Career disillusionment is on the rise, what stops us from finding more fulfilling work? Photo / Getty Images
Career disillusionment is on the rise, what stops us from finding more fulfilling work? Photo / Getty Images
A Gallup survey found 60% of people take little fulfilment from work, with increasing levels of work disillusionment correlated to a growing consciousness of more choice.
There’s also a growing gap between the diversity of opportunities and our ability to imagine ourselves achieving them.
Those most content and fulfilled by their work frame their careers in more qualitative terms.
Our general disillusionment with work has increased over recent years. This seems counter-intuitive. The world we experience today offers us so many more opportunities and choices. Most of us accept that the general standard of living and quality of life available is much improved from 50 years ago. And yet,the evidence points to greater levels of dissatisfaction with our professional lives.
Gallup’s annual survey that tracks our collective relationship to work shows around 60% of us find little meaning and take little fulfilment from our work and a staggering 20% say that it is the main reason they feel completely miserable. Another report published last year by the UK’s leading HR professional body, CIPD, cited as many as 90% of us were disengaged with our jobs. The popular depiction of Gen Z being the primary source of work disillusionment is misplaced. The data shows a more pervasive trend. Pew Research found that 50% of baby boomers were dissatisfied with their jobs versus 55% for the younger generations.
More choice, less satisfaction?
Our research has identified two things that shape satisfaction with our careers − the spectrum of opportunities the world offers, and our capacity to imagine ourselves achieving them. As the world of work has changed, as the spectrum of opportunities has exploded, we have all come to expect more from work.
Our increasing levels of work disillusionment are correlated to a growing consciousness that we have more choices.
What is harder to explain is what stops us from finding more fulfilling work. We found that the crux of being trapped in what we’ve dubbed a “Groundhog Career”, was a growing gap between the diversity of opportunities and our ability to imagine ourselves achieving them. We seem to undermine ourselves, make excuses or even go as far as to embrace a measure of suffering.
Blame your parents and your grandparents
Many of us have been programmed to accept a degree of suffering at work. We inherit this from our parents and grandparents − a deeply ingrained fatalistic outlook that is driven by dogged belief systems. From the Protestant work ethic of the 17th and 18th centuries, through the emergent labour movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, to every generation’s well-intended desire to help their children strive for financial security and social respectability. We are taught to approach our careers quantitatively.
We aim for a well-paid job. We balance effort for reward. We relate to employers, and business opportunities, as things to “take advantage of”. Implicit is a perspective of carrying a scepticism about the world of work, a distrust for others’ intentions, and, perhaps most importantly, a single-mindedness that pushes us to strive for “the most we can get”. This social conditioning is at the very foundation of why work is often a source of unhappiness in our lives. You reap what you sow.
How do we change the narrative in 2025?
So, what is the secret to finding fulfilment? What do the roughly 50% of us who are content and fulfilled know that the rest of us don’t? And how do we join them?
Dr David Oxley and Dr Helmut Schuster's book "A Groundhog Career" outlines how to take control of your own journey and find a job that aligns with your purpose – and not someone else’s.
The answer is simple and yet devilishly difficult to achieve. Self-determination requires self-awareness. The single biggest contributory factor in our disposition to work is whether we feel in control of our own destiny. Whether we can shift the frame in our minds from being trapped by an obligation versus spending our time pursuing something on our own terms.
Our research underscored how those most content and fulfilled by their work have a very distinctive set of behaviours. They frame their careers in more qualitative terms. They switch the telescope from being focused on the necessities of the next hour, day, or week, and have a clear and compelling sense of how their work enables something longer term. Often, they describe their efforts as in service of achieving a collective purpose that transcends traditional reward descriptions. Something that scientists refer to as an atelic goal or what we might simply describe as qualitative.
Our conclusion, is the answer to the exam question … How do you escape a Groundhog Career? Challenge yourself to:
Take the red pill
Borrowing from Morpheus, the first step is making a commitment to take a long, objective and realistic view of your behaviours and whether you are sabotaging living your best professional life.
Reinvent / risk
Work on experimenting with new career options and lowering your tolerance to take a little more calculated risk.
Focus on joy rather than pain
Everyone, and we mean everyone, has things at work that they enjoy. Focusing on those things and finding ways to make them a bigger part of your life can be transformative.
Know your purpose
It’s an overused phrase but nonetheless very important. Be clear about why you do what you do. Understand the answer to the question “What’s this all for?”
Drs Schuster and Oxley are career futurists, former senior human resource executives and award-winning authors of the Shey Sinope books series that explores different contemporary career challenges. Their latest book A Groundhog Career will be published on March 18.
