Don’t let your job get you down

As more people say work is making them unhappy, MARIE-CLAIRE CHAPPET points out what disillusioned workers could do

IT WAS World Mental Health Day on Tuesday and the chances are that, while you sit at your desk in the office, this will be more relevant to you than ever before.

A report this year revealed that one in three “sick notes” handed out by GPs in Britain are now for mental health issues and, shockingly, more than five million workers are being signed off every year due to anxiety and depression.

More of us than ever now feel that our work life is actually affecting our mental health.

A not-so-cheering fact is that the UK currently has the lowest ranking for job satisfaction in the Western world, with nearly a quarter reporting feeling deeply unhappy at work.

So why are we so down? And, more what needs to change to fix it? Enter Dr Annie McKee. She is senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, and high-profile leadership consultant and has written a book called How to be Happy at Work . After years spent consulting in the public and private sectors, McKee was alarmed at how unhappiness was such a consistent problem among her clients.

“There have definitely been times when I have been unhappy at work,” she says, relaying how, as a single mother at 27, she took herself to college to finally pursue her career.

“But part of the reason I wrote this book was that it didn’t seem to matter what size or type of company it was, so many workers said: I want to do well at work, I really want to enjoy my work, but I’m miserable.”

She believes that our unhappiness, beyond any particulars about our individual office cultures, is tied to three intrinsic work myths that we have blindly believed for years: work has to be gruelling, how we feel about work doesn’t matter, importantly, and we cannot ask for anything more from work. Ultimately, we believe we are not meant to be happy at work.

“When we are unhappy and miserable and disengaged, we don’t give our best.

“Happy companies outperform their competitors by 20%,” she says

According to research by consultancy Robert Half, earlier this year workers in the UK highlighted three key factors affecting their job satisfaction: pride in their organisation, feeling appreciated, and being treated with fairness and respect.

Based on this, the onus for happiness at work can, and should, lie with the workplace.

“If we can help leaders understand themselves better, and understand the power that they have to either create good, happy work cultures, or the opposite, then we can make a difference in the minds of individual people who get up and go to work every day, and to the companies as well. “But companies strive for organisational success over personal success,” McKee notes.

“We’re in this hyper-competitive world where we are driving for short-term gain over longterm success. In that kind of environment, people learn that their boss will sacrifice them individually for the goal and target of the company.” It may also be why the UK freelance economy is flourishing.

Since 2009, it has grown by 25%, and there are an estimated two million freelance workers.

A survey conducted to coincide with World Mental Health Day by The Hoxby Collective, a global network of freelancers, showed that a third (33%) of workers surveyed claimed to suffer mental health issues as a direct result of working rigid hours. And an overwhelming 90% suffered from stress, 78% from anxiety and 52% from insomnia. Their conclusion was that the traditional “9-5” which has shifted to 8-6 for many) is inefficient and taking its toll.

However, our unhappiness at work is not all our boss’s fault. This view forms the backbone to McKee’s book, namely that we have more control over our work-based happiness than we think, and the misapprehension that we don’t is only making things worse.

She advises a reframing of your perception of your job; asking yourself how unhappy you really are and whether or not you have the power to change things for yourself, instead of waiting for someone to do it for you.

Her book urges a heavy degree of navelgazing, as she argues that by understanding what you want from work, you can better decide whether what you are doing is right for you.

Not recognising the need to make these changes is what McKee calls “Boiling Frog Syndrome”.

They wait for that great big wake-up call: getting sick or getting fired – but if the water feels warm, it probably is. Pretty soon it will be too hot.” Getting out of this hot water means breaking free of what McKee calls the “happiness traps” that work creates: overwork, money, ambition, “should” and helplessness.

“Overwork is overvalued,” she pithily remarks. “People are lauded for getting into work at 8am and reading e-mails at midnight.

“Nobody can work like that, compromising sleep, health and family, without one day waking up and realising that they are emotionally depleted.”

This is something that Lloyds Banking Group boss António Horta-Osório talked about at the weekend, when he revealed that his insomnia and inability to switch off reached such a crisis point that he had to be admitted to The Priory in order to rest, and stop a total physical collapse.

Prioritising money over health and happiness is, McKee notes, one of the primary reasons for work burnout, misery and the huge damage it can do to your mental health. Ambition can also fuel this. Interestingly, according to research, men are more likely than women to fall into these traps. One recent survey showed that 80% of women placed workplace happiness over salary, compared with 55% of men. Disturbingly, this fits with what disgraced Saatchi & Saatchi chairman Kevin Roberts claimed last year – when he blamed women’s “circular ambition to be happy” on the dearth of female CEOs.

Should we be worried about this? Is happiness a barricade to success? McKee vehemently disagrees.

“Happiness and success go hand in hand,” she says, and then pointedly adds: “And happiness comes first.” — The Daily Telegraph