There’s a familiar feeling that tends to surface after a decent break, particularly at the start of a new year.
People return to work and, on the surface, nothing has changed. The role is the same, the organisation is the same, and the expectations are the same. Yet the way it feels to step back into it is noticeably different. Time away creates just enough distance to notice patterns that usually get ignored, and once that awareness sets in, it’s hard to simply slip back into autopilot.
The thought that shows up at this point isn’t usually very clear or well-defined. It’s rarely framed around skills, career pathways, or long-term strategy. It’s much simpler than that. There’s just a sense that there must be something better out there than repeating the same year again.
What’s interesting is that, at this stage, most people don’t think about what they’re already good at. They don’t recognise their day-to-day work as a collection of skills that could be applied elsewhere. Analysing problems, questioning why things are done a certain way, reviewing processes, spotting gaps, and trying to improve how work actually happens all feel like “just part of the job”, not something transferable or valuable in its own right.
Because those skills are so familiar, they’re easy to overlook. They don’t feel special. They don’t feel like a pathway. They just feel like effort. So, when people start looking for something better, they tend to look outward instead, assuming the answer must involve a completely different role, industry, or direction.
And in doing so, they often miss the fact that the foundation for a different path may already be there, simply unnamed and unrecognised.
Think of it like this.
Most people use their skills the same way they use a phone they’ve owned for years. It does what it needs to do, so they don’t think much about it. They use the basics every day and rarely stop to consider what else is already there, simply because nothing feels broken or unfamiliar.
That’s often what’s happening after a break, when the feeling of “there must be something better out there” shows up. The issue isn’t a lack of capability. It’s that the skills being used every day have never been named or recognised as transferable. Until someone points them out, they remain invisible, even though they’ve been doing the work all along.
“The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read, but the person who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
- Alvin Toffler (American futurist and author)
That sense that there must be something better out there isn’t just a post-holiday feeling. The global data is starting to reflect it. In the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, analytical thinking continues to rank as the most in-demand skill among employers, alongside leadership, resilience, technological literacy, and quality control. These are not future skills or specialist capabilities. They are skills many people are already using in their current roles, often without ever recognising them as transferable or career-shaping.
What’s particularly relevant is where job growth is expected. The report identifies roles such as compliance officers, risk management specialists, and auditors as areas of net growth globally, driven by increasing regulation, technological change, and the need for stronger governance and assurance.
At the same time, employers expect a large proportion of the workforce to reskill or shift into adjacent roles rather than start again from scratch. This reinforces a simple point: the path forward for many people isn’t about finding something completely different, but about recognising the skills they already have and applying them in roles where those skills are explicitly valued, such as auditing within ISO management systems.
Before looking outward for something better, it’s worth pausing to look at the work you’re already doing through a slightly different lens. Many roles involve activities that don’t get labelled as “skills” because they feel routine or expected, even though they require judgement, structure, and critical thinking.
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Does this sound familiar in your |
This way of working shows up in … |
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You’re often the person who is asked to check whether something makes sense before it’s finalised, or to sense-check decisions, documents, or processes. |
Auditing, compliance, ISO management system roles. |
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You regularly notice gaps, inconsistencies, or things that don’t quite line up, and you ask questions to understand what’s really happening. |
Auditing, risk management roles. |
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You document, review, or update procedures, actions, or records, often translating requirements into something practical that others can actually follow. |
Compliance roles, ISO auditing, management system implementation and maintenance. |
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You tend to follow actions, issues, or decisions through to completion, rather than letting them fade away once they’ve been noted. |
Management system implementation and maintenance, risk management and assurance roles. |
The examples above aren’t a checklist or a career test. They’re simply prompts designed to help you notice patterns in how you already work, and where that way of thinking naturally shows up in roles like compliance, risk management, and auditing.
This article is just the beginning. Join us for the extended discussion on the podcast, available on Spotify and YouTube.