Managing Middlescence

Midcareer employees and managers, who should be at their peak of productivity, are the most disaffected segment of the workforce. Companies need to find ways to rekindle the fires of this vast, neglected group of people—or risk losing them altogether.

by Robert Morison, Tamara Erickson, and Ken Dychtwald

Burned-out, bottlenecked, and bored. That’s the current lot of millions of midcareer employees. In our research into employee attitudes and experiences, we heard many stories of midcareer restlessness, a phenomenon we call middlescence. There was the manager who was beginning to realize that he’d never become the company president, the senior executive who felt that she had sacrificed her life—and her spirit—for her job, and the technician who was bored stiff with his unchallenging assignments. Typical is the case of one productive and well-respected middle manager in his late forties. He was sandwiched between obligations at the office and at home, and his work group was demoralized after two rounds of downsizing. The company’s structure had flattened, leaving fewer possibilities than ever for promotion, and he felt stalled. “This isn’t how my life and career were supposed to play out,” he told the employee counselor. “I don’t know how much longer I can cope.”

Like adolescence, middlescence can be a time of frustration, confusion, and alienation but also a time of self-discovery, new direction, and fresh beginnings. Today, millions of midcareer men and women are wrestling with middlescence—looking for ways to balance job responsibilities, family, and leisure while hoping to find new meaning in their work.

Midcareer employees—those between the ages of 35 and 54—make up more than half the workforce. One in four has managerial or supervisory responsibility. When in June 2004 we at Age Wave and the Concours Group conducted a survey with Harris Interactive of more than 7,700 U.S. workers, we found that people in this age bracket work longer hours than their older and younger counterparts, with 30% saying they put in 50 or more hours per week. Yet only 43% are passionate about their jobs, just 33% feel energized by their work, 36% say they feel that they are in dead-end jobs, and more than 40% report feelings of burnout.

Midcareer employees are the least likely to say that their workplace is congenial and fun or that it offers ample opportunity to try new things. As a group, they have the lowest satisfaction rates with their immediate managers and the least confidence in top executives. Only one in three agrees that top management displays integrity or commitment to employee development, and one in four often disagrees with the organization’s policies on important employee matters. A fifth are seeking opportunities in other organizations, and a similar percentage are looking for a major career change. But 85% believe that career changes are very difficult these days. Family and financial pressures outside work make them conservative in their career choices, and many cannot afford moves that would involve cuts in pay or benefits. Other research has yielded similar findings: According to a 2005 Conference Board survey, the largest decline in job satisfaction over the past ten years occurred among workers between the ages of 35 and 44, and the second largest decline was among those aged 45 to 54. In short, far too many midcareer employees are working more, enjoying it less, and looking for alternatives.
The Problems

Middlescent restlessness isn’t new, but it plays out differently in different generations. It seems to be hitting today’s midcareer workers harder than it hit their predecessors. Increased longevity, delayed (and multiple) marriages, and large numbers of two-career households have altered family patterns such that middlescents are often sandwiched at home between raising children and caring for aging parents precisely at the time when their job responsibilities are peaking. Increased longevity also means that the average 50 year old today could be looking forward to 30 years or more of healthy, active life. That can be a blessing—time enough to learn new skills, start another career, build an entrepreneurial business, or shift priorities to give back to society. Or it can be a curse—for those without the financial resources to chart their own course, who instead face the prospect of having to work indefinitely at a job they don’t really enjoy. Either way, it’s a problem for their current employers.

Generationally, most of today’s (and all of the older) midcareer employees are baby boomers, their values forged in the midst of the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the civil rights and women’s rights movements. In middlescence many are asking themselves: Have I had the impact I expected to have? How can I make the next phase of my life as meaningful as possible? Earlier generations looked to their work for security and material success; the way to combat restlessness was usually to hunker down and focus on one’s current job. Many of today’s idealistic yet frustrated boomers have different goals—they’d be willing to trade some of their current success for greater significance in their lives and work, even if that means doing something altogether different.

Companies are ill-prepared to manage middlescence because it is so pervasive, largely invisible, and culturally uncharted. Many midcareer men and women may crave a fresh start but don’t tell their bosses how they feel (see the exhibit “Sources of Frustration”). Employers view these people as solid corporate citizens, bank on their loyalty and commitment, and assume they’re doing fine.
Sidebar IconSources of Frustration

That neglect is bad for business: Many companies risk losing some of their best people, who may opt for early retirement or seek more exciting work elsewhere. Firms are too often blindsided when valuable people up and quit. We met, for instance, with executives at an aerospace company that had recently lost a midcareer technical manager who wanted to grow but couldn’t see any near term possibilities for advancement. His bosses knew this but did nothing, so the employee left to start his own consulting firm. In retrospect, the executives recognized that they could have easily found ways to make his job more interesting and challenging. As it is, they’re hoping he’ll eventually return.