Is Your Workforce Painted Into a Corner?
DDI’s Pulse of the Workforce
They are specialists and experts. As engineers, marketing gurus and financial whizzes, their technical skills are vital to an organization’s success. We’re talking about individual performers—associates in non-leadership positions who are accountable for executing strategies, inventing new products, and building customer loyalty. Because they aren’t leaders, they often get little attention from the learning and development functions of their organizations…and their training options run heavily in favor of technical skills. But these team members are monumentally important to the success of their unique group and organization overall.
In the summer of 2009, DDI surveyed the U.S. workforce. Concentrating on specialists and professionals in non-leadership positions, we asked more than 1,000 individual contributors how they feel about their jobs, their opportunities for growth, engagement levels, and skills they desired to develop.
According to the research, half of individual contributors feel their jobs are stagnant. And 1 out of 3 just do their jobs, nothing more. All at a time when organizations can ill afford to have unproductive, poorly engaged individual contributors.
What makes their jobs stagnant? When compared to contented workers, those who feel stagnant are twice as likely to say they:
- Had no room to advance (32% of those who said their jobs are stagnant vs. 18% who said they aren’t)
- Are less likely to be asked to do more (14% vs. 27%)
- Are given fewer exciting challenges (3% vs. 26%)