Staying Engaged With Your Job

Recently Spark Hire has been talking about employee engagement a lot. If you’ve been following, then you know how important employee engagement is for your company and your turnover rate. Employees that are engaged with their company and their work are much happier and less likely to jump ship as soon as something better or different comes along. They are also more productive. But what about you? As an HR professional, it is often your job to think about how you can help others in the company, but you can’t forget about yourself in the mix.

Do you still feel engaged with your job? It can be quite difficult to suggest ways your company can engage better with its employees if you are not engaged with your own work. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut with a job and simply do what is expected of you. After a while, a job can get pretty boring- especially if you do the same thing day in and day out. If you’re bored, chances are you are no longer engaged. So what can you do about it? Jump ship? You may want to, but consider some of these simple tips for re-engaging with your job before deciding to find a new one.

Remember What Makes You Happy
If you’re feeling disengaged or bored with your job then try to remember what made you happy about this position in the beginning. What was it about this industry or this particular company that piqued your interest in the first place? If you are happy, then you are already on your way to being engaged. Granted, work engagement and employee engagement does not mean happiness or happy employees, but it is certainly a start. So before you start frantically searching for a way out, take a minute and think about your job.

What parts of it make you happy and satisfied? Are you still communicating with your coworkers or have you been keeping to yourself as of late? If that’s the case then try and reconnect with your coworkers. If that’s not the problem, then take inventory on the tasks you do and note which one’s satisfy you. Have your roles and responsibilities changed and that’s what is making you unhappy? If so, have a talk with your superior and see why that is. Is this temporary or will these new changes be permanent? At the very least, try and pinpoint the aspects of your job that make you happy and focus on those. If you can’t answer that question, then it may be time to move on.

Look For Meaning
Often times people will feel disengaged from their work because they feel it is pointless. If you are completing responsibilities and tasks each day but think that if you didn’t do them it would make no difference, then how can you have pride in your work? Instead, look for the meaning in the work you do. A lot of us won’t have a job that is immensely changing the world or the lives of others for the better. However, a lot of what we do is benefiting someone. Take a look at how you make a difference within your company and how you help the company get to where it wants to be. How does your work affect the CEO, the marketing manager or even the maintenance crew? Simply knowing that the work you are doing is helping someone else down the line gives new meaning, or once-again-found meaning, to your job.

If you don’t find any meaning, then perhaps you can create one. Spark Hire has talked about volunteer work for increased employee engagement and company culture before and it could help to improve your own engagement as well. If there is not something at your job that makes you happy, see if you can create one through company volunteer efforts. It’s possible that many of your coworkers and other employees would be interested as well.

Understand What You Dislike
As stated earlier, it’s best to take note of all of the roles and tasks you complete to see which ones you enjoy and which ones you dislike. Hopefully there are at least a few tasks or responsibilities that make you happy. Take a look at the tasks that make you unhappy and see if there’s anything you can do to change them. Why do these tasks or responsibilities dissatisfy you? Is there anything you can do to make them more enjoyable? Often times the answer is just that we’ve fallen into a routine where what was once exciting and new has become boring and redundant. Is there a way you can make these boring tasks interesting again?

If all else fails and most of what you are doing falls under the “dislike” category, then you may seriously want to think about starting a job search. If you can’t do anything to change this position and make it enjoyable again, then what is the point in continuing the abuse? Remember though, unless you are financially in a position to do so, do not leave a job until you have found a new one. The realization that your job has become a huge source of unhappiness may send you running for the door. Before you make any rash decisions though, think them through and discuss them with your family if you support them as well. Being unhappy or unsatisfied in a job can take a large toll on your body, so if there’s no saving it, then cut your losses and work on moving on.

How do you stay engaged with your position? Have you ever been able to turn a once-fun-turned-boring job around? Share with us in the comments section below!

IMAGE: Courtesy of Flickr by quinn.anya