Still Benefits To Spending Your Career At One Company?
Even though rare, staying at a company that offers steady growth, stability, and consistent pay raises commiserate to the cost of living poses advantages that are preferable to job hopping and support a population of one-company workers.
One company workers used to be the norm and relatively common. You graduated college, went to work at a company as your first job, stayed there until you retired, and then sat on your front porch with your spouse to wait for the kids and grandkids to come to visit. But these days, even before the great resignation, being a “lifer” was rare.
According to the BBC, many benefits come with joining the ranks of one company workers. If you’ve been at a company for years that has given you the opportunity to “move up” or learn new things, workers may not have the desire to leave.
Most people have the desire to feel like they are making a difference and growing–even if they don’t necessarily view themselves as “ambitious.” So companies that offer their employees pathways to growth, new positions, and mentorship will tend to have more one-company workers.
On the flip side, many people just view a job as a job. They want stability, a steady paycheck, a place to do what they were hired to do, and when they are done, they just want to come home and relax. Jobs that offer this also tend to have many one-company workers.
Although some people get curious about what else is “out there” and what other companies offer, that wanderlust can be quenched by yearly bumps in salary and stability. However, what happens when the job can no longer keep up with inflation and those raises, don’t make a difference anymore? One company workers may not be curious, but they may have to jump ship even if they don’t want to.
This situation started to occur as the cost of living in the US rose quickly in the last couple of years. This is also known as inflation. Typically, yearly raises of 3-5% that were common would cover that inflation. However, last year from 2021 to 2122, that number was 8.5%. This jump challenged one company workers as an 8.5% raise is fairly high.
In 2022, the average raise was reported at 4.6 %. That only covers a little more than half of the cost of living or inflation. Were one company workers seduced to go elsewhere? Well, some experts say that was one cause of the great resignation. And what caused the phenomenon of quiet quitting.
Workers who knew they no longer wanted to be left behind, especially if where they were working didn’t provide what their ambition required, just gave up and quietly looked for employment elsewhere.
At the same time, some supervisors started spying on workers to see what they were up to when they were working remotely. Even if you start out to be one of the one company workers, that would be enough to make you start to find new options.
For those workers who just want the steadiness of it all and are making ends meet, well, sometimes a recession or economic downturn happens and they are forced to make a change. Even the thought of this is enough to cause daily stress in a workplace
So, one-company workers are rarer and rarer as the economy turns volatile. But, those who have made the journey successfully, have a lot to look forward to. Retirement (or not) with or without waiting for the kids to visit. Those workers don’t retire and hopefully, get to live a life of adventure ahead of them.
