Is Your Employer Making You Less Employable?

What would you do if one day, you woke up to realize that you had become less employable and competitive in the labor force as a result of working at your current organization? How would you feel? While one may think that being gainfully employed today provides constant opportunity for learning, growth and advancement, the reality is that this is just not the case. Joining the wrong company and operating in the wrong working environment can really set you back, especially as the world continues to rapidly change on the back of technology.

Last week, I had a very interesting conversation with a classmate of mine from business school about what he’s been up to at his new company that really made me think about this issue. Although he was just hired, my classmate spoke at length about all of the extra learning he was doing on his own time to get up to speed on the latest tools and techniques for data analysis which we had not learned in our MBA. SQL, Python and Tableau were at the center of our discussion and the more we spoke, the more I could tell how much he needed to know these kinds of things to be successful in his new gig.

The good news for him however, is that it seems like his company actively supports helping him learn these new skills. They give him opportunities to apply what he learns outside of work every day and as a result, he is rapidly growing and adding substantial value to his company.

This got me thinking about other individuals with whom I’ve spoken with over the past month who shared similar stories as my classmate. These colleagues however, didn’t have the same kind of supportive employer who helped them learn and apply the new skills they needed to stay relevant in the market today.

Out of those individuals, I’ll bet you can guess how many of them intended to stay with their current employer. In today’s environment, one can’t afford to become complacent and remain at an organization where you are not being exposed to the latest ways of doing things or pushed to learn the critical new skills of your chosen field; even if it’s comfortable. Here are a few ways to assess whether working at your organization runs you the risk of making yourself less employable in the future:

1. Your organization is too concerned about maintaining the status quo, and is resistant to trying new things or investing in new tools that the market is adopting
2. It’s impossible to carve out time in your day to think about how new approaches or new technologies can be applied to how you do your work
3. Your work schedule prevents you from investing personal time in learning
4. The incentive systems in your organization don’t foster a collaborative environment where mentorship, informal and social learning is celebrated
5. You can’t find opportunities that give you exposure to what you want to learn, what your business needs to accomplish and where your profession is going
6. Devoting some of your workday to learning new things is seen as an opportunity cost on your productivity and not as a celebrated practice

Stay tuned in the coming weeks as I expand on each of these ideas through the lessons I’ve learn from speaking with some of Canada’s rising business leaders through my blog, #WRK https://wrk795.wordpress.com/