What defines success in a career? Ask most people, and they'll point to obvious metrics: salary figures and impressive titles. Open any business publication, and you'll find an ever-shifting parade of workplace trends — from finding your purpose to living your values to achieving work-life harmony. Yet the reality of what makes a career truly rewarding defies simple categorization. Real career fulfillment emerges from something both more straightforward and more nuanced: the powerful intersection of many distinct attributes and experiences coming together to create something extraordinary.
This is evident in Europe, where the latest benchmark data from our Center for Workforce Transformation shows that employee engagement, one outcome of a fulfilling career, currently sits at 75.6%, below the global average of 79.3%. While financial security and career advancement are undoubtedly important parts of career fulfillment, so are intrinsic factors such as purpose, personal growth and development, and alignment with values. These factors take on particular significance in the European context, where employee well-being has hit concerning lows, dropping below pre-pandemic levels. Currently, 54% of European employees feel good about their career opportunities, leaving a lot of room to discover the building blocks of the best possible career.
Our Methodology
Researchers at Perceptyx’s Center for Workforce Transformation conducted a comprehensive, two-part study to understand what constitutes a fulfilling career. Beginning with a pilot survey of more than 1,500 working adults across all major industries and job levels, we developed and refined a framework of 10 key attributes. Our initial survey included over 100 items designed to measure the breadth and depth of career satisfaction dimensions identified by industrial-organizational psychologists.
Through rigorous psychometric analysis and data cleansing, we narrowed to a 30-item assessment measuring these 10 unique attributes. We then expanded our research to poll 3,700 U.S. workers and 3,200 workers across 14 European countries. This extensive European sample was designed to represent the largest economies on the continent to represent the broadest sample of workers. This approach allowed us to identify both universal patterns and important cultural nuances in career satisfaction, revealing how fulfillment manifests differently across various European contexts.
The Key Attributes of a Fulfilling Career
Our research demonstrates that career success isn't about finding a role or field that achieves a single factor or quality. Instead, it comes from an accumulation of multiple attributes that span personal ambitions, professional goals, and workplace dynamics. Some attributes are deeply personal and tied to the individual and field chosen, while others are directly linked to your workplace environment. Many attributes overlap both domains, highlighting the interplay between career field and organizational fit.
Here are the 10 attributes that define a fulfilling career:
Career Pride (51% have this attribute)
Career Pride reflects a deep sense of accomplishment in one's professional journey. It is both the intrinsic satisfaction that comes with career achievements and the delight in sharing those achievements with others, often with a sense that others will find the work impressive or prestigious.
Career Identity (39% have this attribute)
Career Identity refers to the extent to which your professional role aligns with your sense of self. It's the idea that your professional identity authentically reflects your personal identity such that career success and personal success are intertwined.
Career-Life Integration (52% have this attribute)
Career-Life Integration captures the interplay between the professional and the personal. Distinct from "balance," which assumes hard boundaries, integration is more fluid, creating time for participation in all of the important moments across life's domains.
Stability (39% have this attribute)
Stability reflects the assurance of financial security, job continuity, and predictability in a career. It provides a foundation of safety, allowing individuals to support themselves while adapting to the many disruptions in the job market and the evolving skills needed for future roles.
Purpose (41% have this attribute)
Purpose is the ability to contribute to the broader good or something larger than yourself through your career. Workers high in this attribute often see their daily tasks as part of a greater mission, whether advancing societal goals, helping others, or creating lasting impact.
Values Alignment (46% have this attribute)
Values alignment is the compatibility between an individual's personal ethics and those reflected in the type of work they do and the organization they work for. Employees high in this attribute are honored to share their organization's values with others because they match their own.
Autonomy (51% have this attribute)
Autonomy refers to the control individuals have over their work, including decision-making, scheduling, and how the work gets done. Defining the outcomes instead of the steps promotes ownership, enabling workers to use their strengths to get the job done as they see fit.
Connectedness (44% have this attribute)
Connectedness highlights the quality and depth of relationships formed within your workplace and your career field in general. It includes meaningful bonds with colleagues, mentors, and teams, fostering a sense of belonging, mutual support, and a caring community.
