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happiness at work

Feeling career satisfaction?

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Growing sunflowers (Better Business)
Career satisfaction is a growing movement.

There are many reasons for this including the needs, wants, and values of Generation Y/the Millennials, the growing influence of women on the workplace in senior decision making roles and perhaps that many people are a bit (or alot!) weary from the downturn years.

Research by Bruce Woodcock from the University of Kent has explored the factors that create career satisfaction.

15 factors key for career satisfaction:

1. Living near work
2. Access to green spaces or working outdoors
3. Mindfulness – being aware of what we are doing
4. Flow – being immersed in an activity we relish
5. Learning new skills
6. Having purpose and motivating work goals
7. Helping others
8. Autonomy
9. Challenges with clearly defined steps
10. Receiving positive feedback
11. Having supportive social contacts
12. Working for small organisations or self-employment
13. Realistic deadlines
14. Reasonable hours and good work life balance
15. A conducive environment to working productively without distractions

Score your current work. Give each of the 15 factors a score out of 100%.

Add up your total – maximum 1500. What does this tell you?

Our company cat can be a distraction at work, but a furry and purring welcome one. I am sure she sends e mails sometimes!

Working in many companies does not give people many of these 15 factors. Is it really surprising then, that more and more people are choosing to become self-employed, to work for less bureaucratic smaller companies and to design work to suit them – their own business or tailor made portfolio career?

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Download our free report to uncover your transferable skills – they could be the key to increasing your career satisfaction:
http://careerstrategies.co.uk/changingcareersreport/

Click on this link to read more about career satisfaction:
http://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/Choosing/career-satisfaction.htm

Do You Love Your Job?

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You do? You’re kidding right? Oh you’re the one.

You see it’s a bit like relationships – there are lots of ‘all right ish’ ones but ones that are brilliant are as rare as a nesting osprey.

If you are a typical employee, if you have a job, you will be hanging onto to it for dear life like an aging footballer with a supermodel girlfriend.

 If you are fed up to the back teeth of your job, your boss or your employer, what can you do except grin and bear it? The behaviour of people who don’t like something but don’t know what to do about it easy to spot:

  1. You talk more behind your boss’ back than to their face
  2. You wake up on a Monday morning with lead weights in your shoes rather than a spring in your step
  3. Weekends and holidays feel like an oasis and you cling to them like a drowning man
  4. You get ill a lot because your body is being obliging to get you out of there
  5. You drink too much alcohol, shop to excess, eat comfort foot to excess and do drugs to distract yourself, or maybe all of them
  6. Soap opera storyline feel positively cheery compared to your lot

So what’s the alternative? Here are 3 options:

1)     Bump off your boss and steal their job

2)     Resign with no job to go to

3)     Download the Energise free report ‘Pain free career change’ as the first step to keep sane http://www.careerstrategies.co.uk/

Is Your Work Working For You?

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Research shows that between 30 and 45% of people want to change job. That is a hell of a lot of people not enjoying their work and feeling unfulfilled. Many of us fell into it by chance. Did you? 

I have people contacting me who have been working for 7-10 years who have never found their work fulfilling. That is a lot of hours clocked up of misery. Often in that time they have cheered themselves up by shopping, taking weekend breaks and holidays as well as the cheaper frequent comforters of food, alcoholic and drugs.

In the time and for the money they have spent soothing themselves, they could have retrained and changed their career. Blocks to action can be confidence, circumstances e.g. needing flexibility with a young child or knowing they won’t get as a good a package elsewhere. With retirement getting later and later as we will be living longer, isn’t now the time to start the ball rolling? Otherwise the ball and chain remains – a heavy weight.

Take the first step and download our free report http://www.careerstrategies.co.uk/

What Is Fair At Work?

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What is fair at work and who decides? I predict that fairness is going to be a burning topic this year and it will feel like the City are walking on hot coals at times. It has always been a topic bubbling under the surface but the volcano is about to erupt.  Recruitment is growing in the financial sector, which is great news.  

