The companies that are driving young people into early-career burnout

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There are companies with high turnover of young employees, which can harm professionals right at the beginning of their careers. Sarah has always dreamed of working in the fashion industry. At the age of 21, she decided to move to London and pursue her dream, pursuing the career she loved. “Like many other young people, I was passionate about fashion,” she says. “But the reality was not so glamorous.” After working for less than a year in fashion retail, Sarah landed a job as an e-commerce assistant at the headquarters of a global luxury brand. In both jobs, she was surrounded by people her own age and like-minded people. They all wanted to succeed in the fashion world. “It’s like a creative industry: young people always like to work in it,” she says. “And the benefits are good, even in sales: we got products at deep discounts all the time.” But Sarah adds that there has always been high turnover in the office, especially among lower-level employees. “Young employees quit all the time,” according to Sarah. “An 18-year-old intern only stayed a week when she realized that her job was essentially low-paid manual labor, with long hours simply loading and packing clothes returned from photo shoots.” “The interns who stayed on the job for months ended up resigning with burnout”, she says. “There was just a continual turnover of impressionable young professionals and nothing was done about it. It became a test of who had the most stamina.” Sarah stayed at that job for two years. The excitement of working in the fashion industry soon turned to boredom and frustration. “Administrative tasks for long hours and low pay,” she says. As management did not offer a clear career path, nor was there a sense of progress, Sarah says her job ultimately immobilized her and she quit. “Management and employees knew it was a competitive workplace – that their job would always be in high demand,” according to Sarah. “If you left, you’d be replaced by another young professional excited to be there.” Experts say there are many companies that specifically hire recent college graduates who are trying to pursue their passions – often in competitive or even “glamorous” careers. In some cases, it can be great for these professionals, who are looking for a way to break into an industry of their dreams. But young employees can sometimes become disheartened in strenuous low-paying roles, as employers know that potential vacancies will always be highly coveted. These situations can make professionals at the beginning of their careers, who are looking to establish themselves, vulnerable to burnout or disillusionment right at the beginning of their professional lives. ‘Without the shadows of experience’ Many jobs are formed with the expectation that young professionals will grow within the company. There are often defined paths to promotion and goals to be achieved. Sometimes companies even offer training and development programs to guide newly hired employees into higher positions. Even if progress is laborious, many employers prefer to invest in professionals who stay with the company. But experts say other companies take a different approach. They form infrastructures in which they hire young employees with little or no opportunity for advancement and clog them with laborious tasks. In these situations, companies often expect these young professionals to leave at some point, either because they are at a dead end or due to job burnout. They are then usually replaced by other young professionals, who will suffer the same fate. Of course, young employees are often expected to push themselves in the early years of their careers, showing ambition, persistence and resilience in the workplace – in a sense, to gain experience. But not every young professional without an explicit path to growth will stay with a company that intentionally churns out its entry-level talent, according to Professor Helen Hughes of the University of Leeds Business School in the UK. As an example, she cites the public relations industry, where entry-level, lower-paying roles “fit within a person’s career trajectory – the expectation is that in the early stages, you need to take on junior-level roles before you can progress. .” But some companies choose to form what Hughes calls a “short-sighted model.” And there are many reasons why companies decide to turn over their young employees instead of investing in them. First, there are the financial implications. New graduates start at the bottom of the ladder with starting salaries and don’t have the same compensation expectations as experienced workers. “Employers often hire new graduates so they can pay less,” according to Dominik Raškaj, marketing manager at Croatia-based job site Posao.hr. “It is, in fact, a source of cheap and undervalued labor.” In addition, novice professionals can be malleable and willing to accept certain working conditions. “The less experience an employee has, the more open-minded they are and generally the more accepting they are in a work environment,” says Hughes. “They don’t have the shadows of experience, which is to the advantage of the employer – they can be molded more easily.” But this can leave young professionals looking to break into a career susceptible to low-paying jobs or toxic work environments. “New graduates can be vulnerable to exploitation because they don’t have the experience to know what’s right and what’s not,” says Hughes. “New graduates can get the feeling that everything is really competitive, so they are desperate to accept a challenging position that may not offer the best conditions.” ‘It can distort a person’s vision’ In these situations, the immediate risk is burnout. Professionals can be overwhelmed by long hours and huge workloads or insignificant tasks. And, due to their lack of experience, they may be unable to defend their interests. This can leave employees frustrated at best or high-stress, as Sarah was. But many feel they have no choice but to stay, especially if they are trying to break into certain sectors where entry is very difficult. And for young professionals desperate to establish themselves in a competitive career, facing long hours and poor working conditions, the effects can be treacherous. “Some may decide to stay until burnout because they’re early in their careers,” says Hughes. “But without past experiences to guide them, the risk is that they accept that that’s what the job market offers, bad conditions become normal and young professionals end up thinking that’s all they want. OK.” This can have serious and lasting effects for these young professionals, undermining their expectations of what it means to be in the workforce. “You see people start to leave, you reduce efforts and you exhibit silent resignation behaviors,” says Jim Harter, chief scientist for workplace management and well-being at US research firm Gallup. “It can distort a person’s view of what a career means and their relationship to work.” “New college graduates can be so preoccupied with getting a job that they think anything goes,” adds Hughes. But working hard for long periods at low wages with no solution in sight has long-term consequences. “You adjust to the norms around you – bad norms – early on in your career,” he says. The good news is that today’s employee-friendly job market in many countries or sectors can offer young employees options if they feel they are being exploited in a role with no prospect of advancement, or the cost is getting too high. . “There are also now more questions being asked about new graduate jobs,” says Hughes. “And there are more complaints about poor working practices on social media, which means the pressure for change on companies that don’t look after their young workers is greater.” But even in an era of understaffing in many countries and online criticism, many of these toxic environments still exist. This means that it may be up to entry-level employees to recognize when they are in bad shape. Identifying this situation can be difficult, as employees with little work experience may not know the standards in an entry-level position, compared to a later stage. Sarah realized that her job was pushing her to the limit and quit. But instead of staying in the same industry, it took a different path. Now, she works for a creative agency outside of the fashion industry. Sarah says she is much happier in her new position, which offers clear opportunities for advancement, challenging work and varied daily tasks. “[A moda] it might have seemed like an awesome place to work,” she says, “but I realized that having a rewarding job is far more important than having a nice name on your resume.” Sarah’s last name is omitted for professional reasons. This entry was published in

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