Growth & Development (47% have this attribute)
Growth & Development represents opportunities for continuous learning, skill enhancement, and career stretching. Importantly, this attribute is not specifically about growth in title or prestige, but about creating the right challenges to improve each day, each month, and each year.
Organizational Satisfaction (48% have this attribute)
Organizational Satisfaction captures how well the workplace embodies the culture an individual wants. It is a sense of pride about being associated with a specific organization (as distinct from the Career Pride attribute discussed earlier) and a willingness to recommend the organization to future employees as well as future customers.
The Far-Reaching Impact of Career Fulfillment in Europe
A fulfilling career is about far more than just liking the work you do or being happy where you do it. For European workers, a fulfilling career improves their day-to-day experience, reduces stress, and fosters long-term life satisfaction. While European workers generally reported lower scores than their American counterparts on each of the attributes associated with a fulfilling career, the importance of building a multi-faceted career remains equally crucial.
Our study identified three important areas where career fulfillment matters most for European workers:
Day-to-Day Health and Well-Being
These outcomes reflect how career fulfillment shapes an individual's daily life. For European workers, the connection with colleagues emerged as particularly significant. Among the 10 career attributes, Stability, Connectedness, and Growth & Development emerged as key drivers of individual health outcomes.
Employees who score highly in Connectedness are 1.4x more likely to say their physical health has improved over the prior year and 1.5x more likely to report improvements in their mental health. This emphasis on workplace relationships distinguishes European workers from their global counterparts, highlighting the importance of strong professional bonds in European workplace culture.
When it comes to managing stress, Career-Life Integration takes precedence, with highly-scoring employees 2x more likely to report low stress. That's followed by Organizational Satisfaction (1.2x), Stability (1.2x), and Connectedness (1.1x), demonstrating how multiple attributes work together to support employee well-being.
Organizational Impact
These measures represent an individual's contributions to the workplace and include improvements in quality and quantity of work, employee engagement, and whether individuals are actively seeking new job opportunities — all key indicators of business success. Making a positive impact on one's organization is as good for employees as it is for the organizations employing them.
For European workers, Growth & Development and Connectedness emerged as unique drivers of organizational contribution. Employees experiencing a career rich in Growth & Development are twice as likely to say their productivity and quality have increased since this time last year. Connection to co-workers also proved particularly important in the European context, making employees 1.9x as likely to have increased their productivity and quality of work. Additionally, Career Pride emerged as a key predictor of innovation in Europe, while it doesn't rank as highly in the U.S.
Long-Term Life Satisfaction
A fulfilling career has a lasting influence, shaping how individuals view their lives as a whole. We assessed this using measures such as overall life satisfaction and whether employees would choose the same career path again if they were just starting out.
When it comes to the life satisfaction outcomes researchers studied, two key career fulfillment attributes stood out consistently across both European and U.S. populations: Career Pride and Organizational Satisfaction. The data show that for long-term life satisfaction, the career you choose is as important as the organization you choose to work for.
Employees who score highly in Career Pride are 1.2x more likely to say that, when looking back, they are satisfied with their lives and 1.5x more likely to say they would choose the same career if they had to do it over again. Those scoring highly in Organizational Satisfaction showed similar results, reinforcing the idea that where you work matters as much as what you do.
Regional Nuances in Career Fulfillment
While our research reveals universal patterns in what makes a career fulfilling, there are notable differences in how these attributes manifest across regions. For example, the most important drivers of improved mental health in the U.S. are Stability and Purpose, while European workers prioritize Connectedness and Growth & Development. This emphasis on workplace relationships and continuous development reflects distinct cultural values and workplace expectations in European organizations.
Organizations with employees spanning multiple continents should ensure they understand these nuanced differences while recognizing the broad commonalities that exist between these groups. This balanced approach is essential when working with employees to develop fulfilling career paths that resonate with their cultural context while supporting universal human needs for growth, connection, and purpose.
Uncover What Your People Need to Experience Fulfilling Careers
This overview only scratches the surface of our findings about career fulfillment in Europe and globally. Download A Formula for Fulfilling Work: The 10 Attributes that Drive Personal and Organizational Impact to learn more about how these attributes manifest across different regions and how organizations can support their employees in building truly fulfilling careers.