Are you a career optimist or a headless chicken?

I just read some interesting research by the Bank Workers Charity, a charity set up over a century ago to provide education to orphans but, today, a charity that looks after the needs of redundant or sick (not cool, but ill) workers in finance.

They’ve been very busy lately.

One of the more interesting things that they’ve been up to is investigating the stresses and strains of bank workers, publishing a report late last year: Bank on your People: the state of the wellbeing and high performance culture in the Financial Sector.

The survey asked 546 people across a range of levels and functions to illustrate the concerns of employees in the financial sector between in their home lives and the conflict of those with their working lives.

Interesting.

The majority of the people in the survey are women, as are workers in banks, and a large number of the survey participants (30%) are over 45 years old.

Maybe in a worrying sign, 2 out of 5 are worried about their financial security, 1 in 3 struggle to pay their payments on debts and loans, and 1 in 4 have serious concerns about their personal debt.

And these are bankers (e.g. they’re just like you and I).

My favourite chart in the whole report however is on Page 17, and shows that bank workers fall into one of four categories with roughly a quarter of staff in each category.

A quarter are truly engaged in the bank’s business and have a passion for their work.

Unfortunately, the other three-quarters couldn’t give a toss, hate their work or spend all the time running around like headless chickens … or that’s the impression you get when you see the chart (double-click to enlarge):

What’s interesting is that:

1. these buckets of staff categorisation apply equally across all areas and levels of the organisation; and
2. this chart is probably true of any company’s organisation structure.

So, are you a career optimist?