Here’s a double whammy for the working professional. You hate your job and want to quit, but the economy is bad so you’re afraid to leave.

There’s no need to prove the second part of that statement—everyone knows that unemployment is high and finding a position is tough. But a recent survey shows that in one industry, people despise their current job more  than ever:

[The] survey found that the willingness of IT employees to “exert high levels of discretionary effort” — put in extra hours to solve a problem, make suggestions for improving processes, and generally seek to play a key role in an organization — has plummeted to its lowest levels since the survey was launched 10 years ago.

In 2007, about 12% of the IT employees fit in category of “highly engaged” workers, but that has since fallen to 4%.

These are literally the most critical employees,” said Jaime Capella, a managing director in [survey company] CEB’s information technology practice. Moreover, such critical workers are 2.5 times more likely than the average employee to be looking for new opportunities.

Although the data from this study is fairly dire, the language used in the story is equally concerning. That first paragraph seems to imply that employees ought to be willing to “put in extra hours.” Yet, shouldn’t we characterize these unusual situations not as a sign of engagement but a failure of management?

Likewise, the drop of “highly engaged” workers from 12% to 4% ought to upset any business owner. Does that mean almost all of the people we hire are not “highly engaged” to begin with, or does their level of engagement start to drop after the interview?

It might seem bold, but don’t we want to strive to have all our employees ”highly engaged” while expecting none of them to work overtime?  And in a tight economy, can’t we afford to let people go who aren’t committed to the organization?

These are hard questions and can’t be answered in a single blog post. But in general, we cannot just focus on job satisfaction. We have to instead study the connection between satisfaction and productivity.

If you’re struggling to engage employees, consider reaching out to Slaughter Development. We’ll help you figure out how to empower employees to be productive so they enjoy work and achieve more without the fear of being swallowed by the troubled economy.

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