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Considering Leaving Your Job?
Bad patch
or bad job? If you’re miserable at work, how do you know if you can fix
things, or whether you should consider leaving your job? Jobsite finds
out.
We all have bad days at work. But if that bad day is every day, it might be time to consider leaving your job. Some causes of job dissatisfaction are impossible to alter, and in this case employees may well be better off making a fast exit. With job vacancies increasing by around 1% in May 2008, according to the Office of National Statistics, now could be just the time to look for work. However, workplace discontentment may be improved without leaving your job – and in some situations, improving your current job may achieve a better outcome than looking for a new one.
According to leading
organisational psychologist, Cary Cooper, who analysed the 2007 City
& Guilds Happiness Index, happy employees have both a good
work/life balance and an interest in what they do for a living. If
employees lack one of these crucial elements of job satisfaction, they
may well be one of the 20% of UK workers who are considering leaving
their job.
Good work/life balance is
currently a key government agenda, and having plenty of time to enjoy
your social life and family, according to Cooper, is essential for
enjoying your work. If you love what you do, but often feel stressed
and overworked, there are steps you can take to improve things before
you consider leaving your job.
TUC General Secretary,
Brendan Barber, suggests that unless employees take charge of their
time, they’re likely to find themselves overworking. “Making sure work
uses no more of your time than it should requires active steps, because
it won’t just happen on its own,” says Barber. “Take a good look at
your life and make a clear decision to claim more of it back for
activities other than work. The first thing you can do is have a good
look at the way you’re living now.
“Start by sitting down and
working out how many hours a week are taken up by work. That doesn’t
just mean the hours you’re at the workplace, but also any time you
spend working at home and all the time on top of that you spend
thinking and worrying about work, and even the times when you’re too
tired from work to do anything else. You might be surprised by how much
it adds up.
“Then look at the other side.
Make a list of all the things you really enjoy doing but haven’t had
the time or energy to do for a long while. It can be something as
simple as reading a book at bedtime, gardening or meeting an old friend
for a drink. Again, you might be surprised by how long your list is. By
making these lists, you’re recognising that there’s a problem, and by
spelling out what it is you’re setting yourself on the road to solving
it and putting your life back into a healthier balance.”
Employees may also have poor
work/life balance if they have no flexibility with their working hours.
If you find your work rewarding, but hate the regimented hours and
nine-to-five routine, it may be worth talking to your employer about
flexible working – which includes condensing hours on certain days,
some part-time working and occasionally working from home. Staff who
are offered flexible hours claim to enjoy their work more, according to
figures from Chiumento, so if you’re not enjoying your job consider
whether flexible working would help.
Happy Ltd. offer their staff
highly flexible work patterns and see much higher staff retention as a
result. Employee turnover is just 10%, compared with an average of 17%
experienced by companies in the same sector. At Happy Ltd., parents can
bring children into work if they need, and staff are regularly
consulted to check they’re happy with their working hours. “Imagine an
organisation that assumes any proposal you make for your working hours
makes sense, rather than forcing you to prove it,” says Ben Cazin,
Senior Trainer at Happy Ltd. “That is the kind of workplace we strive
to build at Happy.”
If you don’t have workplace
flexibility and you think it’s making you enjoy your job less, how do
you go about changing things? Broadly speaking, you’re legally entitled
to request flexible working if you’ve had more than 26-weeks continuous
employment, aren’t an agency worker and care for a child or relative in
some capacity. In this case, you can submit a request in writing
(although employers can refuse on a number of very general grounds). If
you’re not a primary carer you don’t have any specific legal rights to
request flexible working, but that doesn’t mean you can’t ask. After
all, making changes for existing staff is often more cost-effective for
employers than going through the recruitment process.
Improved work/life balance
may help some employees stay put, but what about those who aren’t
interested in the work they do? Should they consider leaving their job?
Nicky Hambleton-Jones, host
of Channel Four’s Ten Years Younger, and author of life-coaching bible,
Top to Toe (published by Hodder & Stoughton: £16.99), worked
for blue-chip organisations before she became a fashion and life-style
coach, and remembers all too well the unhappy feeling of working in a
sector she wasn’t interested in. “When I worked in the city, everything
was a struggle,” she says. “Reading the Financial Times was a sweat.
Browsing the fashion pages of Vogue, on the other hand, was pure
pleasure. No matter how hard I tried to feign an interest, I just
couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to excel at the job and it showed.
Everything was an effort, nothing came easily and I continued to
struggle through miserably, hoping one day something would change.”
If you’re not interested in
the organisation you work for, it could be time to consider leaving
your job for something you’re really passionate about. “When you follow
your passion life becomes easier,” says Hambleton-Jones. “By this I
don’t mean all your problems disappear, but at least you feel as though
you’re swimming with the tide rather than against it.”
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