The findings of a survey recently by McKinsey Quarterly look at the big moments that shape our careers. Thoroughly investigating the twists and turns in the career courses of nearly 900 international executives, the results indicate what motivates employees to change jobs, companies, and industries.

Career-shaping Events
McKinsey Quarterly examined what factors led to significant, long-term change in the work lives of the surveyed executives. In general, the respondents said they experienced about five career-changing moments that were most commonly prompted by a passion for a new industry, a new job opportunity, or diminished interest in a current position. Overwhelmingly, these career-changing moments had a positive effect on “intellectual interest of the job, compensation, and rank in the organization," according to McKinsey's global survey.

Study findings determined that the most pivotal event in the careers of most respondents occurred around the age of 30. In addition, executives around the globe said that the events having the most profound effect on their careers “originated largely at work, not from family considerations or changed personal aspirations.”

Results of a Career Shift
For nearly 40 per cent of respondents, and ranking as the most common outcome, a career-changing event meant taking a new job with a different company in a new industry. That shift amounts to a considerable change.

On the Holmes-Rahe social readjustment rating scale—which correlates how stressful life events can lead to illness—a career change holds the value of 36 “life change units”. Therefore, taking on a new career is as profound as experiencing the death of a close friend or going through a divorce.

Yet in light of this potential for anxiety, the majority of respondents noted that their career changes had a strongly positive effect. More than three-quarters of those surveyed said compensation, organizational rank, overall satisfaction, and engagement in their work all improved. Only a small portion (2-5 per cent) reported a negative effect while 8-19 per cent noted a neutral effect in these areas.

Work-Life Balance
Surprisingly, fewer career decisions are based upon work–life balance. Respondents chose it far less frequently as a factor in their pivotal career-change experiences than they did, for example, with events occurring in their personal life and at their workplace.

Despite 40 per cent of respondents reporting a struggle to balance personal and work commitments, only 14 per cent of men and 18 per cent of women said work-life balance was a defining factor in a career-changing moment.

"Executives seem to be basing fewer career decisions on work-life balance than might be expected given the attention this relationship receives and the number of people who have had difficulty with it,” write survey authors Pascal Baumgarten, Georges Desvaux and Sandrine Devillard. In this same vein, the survey also found that there are minimal differences in how parents and non-parents make career decisions.

What’s most notable is that the factors relating to work-life balance are neither particularly important in this connection nor particularly missed if they aren’t offered, regardless of whether the respondents have children,” the authors write. For example, only 5 per cent of respondents valued a work environment that was supportive of family and the same portion felt this was something companies should offer.

In spite of the lesser importance work-life balance holds, spouses played the largest role in helping the executives make their career-changing decisions. Additional influence comes from personal and work friends, managers, and mentors.

How Companies Manage Career Changes
For those businesses that helped steer the course of an employee’s pivotal career change, twice as many respondents reported support rather than no support. Yet a third of surveyed executives said their companies were uninvolved with their career change.

Reinforcing what employees value and find supportive, executives ranked the following elements as being important:

• Supporting career development
• Providing positive feedback or career opportunities
• Promoting employees and offering fair compensation
• Offering a mentoring or training program

Source : http://www.galtglobalreview.com