Not every one is lucky enough to love their job but it can’t be good for an organisation to have significant numbers who hate it! Lack of job satisfaction, low morale, a stalled careers, frustrated ambition and jaded, disillusioned professionals. These are concerns for HR as much as individual line managers. Resenteeism that’s how the Guardian news paper recently referred to the situation where employees hate their job but stay in it even though they should probably leave. It’s a type of professional dissatisfaction where people stay in unfulfilling jobs because they are worried about the risks of changing careers As someone who trained as a teacher but didn’t go into teaching I recognise the condition. It usually occurs 3 or 4 years post qualifying when the individual realises this isn’t how they thought it would be when they were training, isn’t how they want to spend the rest of their working life but think it to late to start again doing something different. It’s similar to the midlife crisis people used to write about. It’s belived to be more widespread at the moment because after Covid a lot of people had a rethink about their work / life priories and as a result we had the big,” resignation”. Organisations reported higher numbers of people leaving to do something completely different. Those who remained contribute to Resenteeism. Is this just another “ Ism” that HR get landed with like Absenteeism and Presenteeism even though these are as much about line management as they are about HR policies. Resenteeism is about lack of job satisfaction, low morale, a stalled career, frustrated ambition and jaded disillusioned professionals. It’s a combination of structural issues like how much control individuals have over how they carry out their responsibilities/work, the amount of bureaucracy they have to wrestle with, development opportunities and management issues like how in-tune they feel with the organisations aims and objectives/values, the extent they feel they can make a difference and how valued they feel. So a combination of HR issues and quality of management. Resenteeism is therefore something for HR to get involved in but really it’s just a new expression for a range of personnel and training issues HR is already helping organisations and their managers deal with.
Blair McPherson former director author and blogger www.blairmcpherson.co.uk
