Your questions about career health answered
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How can you assess and improve your career health like physical wellness?
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What professional resources help with career challenges and development?
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Why focus on consistent habits over quick career fixes?
In a labour market shaped by restructuring, technological change, and longer working lives, career health has become just as important as physical well-being. Just as staying in shape is a constant work in progress, maintaining optimal career health also requires intention and consistency.
Think about it this way: being stuck in a career rut can feel a lot like going on a diet and not seeing results. You might feel like you’re putting in the work, but without strong fundamentals and a disciplined approach, your efforts are not gaining traction.
What drives success in careers and health alike? There’s no secret hack, but rather a combination of positive attitudes, discipline, and clear goals that allow for follow-through.
Shape your career future. Get guidance to grow your career long-term with MyCareersFuture.
This guide applies healthy lifestyle principles to career health and planning, offering a more holistic and empowered career journey ahead.
Conduct a career health self-assessment of attitudes and habits
We already know what it takes to nourish our bodies: balanced nutrition, regular physical activity, and stress management. But you may not have that same awareness of what’s necessary for healthy career growth.
With the average adult spending a third of their lives at work, it’s just as essential for individuals to know how to keep their career health in check the same way they would their physical bodies.
After all, what happens during our nine to five is likely to affect our mood and energy in the after working hours from five to nine. Taking the first step to develop better awareness on ways to improve how we feel and perform at work will in turn do wonders for your overall wellbeing.
Even without major red flags or workplace challenges, the adage stands — prevention is better than cure. With better understanding of factors affecting your career health, you can nip potential problems in the bud before they lead to bigger issues like career dissatisfaction, stress, or burnout.
To find out more about how individuals can begin to actively take charge of their career health, we spoke to Frangky Hong, Head of Emerging Programmes at Lifelong Learning Institute, Ingeus, who shared some common problems that might affect one’s career wellbeing.
Frangky identified several unhealthy career patterns that need attention: unclear direction, complacency in skill development, fear of change, resistance to feedback, and poor networking skills.
To strive for better career health, Frangky advises that individuals adopt strategic career planning, as well as embrace flexibility, optimism, and continuous learning.
Try this exercise for a quick self-assessment on your career health to help you uncover issues that you can address, improve, or correct for better long-term career health. Ask yourself the following:
- What are some challenges you’ve been facing at work, and what may be some of the underlying factors? Are they internal or external, and what can you do to resolve these issues?
- Do you require a complete reset, such as a change of career path, or just some tweaks?
- Is there a skills gap you would like to address before you move forward?
By taking the time to reflect on where you currently stand, you gain clarity on what’s working, what isn’t, and where to focus your energy moving forward. If you’re looking to stay and work through these in your current role, these insights could help you frame your goals or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the year, allowing both you and your supervisor to witness, actualise, and track your progress.
“If workers feel stuck or lost in their career, they should take steps to reflect on their career attributes to identify gaps and upskill or reskill when necessary,” Frangky explained.
Should the assessment reveal feelings of imposter syndrome or a struggle to keep up with new tech like Artificial Intelligence (AI), consider upskilling with relevant SkillsFuture courses. It’s also advisable to let your supervisor in on this decision so that you work in tandem to bolster your learning process.
In conducting this self-assessment regularly, you’ll develop a heightened self-awareness on your career health and set a strong foundation for sustainable professional development.
Consult a professional or sign up for training
We can usually sense when something’s off with our health. However, we may not always have the tools or knowledge to get to the root of the problem. This is when we would seek help: a doctor to treat illnesses, or a personal trainer to tackle physical insecurities.
As it turns out, the same can be applied to our career. After a self-assessment, you may spot issues plaguing your career health but still need clarity on how to fix it. A career advisor or coach can help uncover blind spots and provide tailored guidance using proven frameworks and tools.
If you need clarity on your next steps or want to make more informed decisions toward your career goals, consider a session with the professionals below for a holistic approach to long-term career planning:
- Career Coaching: Receive personalised guidance from coaches who will help you assess your strengths and gaps to build actionable plans.
- Volunteer Career Advisors: Get industry insights from career veterans to make more informed decisions about your next steps.
- Skills and Training Advisory: Speak to a Skills Ambassador to find out about suitable courses that can support your career growth.
