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Unhappy in your job? Reluctantly getting out of bed for work? Or maybe you hate your boss? Being stuck in a job, or as organizational psychologist Merel Feenstra-Verschure calls it, ‘Locked at the job’, is a social thing. And she thinks we should be a little more honest about that.
Merel Feenstra-Verschure wrote her dissertation at Tilburg University about the phenomenon of ‘being locked in your job’. She comes, as she describes it, “from far away”. Feenstra-Verschure once started at secondary school, went to senior general secondary education, did higher professional education and two master’s degrees. She herself did not get any further in her job with what she really wanted. “And I wanted to make a difference in the labor market.” She quit her job at ABN-AMRO and decided to start her own PhD research at the age of thirty. And after six years there was the end result.
Being locked in your job, according to science
Why did the organizational psychologist delve into this ‘workplace matter’? “Whether it concerns the butcher or the lawyer, everyone recognizes the dissatisfied feeling about his or her job.” According to the researcher, the feeling of being trapped has to do with two factors. “One of them is dissatisfaction. This could be, for example, because you do not experience sufficient responsibility, receive little appreciation or have a conflict with a manager.” But according to Feenstra-Verschure the question is at the same time: ‘Why don’t you leave?’ “That is because of the perceptions we impose on ourselves.” According to the researcher, for example, we tell ourselves that we will earn less with another employer or that we cannot do our current job elsewhere. “Then you won’t move.” The organizational psychologist concludes that people stay in such a situation for an average of 2.5 years. “That starts at six months and can go up to eight years.”
That trapped feeling really exists, as Feenstra-Verschure has demonstrated. But why don’t we act? “There is a taboo on this subject. On the one hand because we don’t want to admit that we feel this way and at the same time we know little about it. We are not aware enough that we are going through this.” In addition, according to the researcher, the focus nowadays is on “continuing your studies, growing and the best prevention. But there is little attention when things are not going well.”
Organizational psychologist Merel Feenstra-Verschure
Depression and burnout
But the researcher did conclude that there were visible consequences of the feeling of being locked up. “In addition to uncertainty, frustration and anger, productivity also decreases. It was precisely the people who felt locked up that showed that they were less productive.” It also turned out that a third of the people studied ultimately suffered a burnout. “Yet another group, also a third, experienced daily stress, a drained feeling and exhaustion. It’s a shame that a person has to deal with that for so long.” As a result, according to Feenstra-Verschure, we keep ourselves “stubbornly quiet in the workplace”. Did you know these five ways to give your work more meaning?
An apology for not leaving? Financial comfort, ‘I’m too old’, ‘too poorly educated’, ‘I’ve been working here for so long’ or ‘I like my colleagues’. In addition, according to the organizational psychologist, people are quite creatures of habit. “Leaving the situation as it is is easy, comfortable and we prefer to stay where we are. But I think there is a large group of people who could do with less vacation twice a year, in order to be happy from another job.”
By the way, the ‘trapped’ feeling is nothing new, according to Feenstra-Verschure. “But nowadays there is more attention to job satisfaction.” The organizational psychologist compares it to the phenomenon of burnout. “A few years ago, people looked at you strangely if you talked about a burnout. But nowadays there is much more attention and understanding for this and people recognize it. We should have that with our jobs too. That you dare to honestly say that you might prefer to do something else.”
Talking to the boss
But the researcher emphasizes that being ‘locked into your job’ does not mean you have to leave immediately. According to her, the top executives, bosses and managers must also participate in this. Feenstra-Verschure and her company The People Society advise these bosses on how to better deal with people who feel trapped in their jobs. “Have a conversation to see if you can change something internally. Managers must also be open to this. If your wishes are not listened to, then it may be time to resign.”
On the first page of her dissertation, which she published in a book, Feenstra-Verschure wrote: ‘Nothing is impossible‘, which she dedicates to her two daughters. She calls herself a good example. “It was quite a journey, but if you try hard, a lot is possible.”
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2023-10-03 16:11:38
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