Labour as a factor of production has cost implications in the organization production system. The worth of labour is better measured in terms of the quality, efficiency, and timeliness of his or her output when compared to input such as investment in training, motivation, compensation, and other remunerations.

The ability of the organization to constantly expand its market through improved production and quick response to customers’ demands require that its workforce has the capacity to be innovative, creative and constantly evolving. A plateaud workforce could not be said to be evolving since it may appear that they may have gotten to the peak of their career.

Except where the organization takes deliberate action to enlarge jobs and at the same time devised job enrichment strategies otherwise the plateaued employees are more of a liability than being an asset.

Career plateau will become noticeable on productivity in the following areas:

• the continued commitment of organization scare resource to take care of employees whose productivity capability could no longer be expanded to meet the demand for production/service delivery/

• Increase in the severance package. The question has been while keeping a redundant employee or remains in an employment that does not provide with an opportunity for growth? Note that ultimately it will add to the numbers of years spent on the job and ultimately on the severance package.

• Loss of motivation and moral can result in low productivity. It is a universal fact that the expectation for promotion, role expansion, and salaries increment contributes to improvement in performance by an employee and the motivation to commit more effort and time to the needs of the organization.

• Except for jobs that are repetitive in nature and does not require creativity or any extraneous motivation; keeping an employee who is used to the position and who do not aspire to higher responsibility may be in the best interest of the business only in the short term as monotony will likely to set in after some time.

• One issue that affects employees whose career had plateaued is what we call the error of central tendency; this is the tendency of employees to cluster around the middle in the organization hierarchy without moving forward or backward thereby hindering others from attaining higher cadre in the hierarchy. This situation sometimes creates room for contamination syndrome in which other employees minds are poisoned against the organization as a place that does not reward performance or promote its personnel.

Continued to EFFECTS OF CAREER PLATEAU ON EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION AND PERFORMANCE