Working in Higher Ed IT: Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Abstract

Work culture has changed over the past 50 years. In the 1960s, men went to work, women stayed home or had gender-specific jobs like secretaries and teachers until they had children of their own. The cliché, gold watch, was known as a retirement gift for those men who had served the same business until retirement. Managers were trained to find holes in a person's work history and stay away from those jumping from job to job every few years. Today's work culture has had a paradigm shift as younger generations have different values and ideas about their work culture. Employees of today have different expectations for their time spent working, and they stay in a job as long as they are providing something of value and learning. Once they have mastered the skills and knowledge from a job, they move on to another job that will teach them new skills and knowledge. A higher education job with an information technology services (ITS) team can be very challenging and very rewarding, but how long does an employee stay? What are the signs that they need to try something new or different? As employees, we put an emotional investment into our jobs, and the thoughts of leaving a job usually bring fear. If the time has come when employees are not engaging in their work, then it may be time to be brave, tune up the resume, and take a different road-amazing things could happen!