Plateaued employees also exhibit a greater propensity for leaving the organization. Results have shown that content plateauing has a negative effect on affective commitment to the organization. This type of employee reaction to career plateauing results in a loss of employee morale and productivity and leads to turnover, which may prove very costly to organizations.
While the organization may experience negative repercussions when the employee experiences a plateau, the employee may also realize some personal consequences. Harmful psychological effects include lower self-worth due to promotions being taken away, lower skill assessment, and less acceptance by peers and superiors due to devalued work contributions.
Structurally plateaued employees have reported greater work-related stress than have non-plateaued employees. Researchers have found that both structural- and content-plateaued employees experience high levels of job strain and that structurally plateaued employees report experiencing high levels of job-induced tension.
Although these studies used various stress scales, there seems to be consistency in the direction of these relationships. It is conceivable that the reasons for structural and content plateauing could be considered work stressors. For example, structurally plateaued employees may become distressed upon acknowledging there are no more available positions; that is, there are organizational constraints disallowing further promotions.
Employees may become distressed should they perceive that the organization has negatively assessed their abilities and therefore has structurally plateaued them for organizational assessment reasons. Content-plateaued employees may respond similarly when they acknowledge that their jobs will no longer be challenging or that they offer little growth, little flexibility, or few increases in job responsibility.
Bardwick once noted that the end of job challenge can generate as much stress as the end of the hierarchical or structural climb. Researchers have found that stress regarding career progression may be equal among people of various career anchors and more prevalent among early career stage professionals. Both male and female employees expect the same chances for career progression and have similar aspirations and social expectations for advancement.
Since the firm is taking those opportunities away, employees may become distressed upon realization of their plateau status. Although many negative sentiments have been associated with career plateaus, plateaued employees appreciate a few positive experiences.
Most important, some research suggests that given the flattened organizational structures common to many companies, experiencing a career plateau may not be as embarrassing or stressful as it once was.
Plateaus are a time when new ideas are digested. They afford highly desirable stable, secure, and restful periods. Plateaus allow for reflection and offer individuals time to regroup and plan the next phase of personal and professional growth. Plateaus permit the employee the time to assimilate new knowledge and integrate that knowledge into his or her functional repertoire. Some employees may even hope for a plateau due to their inability to cope with the stress that career mobility and progression impose.
In fact, plateaued university employees have reported a greater likelihood of staying with and being committed to their organizations. Plateaued employees are expected to invest less of themselves in the job and more in nonwork activities. According to compensatory theory, disappointments in one sphere of life tend in some way to be made up for in another sphere. Therefore, plateaued employees psychologically distance themselves from work by becoming more involved in nonwork issues.
Individuals become involved in these nonwork activities in order to perform well in another domain and maintain their self-esteem. Similarly, plateaued employees may devote more time to their families, leisure interests, and community activities. Researchers have suggested that plateaued employees realize their needs are not being fulfilled within the workplace and look to other life domains for fulfillment.
These studies suggest that employees experience positive non-work-related outcomes because of their plateau status. There are many opportunities for future career-plateauing research. First, researchers need to be aware of the conceptual differences between the structural and content plateau construct types noted herein and pursue studies that validate these constructs.
Continuous feedback is key. In order to provide continuous feedback, you need a system in place to collect valuable, actionable responses. This gives our leadership an opportunity to acknowledge great performance and realign the team whenever necessary.
With continuous feedback, plateaus are spotted early and mitigated quickly. Pull from performance recaps, daily or weekly check ins, goal updates, and meetings to find opportunities for recognition. A simple acknowledgement that you read and appreciated an update or check in goes a long way. If you want to take it a step further, positive feedback can be incredibly powerful when shared publicly. Systems like Teams and Slack make it easy to publicly recognize a team member for their accomplishments.
Cross-departmental collaboration adds newness and variety which are crucial to finding a new sense of motivation. But the real impact of collaboration comes from pushing people outside of their comfort zone. Once someone gains exposure to the real work of other teams, they may identify new skills to develop or an interest in new responsibilities.
An engineer might find themselves excited to help customers solve their problems, which could lead them to consider product management. Working alongside other teams gives exposure to different ways of thinking and new approaches to problem solving.
This is not a new concept. I once traveled to a conference with a front-end developer and got a lot of exposure to how he worked. It also showed us how wildly ineffective and inefficient communication can be across departmental lines.
Lastly, cross-departmental collaboration eliminates unnecessary siloes. How you implement cross-departmental collaboration will vary depending on your business, but it has enormous potential to help individual team members and the organization at-large avoid plateauing.
Stagnation will lead to a plateau. If an employee has become accustomed to earning a promotion every few years but seems to no longer be met with opportunities for vertical advancement, they have plateaued due to the organizational structure. Employees who find themselves in this scenario may choose to leave the company in order to pursue advancement elsewhere, or stay at the company but decrease productivity and withdraw from organizational involvement.
Anne taught me the value of having a good work ethic and she is essentially is the reason I am where I am today in my career. She always encouraged me to set goals and meet them, push myself beyond my comfort zone and reach for the stars.
There are times when an individual chooses not to advance further. They may be of the opinion that the added stress, income, travel, or other responsibility that is associated with the position is not worth it. Instead, this employee will dedicate her energy to pursuing personal interests or relationships. These are certainly good for the employee but represents mismanaged or wasted talents and energy by the employer.
Focus on developing skills outside of those in use at your full-time job. These could be hobbies that bring you pleasure like painting or gardening, or workforce-related skills such as learning to code or dabbling in graphic design.
HR has an important role to play in helping an employee re-engage at work by exploring new opportunities for mobility at the company. It's the responsibility of company management to ensure staleness does not invade the workplace.
For example, a manager can help a cashier achieve new heights performance-wise by creating goals for her to accomplish, such as checking out a set number of customers an hour. A person who sees no light at the end of the tunnel is unlikely to increase his pace through the tunnel. With no sight of a reward, employees can become frustrated that their performance goes unnoticed, causing them to plateau and possibly exert less effort as time goes on.
A company that recognizes employee performance and rewards employees appropriately, either through increased pay, added benefits, promotions or paid time off, can motivate the workforce to try harder. An employee may plateau because of reasons unrelated to the company.
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