Healthy work bolsters one’s well-being.
On the other hand, toxic or dangerous workplaces are a risk to mental and physical health.
Whether you are an owner, manager, or an employee, fighting for healthy workplaces is key not only to individual well-being, but also to that of families and communities.
Every worker going home carries either positive, meaningful, work experiences (and a cheque) to their families and communities, or the opposite. So the impact will be for the better or for the worse.
The value of good work
The average adult spends roughly 40 hours per week at work or travelling for work. That is a significant portion of anyone’s 168 hour week. Sleep takes another 7 to 8 hours per day, let’s say 56 hours.
168 hours – 56 hours of sleep = 112 waking hours.
Of those waking hours, the 40 hours at work make up a whopping ⅓ (40/112) or more of all your waking hours!
So what happens at work is likely to have a significant impact on your health and well-being.
So does good work promote positive health outcomes?
In 2006, the UK government commissioned an investigation to answer that question. The investigators and subsequent report writers were renowned orthopedic surgeon Dr. Gordon Waddell and researcher Dr. A. Kim Burton.
You can read their full report on-line, but here is their conclusion:
There is a strong evidence base showing that work is generally good for physical and mental health and well-being. Worklessness is associated with poorer physical and mental health and well-being. Work can be therapeutic and can reverse the adverse health effects of unemployment. That is true for healthy people of working age, for many disabled people, for most people with common health problems and for social security beneficiaries. The provisos are that account must be taken of the nature and quality of work and its social context; jobs should be safe and accommodating. Overall, the beneficial effects of work outweigh the risks of work, and are greater than the harmful effects of long-term unemployment or prolonged sickness absence. Work is generally good for health and well-being.
UK Commissioned Report – “Is Work Good for Your Health and Well-Being?”
Specifically, they found that chronic worklessness, for whatever reason, is is associated with increased rates of death, suicide, high BMI, heart attack, depression, alcohol consumption, illicit drug use, accidents, poverty, alienation and criminality. The relative risk of increased mortality associated with being unemployed is 2.79 times someone happily employed.
To put it in more relatable terms, worklessness is a greater risk to well-being and longevity than smoking a pack a day or having type II diabetes.
And, by the way, this includes poorly planned retirement.
The risks of a toxic job
In Dying for a Paycheck, author Jeffery Pfeffer from Stanford Graduate School of Business has researched the other side of the work coin.
What about toxic workplaces? Surely they are bad for your health.
Sure enough. Some of his findings are graphed in Figure 1 below where the darker bar is the comparative risk to health by second hand smoke.
The odds ratio is the increased risk for a given work stressor, so for example, the top bar “Work-family conflict” has almost a 2 times increased risk for physical illness. So again, the risk to health of toxic work is on par with cigarette smoke (in this case 2nd hand).
Harvard Business Review study
In a large study in 2013, the Harvard Business Review also found significant negative effects both in employee health, and in their productivity, when workers’ legitimate needs were not met at their workplace.
Their survey of about 20,000 employees found that only 7% of workers have their core needs met at work (Figure 2). These include physical needs to rest and renew, emotional needs to feel cared for and valued, mental needs to be empowered to set boundaries and focus in an absorbed way, and spiritual needs to find a sense of meaning and purpose in their work.
Over half (59%) reported having no core needs met! This has huge ramifications not only on workers’ health, but also engagement and productivity.
Here is a detailed breakdown of the survey findings:
Your can download and read the full HBR Energy Project findings and recommendations here.
When work becomes your escape
We likely know people, or have had parents, seemingly overcommitted to their work. We now say they didn’t have a healthy “work-life balance.” Maybe even labelled them “workaholics.”
But for some, according to a recent article in The Atlantic, work has become god. It’s become a new religion. According to the article, for the college-educated elite, work has morphed into a religious identity—promising transcendence and community, but failing to deliver. It’s called “workism.“
The decline of traditional faith in America has coincided with an explosion of new atheisms. Some people worship beauty, some worship political identities, and others worship their children. But everybody worships something. And workism is among the most potent of the new religions competing for congregants.
Derek Thompson – The Atlantic
What is workism? It is the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose. It’s the belief that more work will solve the world’s problems.
But it is also one of the roots of the burnout epidemic. And also contributes to absent parents and like every other “ism,” adds to dysfunction at home.
Finding healthy work
While it is beyond the scope of a simple blog post to give you career advice or mentoring, we do as an organization have access to resources and training to help owners, managers and employees.
A good place to start influencing your own workplace is to educate yourself and your key leaders on the National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace. Developed by the Mental Health Commision of Canada, it is the first of its kind in the world.
Here is a short video that explains how it works:
The role of the leader
Leadership experts now all agree that the difference between a healthy and psychologically safe workplace lies with the leaders, specifically the immediate manager or leader of the team.
According to Gallup, and the point of their book, It’s The Manager, the quality of managers and team leaders is the single biggest factor in any organizations long-term success.
“Corporate culture matters. How management chooses to treat its people impacts everything for the better or for worse.”
Simon Sinek
There has never been a time when excellent leadership and healthy workplace resources are available, and often free, on the Internet. From podcasts, to books, to virtual seminars and courses, no leader or employee need be uninformed on the latest evidence based standard of transformational leadership.
Check out our Leaders’ Page for ways IHTC can help or direct you toward healthier work life. “Work” is part of “life,” and therefore the misnomer of “work-life balance” is better referred to as “work-home balance.”
Compassionately,
