling as if they’ve accomplished something at work. Productivity increases positivity, and while positivity doesn’t cure mental health issues, it is a nice, supplementary self-respect boost. Those who love their career but hate their company usually can show their career satisfaction through achievements in their resume.
Fair wages
Greed isn’t good, but everyone must meet their basic needs, hopefully with a little cushion leftover for savings and bit of fun. A fair salary (and benefits, if applicable) should be a basic human right, although one rarely met when one considers global economics. Nobody who works tirelessly to support him or herself (maybe even a family or loved one) should have to worry about food, shelter and nourishment. Gratifying careers cannot sit on a foundation of hand-wringing over necessities.
Safety and security
Everyone’s risk-taking comfort levels vary, of course, but even (especially!) Hollywood stunt people, deep sea divers and mine workers deserve the utmost safety standards. All employers must ensure their staff should never show up to work afraid their number may be up today. In fact, it really should stand as the utmost priority, with no expense spared. Most adrenaline junkies and seemingly fearless individuals still want some degree of security while doing their jobs.
Stimulation
The majority of workers, from the most isolationist to the resident social butterfly, still need something piquing their senses and intellects. Stimulation doesn’t have to be interpersonal: satisfying careers keep both bodies and brains happy in multiple ways. Individual workers should seek out jobs preventing slippage, while companies themselves might want to consider initiating activities promoting better mental flow.
Inclusion
People like being asked for their input and ideas, even if what they have to say doesn’t necessarily come to pass. When people feel included they usually report much more career satisfaction. Managers and executives should listen to what people are enjoying and disliking in the workplace. While it’s impossible to implement everything that people want at work, just taking time to listen often proves enough. Feeling valued bolsters motivation and productivity. Dehumanizing workers won’t work well for any company in the long term.
Health
Like safety, health also significantly factors into overall career satisfaction. Even beyond stress-related medical conditions, workers might fall victim health issues caused by their workplace. Inadequately-ventilated or mouldy buildings can be health hazards. Although safety can never been 100% guaranteed, businesses should still consider the safety health and security of customers and employees as their utmost concern. Satisfaction with your career is difficult to achieve if you are feeling unwell or uncomfortable in the environment.
Career satisfaction requires life balance
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. You need to be able to escape from work, not just physically but mentally and emotionally too. If you have a work phone turn it off when you are away from work if you can. Try not to check your emails in our own time. Avoid work phone calls out of work hours where possible. You aren’t being selfish or slack. You are saving yourself from burning out and that is important to everyone in your life, including those associated with your work.
Room for growth
If businesses and career paths are to grow, there’s no way they’ll sustain success if they don’t allow the individuals involved to do so as well. Most people improve their valuable job skills over time. It makes perfect sense that they want their positions to accommodate their promise and abilities rather than shoving them into a rigid, restrictive box.
Honesty
It is the best policy, after all. A career path littered with liars, cheaters and other underhanded folks is really only gratifying to liars, cheats and other underhanded folk. All of whom must constantly look over their back and worry about whether or not their cockiness will finally signify their downfall. Really, staying honest with everyone just makes life that much easier. Just don’t forget to pair it up with…
Respect
No matter one’s career path, earning respect from coworkers, higher ups and customers (if applicable) renders even the most groan-inducing tasks at least a shred bearable. “Earning,” of course, is the operative word here. Few things conjure up more dehumanizing emotions than genuinely caring for others’ needs and receiving nothing — or, even worse, outright degradation — in kind. Retail, education and service jobs often needlessly inspire shoddy treatment, hence many individuals’ reluctance to even bother with them.
Career satisfaction requires more than passion and purpose
Not everyone can work in an environment where their passion and purpose is valued and is at the core of their work. But if you want to achieve career satisfaction you need to carefully consider what really matters to you, not just in the work you do but also in the environment in which you work.
Article Courtesy of Accredited Online Colleges.org
