Financial insecurity has shifted the Great Resignation into something resembling the Great Stagnation. As research links feelings of stuck-ness with everything from energy levels to eating habits, WH asks: how can you make your job work for your health?
Gemma Saunders* was used to crying at work. But the day the 28-year-old felt tears pricking her eyes on her commute, she knew something was really wrong. It wasn’t the workload worrying her, rather an unsettling state of being stuck. Over the past nine months, her four-year career in PR had become stagnant; she couldn’t see any path to promotion and the job no longer felt challenging. ‘I felt trapped, anxious and completely disengaged,’ she recalls. As Gemma’s enjoyment tanked, dissatisfaction leeched from her workplace into somewhere she wasn’t expecting – her self-esteem. ‘I began to feel self-conscious in myself and then insecure about my body,’ she says. When Gemma’s desire to change her appearance descended into destructive thoughts about dieting, her friends and family became so worried about her mental health that they urged her to walk away from the role.
Having a torrid time at work is nothing new, of course. But studies have long drawn parallels between negative experiences and having too much of a bad thing – too many hours spent at work or too intense a workload – both of which leave you Googling ‘signs of burnout’ at 2am. Experiences such as Gemma’s throw another factor into the mix.
‘Work engagement’ was once a soft metric used to measure workplace satisfaction, but the concept is increasingly becoming a wellness field supported by scientific clout. The workplace analytics firm, Gallup, which conducts one of the largest annual studies into employee engagement across 160 countries, believes that work engagement reflects ‘the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace’. Engaged employees report having opportunities to contribute, learn and grow, and a sense of belonging – which, HR-spiel decoded, means you get absorbed in tasks, vibe off your colleagues and enter something of a flow state. Without any of the above, disillusionment becomes your line manager, with the disinterest ranging from feeling unattached to the company to being unhappy there to full-on resentment. Reports of willing a mysterious White Lotus-style slaying of the C-suite remain unconfirmed.
Nine to strive
If you feel seen, welcome to the mood of the country. Last June, Gallup’s State Of The Global Workplace: 2022 Report put work engagement in the UK at a woeful 9%, making our nation one of the least professionally engaged in the world. And this figure was totted up before looming recession featured in everyone’s Slack chats. But the fallout from feeling demotivated at work isn’t ju