Like a fitness trainer, they can help you own your actions to meet your objectives. For example, are you putting in effort to actualise your goals, or holding unrealistic expectations? Your coach or advisor can clarify the tangible and actionable steps to take so you achieve more at work.
Here’s what typically happens in a career coaching session, as shared by Frangky. It opens with an honest discussion about your career, such as your feelings towards your current trajectory and goals you’d like to achieve.
When necessary, the career coach might use conversational or assessment tools to uncover your behaviours and attitudes towards work. After underlying challenges are identified, you and the coach may work collaboratively to create an action plan, so you move with confidence and clarity.
Prioritise building on consistent habits, not quick fixes
Like the saying ‘easy come, easy go’, crash diets rarely produce lasting fitness. Similarly, the quick wins you get from career hacks are rarely the way forward if you’re looking for meaningful progress in the long run.
You may come across a range of career “hacks” shared by fellow professionals on LinkedIn or other social media platforms. These can include advice such as putting in excessive overtime to stay visible, prioritising rapid job hopping for higher pay, or focusing more on optics than impact.
While these approaches may deliver short-term gains, it is worth pausing to consider what they mean for your longer-term career growth. Ask yourself:
- Is this practice sustainable and meaningful for my career growth?
- Is this what I want to be known for professionally?
Superficial fixes alone will not deepen your knowhow or give you the momentum to become a respectable expert in your field. Worse, these shortcuts only aid you in evading difficult but necessary lessons for growth.
Instead of trying to hack your way up the career ladder, focus on what will truly nurture your work ethic and professional capabilities. This could include intentionally sharpening your skills, seeking constructive feedback from your colleagues, networking meaningfully, and setting aside time for self-reflection.
These small, repeatable actions compound over time. By prioritising growth, you build the resilience to learn from feedback and earn respect from fellow industry partners, thereby improving long-term career health.
Remain agile and adaptable
Your body in your 50s will not feel or function the same way it did in your 20s or 30s — that’s just life. As you move through the different stages of your career, the factors shaping your trajectory will inevitably change.
Roles can become obsolete, and skills can lose relevance. Taking a holistic approach to your career health requires understanding your own evolving abilities, needs, and external factors facing your industry.
To stay adaptable, Frangky suggests continuous lifelong learning to diversify your skills. This is vital now as more companies are embracing AI and automation tools to drive workplace productivity, prompting job redesign. To stay ahead of the curve, workers will need the skills to work collaboratively with new technologies, combining high-speed processing from machine learning tools with their own creative and critical thinking abilities.
Apart from upskilling for AI and technology adoption, workers can also look at combining technical expertise with soft skills.
For instance, a data analyst with expertise in interpreting data can build transferable soft skills like problem-solving and stakeholder communication. With a stronger grasp on techniques like data visualisation, they would be able to build cohesive narratives when presenting datapoints to tell persuasive, clear, and engaging stories. This makes their work easier to understand, and can even open doors to higher-impact, decision-making roles.
Hence, building a repertoire of diversified and transferable skills can improve your career health, and expose you to exciting pathways such as career pivots or leadership opportunities.
So, just as any gym-goer trains different muscle groups, you should also aim to balance your development in hard and soft skills that you can tap on even through career switches. After all, it’s about remaining agile through the changing landscapes.
Frangky also noted the importance of maintaining and growing one’s network as a key to unlocking better opportunities. To expand your network, seize opportunities such as cross-functional collaborations or external partnerships. If these opportunities are few and far between, consider attending virtual or in-person career fairs to exchange ideas and insights with fellow industry professionals.
Alternatively, LinkedIn could be a useful way to foster strong professional relationships by engaging thoughtfully with industry discussions or areas of interests. In offering valued insights and thoughtful commentary, people may start to recognise your voice and offer to connect with you.
Taking care of both your personal and career well-being
Lastly, remember that the grass is greener where you water it. Achieving optimal career health requires sound knowledge, proactive efforts, and consistent habits. Invest well in your own career and personal development, and the results will follow.
Many of us put a lot of our time and effort into work, and it often becomes a defining part of our identity and lives. With that, a positive career health and outlook can also uplift our self-confidence, mood, and personal well-being. Give yourself the time and space to breathe through difficult periods at work and remember to space out time away for self-care and a mental health recharge.
Ultimately, your career and personal health share a reciprocal relationship. Taking care of yourself helps you perform better at work, and creating better career habits can go a long way in shaping a healthier, more fulfilling life.
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