Why do we work? For most of us, it is a question of income – providing income to afford where we live, or our lifestyle. For others, it’s a pastime – something to enjoy as a hobby, or perhaps as we enter retirement. Some even choose to use work as a financial support, so they can upskill and further advance their qualifications through online education courses.
No matter where or why you choose to work, employment is often a big part of someone’s identity. It can also be a significant driver between the thoughts and feelings you might have outside of work – if you’re experiencing considerable stress at work, you may have those emotions leak into your home life. Are there strategies that we can use to emerge as happy people?
Not All Workplaces Are Happy
Let’s face facts – not all workplaces are happy, and that’s not necessarily because the job is hard, or the team is mean – sometimes work just sucks, and you’d rather be anywhere else. No employer is immune from it – work can sometimes be disengaging, disruptive, and even to some extent, depressing.
Data from research group Gallup highlighted how many workplaces across Australia and New Zealand are not as happy as you’d first think. In data published in the State of the Global Workplace Report, four in ten employees indicated they were struggling or suffering at work. While this was less than the global average of 58%, it’s a stark reminder of how workplaces can feel different things – and often don’t match what individuals may perceive at any given point in time.
You Are Not Alone
How do we begin to tackle the challenge of a workforce that’s struggling? While days like R U OK are a nice way to highlight the issues, data shows that there’s still a significant proportion of the workforce that is simply unlikely or unwilling to seek help. So what can be done to address this?
It’s important to recognise that just because you struggle, it doesn’t mean you have to tackle it alone. Workplaces can help develop valuable skills, such as resilience and reflection, that allow workers to take the impact of events, and hone it from a potentially distressing event to something that can help you grow and develop as an employee.
The Importance of Resilience
It can often seem like people are losing their jobs, left, right, and centre. LinkedIn is an incredible tool for connecting with former colleagues – but for professional workers, much like its filtered social media cousin Instagram, it can portray an unrealistic standard of a worker’s career.
According to data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, almost 10% of Australian workers demonstrated some form of job mobility in the year ending February 2023. That is, they either left their job, changed their hours, or changed industry. While it can sometimes seem like all of those 2.3 million people lost their jobs, in reality, there’s a range of different reasons that people leave work – such as the 54% that simply wanted a change, or left to acquire a better job.
Major workplace events like job losses, workplace incidents, and traumatic events, can impact workers in many different ways. Developing strategies to not only help rationalise these events but to help process and accept them as a way of life, is also known as developing resilience – which can be an immensely powerful skill to have in the workplace.
Resilience can also have benefits across the workforce – for example, having an ingrained culture that fosters resilience across an organisation can help when major restructuring decisions are made. It can help to fuel a sense of trust and reassurance – and remind workers that while things will change – they will be ok.
Using Reflection To Learn Lessons
One of the simplest, yet most effective strategies that you can use in a workplace to thrive is to reflect on the work that you do. Consider writing a reflective journal, about the work that you’ve done over some time, whether it be a week or a fortnight.
Using a structure like the STAR writing method to develop journal entries can be an effective way of not only standardising your reflections but also structuring them in such a way that it is easy to refer to if you need to look back on prior reflections when working on new projects. By following a method that outlines the process that you used to work through a problem, you can help prepare yourself for future, more challenging projects, with the knowledge that you’ve worked on projects that have led you to this moment.
Workplaces often experience change – and in most situations, that’s a good thing. With change, comes uncertainty, which can cause feelings of distress. By developing a level of resilience in your skillset, you can prepare yourself for challenges on the horizon, while also providing yourself the necessary skills to thrive in an increasingly challenging workplace.
