Oh those sweet, sweet golden handcuffs…

Are APS incentives delivering unintended consequences in the form of golden handcuffs? Helena Cain explores this phenomenon and suggests how you might reflect on it for your own agency.

I have a few APS friends who complain, in seriously first-world tones, about their golden handcuffs. Not wanting to dob anyone in, I’ll remain vague, but these golden handcuffs seem to be very counter-productive to the objectives of a modern APS.

So what are these golden handcuffs?

As explained to me by those feeling the tightness of the golden handcuffs: these are the conditions that make it far too unattractive to leave their current jobs and departments, despite feeling bored, burned out, or bullied.  

Everyone reading this surely knows someone like this? The people I know are really nice people, they’ve built steady careers within the APS, they’ve worked as hard as anyone else, but they are no longer inspired, and don’t feel as if they are doing their best work at this point...