Happy Or Unhappy At Work? How To Read Your Staff’s Telltale Signs

My epitaph would never read, “If only I had worked just one more day!” Does that mean I didn’t or don’t like working? No. Yet after reading, “Over a lifetime, workers spend an average of 90,000 hours on the job,” I thought wow, that is a lot of hours.¹ That adds up to 35 percent of waking hours during our working life! Honestly, it does give one reason to pause and reevaluate how we feel about expending that much time in work mode. This is especially true of those who may have felt the effort they put into their jobs did not offer an equal reward.

For the most part, “work” never really felt onerous for me, mostly because I have always loved what I did and still do. How about you? Are you happy at work? Let me ask it another way. If you won the lottery today and got enough money to live off comfortably for the rest of your life, would you still want to work at your current job?

In her book, Happiness at Work: Maximizing Your Psychological Capital for Success, Jessica Pryce-Jones shares that (unsurprisingly) really happy people are more energized, happier with life in general, more motivated and engaged at work, achieve and contribute more, and exude self-confidence. Overall, she states that they are healthier individuals (again, not surprising). What was surprising, however, was that she said happy people actually add more than a decade to their overall lifetime. For those who live in an unhappy world and struggle to find reasons to go into work each day (other than the driving desire to eat and sleep indoors), they are missing the positive personal, social and professional benefits of having a job they enjoy.

I have heard horror stories from staff and doctors alike talking about how they dread going into work every day. They state the office (or the people in it) proved to be miserable, that there was little sense of unity and that everyone walked around with their own personal gray cloud hovering over their heads. As an employer, it is not your job to make everyone happy in the office. However, by providing an environment that allows your employees to be happy, you can create that more favorable tone that makes people actually want to be there.

The solutions are simple for both sides. If you are an employee who is not happy with your job, do yourself and everyone around you a favor, and leave. Find work elsewhere where you are happy. If you are the employer, frustrated by a staff person’s attitude or performance, and see it is affecting not only you but the entire office, don’t settle. Let him or her go. Very soon after whatever dust settles, you will thank yourself and ask, “Why didn’t I do this sooner?” You only want to surround yourself with happy people.

Are you not sure how to identify someone who is not happy at work? Here are six telltale signs:

1. They absolutely dread Mondays and count down the days until Friday. They are clock watchers and you will repeatedly hear them ask, “Is it time to leave yet?”
2. They often look bored or complain they are tired.
3. They continuously question their choice of occupation or feel trapped in a dead end job, resulting in little enthusiasm, productivity or sense of self-worth.
4. They have difficulty balancing work and stress, and find it hard to separate one from the other. You will hear them associate work with stress, grumble and spread negativity.
5. They seek excuses not to be there.
6. They feel they are not fairly compensated and will complain to anyone who will listen.

What do happy people look like?

1. They have a get-up-and-go mentality. “Who has time to drag their feet when the place needs me to stay on my toes?” There is no clock watching. The end of the day comes faster than expected. If anything, there never seems to be enough time in the day.
2. Mondays are not evil. Having the weekend for some “R&R” or to spend it with friends and family actually proves re-energizing for the week ahead.
3. They enjoy the people they work with and even enjoy spending time outside of work with them. Helping their coworkers is second nature and provides a sense of accomplishment.
4. They care about the practice and take special interest in it.
5. They have learned not to sweat the small stuff. Whatever happens is all in a day’s work. Instead, they focus on how to prevent repeat obstacles or further setbacks.
6. They want to go to work, even when they are not feeling well.

Every day upon waking you have a decision to make: happy or unhappy. Which do you choose?

Reference

1. Pryce-Jones J. Happiness at Work. Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, 2010.