Fairness is and will be a source of strikes, discussion and argument. Companies need to give good rewards to attract the best talent, but bonuses in the city enrage people losing their jobs. Is it fair that teachers and nurses get paid low wages when their role is so important to the health and prosperity of our country? No. What is ‘enough’ and who is responsible for deciding?

 Is it fair that companies fund working women having time off to have kids? Is it fair that women get penalised with higher unemployment by doing the majority of child care, creating the perception that they are less reliable then men, because they are the ones who pick up the pieces when the kids are ill? Who decides how to carve up the cake? Like food in the world, there is enough money to go around, it is just unequally distributed,   

Answers and thoughts on a postcard, by carrier pigeon or the modern way a blog post to ….  

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Career Change Dreams Up In Smoke?

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Suffering from that ‘going back to work feeling’? Reality after the festive season reminds many people of going back to school at the start of a new term. A feeling of dread; shining those shoes; buying a new fluffy pencil case; the who got the best Christmas gift parade, but mainly the sinking feeling.

Life can be so superspeed at work that it feels like being on a giant human hamster wheel. The break spits you off the corporate rat race so you catch up yourself before you go completely bonkers and think about what you really want. Mulled wine fuelled dreams of career change, when back at work, often crumble faster than a digestive biscuit.

If this is you, here are some free resources to keep your resolve with your career change full even if your bank account feels empty: 

5 free tips you can do while in employment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b8CFaOq6GY

Free report ‘Pain free career change’

http://www.careerstrategies.co.uk/

Energise ‘Career strategies’, ‘Self promotion’ bulletins and more  

http://www.liberateyourtalent.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=79&Itemid=106

Hope they are useful. Happy new year!

Rachel

Is Your Work Like A Carpet?

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Work can be wall to wall, can’t it? If you find yourself staring out of the window, it is more likely to be because your neck is stiff from sitting at the computer for a long time than you chose to daydream for half an hour.

I had a wall-to-wall day yesterday, I was flat out from early until late and I am not talking sleeping. I barely had a chance to catch my breath and there was no space or time to think.  I am very good at protecting time and as someone who thinks the best place to store a Blackberry is under the wheels of a just-about-to-reverse car, it was a bit of a shock for me to experience the full alert permanent fight or flight feeling.

This is how most people’s days are – wall to wall meetings and no time to do the work. When I need to create something, I go away from my normal environment, switch off phone, e mail, twitter etc and focus 100%. Even prison feels quite appealing for this very reason! I have just given birth to a 250 page career change e course and am in the recovery room. Gas, air and forceps were needed and a caesarean section without the hard labour was quite an appealing prospect. It was a natural birth in the end, and if you’d like a peek at what the baby might look like, download this FREE report:

 http://www.careerstrategies.co.uk

Ever Wake Up Like A Bear With A Sore Head?

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Waking up feeling grumpy isn’t the best start to the day, especially before you disappear into the bowels of public transport or the long commute. The good news is that you can manage your grumpy bear – as if by magic. Yes really.

We don’t get taught at school or college how to deal with difficult emotions, so they can fester and then we give them to someone else, a bit like throwing a cow pat – nice gift! It’s called projection and often we don’t realise we are doing this. So next time someone gives you a dressing down out of context, get curious not mad.

Try this tool to banish your grumpy bear:

Step 1: Name the negative feeling and acknowledge it e.g. sad

Step 2: Name how you’d like to feel e.g. buoyant

Step 3: Recall a memory when you had the positive feeling of buoyant

Step 4: Recall the good memory in 3D and superb technicolour with the best sound system there is and bingo, the grumpy bear has retreated back to his cave Have a good day and please me know how you find the tool – after the grumpy bear has gone back into his cave, naturally!

PS saying yes when we want to say no can cause big grumpy bears, so click on this link if you want to read more. Saying No: http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs042/1102862873131/archive/1103218836146.html

Post a comment about how the tool works for you – but only after your grumpy bear has retreated into his cave!

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http://twitter.com/talentliberator

Why People Are Like Vegetables

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I am heading to my allotment to water it with no prospect of rain in sight,  and am pondering the thought that people are like vegetables. They need watering. Different people need to be watered in different ways as they have different values, needs and motivations. If only we came with an instruction manual, like a car or washing machine, it would be a lot easier. 

