I often call mid-career employees Wallflowers.  They blend into the background, doing their thing, taking care of customers and supporting other staff.  These folks may not to get a lot of attention from management (who are watching the new employees and trying to “fix” the bad ones) and may not receive new training and development.

According to my last national benchmark on employee engagement, 45% of 3-5 year tenured employees are Fully Engaged, while 35% are Unengaged.  Only one in five feels Trapped in their job, the second lowest of any tenured group.  These employees recognize they have the skills to find another job, and their experience provides them a leg up to find another job if they so choose.

However, the wall-flower status of many of these employees is borne out in the way they look at their relationship with their supervisor.  These 3-5 year employees are two times more likely to feel negatively about their relationship with their supervisor than brand new employees (28% negative vs. 15% negative). 

Five work factors most influence these “mid-career” employees:  Daily Satisfaction, Reputation Management, Ethics/Diversity/Safety, Effective Senior Leadership, and Training & Development.  A review of how these 3-5 year employees feel about T&D shows why more than half of them are not engaged with their organization:

• Less than half of these employees (49%) agree their organization provides training and development that supports short and long term career objectives
• Slightly more than four in ten (42%) feel their organization is interested in helping them achieve their long term career objectives
• Slightly less than four in ten (38%) attend training programs/courses related to their job

As I explain in my upcoming book (A Manager’s Guide to Employee Engagement, World at Work, April 2008), it is understandable that supervisors and managers are reticent in providing training/advancement opportunities to talented staff.  These 3-5 year employees are more productive than less tenured staff. They have deeper relationships with customers and other staff.  They know more about the history of the company.

In order to engage these mid-career employees, you have to live by the following:

You have to train your employees so they can leave, or else they’ll leave.