Take a deep breath and answer these questions honestly:

        Feeling a bit out of the loop? Are you getting called into the boss' office more often for petty infractions? Are you conspicuously left out of meetings? Still haven't been asked to submit a strategic plan for next year? When's the last time anyone asked for your opinion?

        All of these could be subtle — and disturbing — hints from your employer that you have overstayed your welcome.

        On the other hand, you may be asking yourself questions about your job satisfaction:

        Do you get the feeling that the company doesn't care about developing you for the long term? Are you bored? Is the company unwilling to transfer you because your bosses don't want to find someone new for your position? Are you stuck because you're good?

        All of these also could be indications that it's time to move on.

        In today's workplace, signs of impending change may be all too obvious or extremely low-key.

        Employment experts say it's important to tune in to unspoken messages.

        Knowing how to pick up the signs and understand the hidden messages can allow you to “see the headlights of that truck coming down the road,” said Tom LaBaugh, president of the Louisville career-transition firm LaBaugh & Associates.

        “What's happening is you have an inner-knowing intuition or inkling that "This is not right, something is wrong,'” said Linda Talley, an executive coach and author in Houston.
       

Sign can be subtle
               “But nobody has told you anything, and the big signs haven't come out. All your alarm bells are going off, but we tend not to trust ourselves. We rely on an external presence. We have to wait until somebody screams in our face.”

        When employers are putting the squeeze on an associate to move on, they rarely beat him or her over the head with their intentions, Mr. LaBaugh said.

        “They're subtleties, but if you have a feeling that the job is not working out and they're not listening and they're making decisions without you, and you can see that you are getting further and further away, that's the time to start updating your resume.”

        Everyday situations can communicate the message, he said: “Most of the time, a company will make it so uncomfortable for people — demands impossible to meet, put them in unattractive situations. Even in staff meetings, you're left out and even attacked pretty harshly, and you're defenseless. You find yourself questioning how you should behave.”

        Why should an employer encourage you to quit rather than fire you? “If an employer can send enough signals and get the person to leave, then they don't have to deal with issues like unemployment, severance pay, outplacement and lawsuits,” Mr. LaBaugh said.

        More than a few companies have developed the technique into a form of guerrilla downsizing.

        Mr. LaBaugh advises against employees confronting their bosses over such behavior: “I would get going on the job search and hang on at least long enough to get a severance package,” he said.

        On the other side of the desk, Marc Drizin, employee loyalty specialist with the Indianapolis office of Walker Information, a market-research firm, said only one in four employees nationally is considered truly loyal.
       

Keeping good workers
               “Those would be employees who plan to stay with the organization for the next two years and have a strong commitment to that organization,” he said.

        Mr. Drizin said the most loyal employees tend to have been with a company less than a year or more than 10 years.

        “It's the three- to five-year employees you tend to see having lower commitment and loyalty,” he said. “They're out of their honeymoon. They've realized there's politics going on in the organization. They might have learned all the skills they can at their current job. They're getting calls from headhunters.”

        Mr. Drizin advised companies to “re-recruit” employees in this three- to five-year group, focusing on ways to keep them challenged, energized and excited on the job.

        He said a common mistake employers make is to simply “throw money” at a demoralized employee. The afterglow of a pay raise wears off quickly.

        “You're beginning to see companies training people for job skills that they don't necessarily need today. But they might need it tomorrow. It's a whole lot cheaper to keep an employee than trying to find a new one.”

        That approach works if it's a skill the employee is excited about cross-training into, Mr. Drizin said.

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