Put it other way, we all need ‘strokes’, but how often do we get them at work? Not enough. Some employees like to have a quiet ‘thank you’ as recognition and others want a cheering crowd and a big prize. For many employees, like the lack of rain, there’s no pay rise in sight and the prospect of a pension drought too, so watering is even more important, especially as less people are doing more work.

Watering your people is crucial for employee engagement and motivation, which directly impacts on business performance, productivity and profit. What watering are you going to do today?

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http://visitor.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?m=1102862873131&p=oi

  • 4 topics each month: Human capital, Smart living and working, Self promotion, Career strategies 

Have You Got A ‘Chip On The Shoulder?’

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It’s a weird expression isn’t it; ‘Chip on the shoulder’. I don’t know where the expression comes from and whether it’s a “a bit missing kind of chip” or a potato chip?!  My interpretation of what it means is that it’s a sensitivity or insecurity that creates an over-reaction as we are looking for evidence to back it up and ‘feed the monster’!

Chips that I have encountered include; feeling on the outside looking in and excluded; not building rapport; or feeling we are not intelligent enough or creative enough. So we over-notice what other people say and do to prove our perception and then overreact as the chip is activated.  Since there are an awful lot of people out there, that’s a lot of ‘chips’ and feeling vulnerable or dealing with uncertainty can magnify the overreaction. In a political or creative culture, there can be a lot of chips rattling around which inhibit full productivity and performance. Self awareness is key, but a lot of people are cynical about personal development, especially left strongly ‘left brainers;.

Chips on the shoulder` are worth looking at because they can stop people from doing what they really want and truly being happy and fulfilled. A good way is to explore the limiting beliefs that have created the chip – it’s a but like clearing out the loft and creating space for good new things to happen. What’s your chip and what does it stop you from doing that you would like to? What are the chips of people close to you?

Cheers

Rachel

Rachel Brushfield
Energise – The Talent Liberation Company

Tel: + 44 (0) 845 22 55 010
Mobile: + 44(0) 7973 911137 
E mail: rachel@liberateyourtalent.com
Web: www.liberateyourtalent.com
Twitter:  http://twitter.com/talentliberator

Linked in profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/energiseliberateyourtalent
Blog: http://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com

Bulletins: Are you receiving the Energise each monthly bulletins via e mail? Don’t miss out on free insights, tips and inspiring case studies. Click on this link to opt in.

http://visitor.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?m=1102862873131&p=oi

  • Career strategies
  • Human capital
  • Smart living and working
  • Self promotion

How vulnerable is it wise to be at work?

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Showing vulnerability creates trust and builds relationships but it also creates risk and it can be abused in the wrong hands, so what is the right measure?

I was ‘very closed’ when I was younger and didn’t trust people easily, so gave little if nothing away about myself. Now I am much more open with people, so it has been a huge personal transformation. I am choosy about who I trust though, they need to earn their stripes!

Those I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours” re vulnerable moments and confiding secrets or fears is a great way of creating a bond with other people. Showing vulnerability shows that we are human and brings out other’s desire to protect and nurture, and helps them realise that they don’t have to be perfect and perform all the time.

It is natural to make mistakes but in business often people cover them up for fear of looking weak and being punished, especially in the current economic climate where headcount is being reviewed. 

What is the balance between showing enough vulnerability but not too much?  What are your thoughts? One of my passions is to get fear out in the open and talked about more.

Cheers

Rachel

Rachel Brushfield
Energise – The Talent Liberation Company

Tel: + 44 (0) 845 22 55 010
Mobile: + 44(0) 7973 911137 
E mail: rachel@liberateyourtalent.com
Web: www.liberateyourtalent.com
Twitter:  http://twitter.com/talentliberator

Linked in profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/energiseliberateyourtalent 

Bulletins: Are you receiving the Energise each monthly bulletins via e mail? Don’t miss out on free insights, tips and inspiring case studies. Click on this link to opt in.

http://visitor.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?m=1102862873131&p=oi

  • Career strategies
  • Human capital
  • Smart living and working
  • Self promotion