Working hours have declined overall in recent decades, but they have intensified. As a result, employees often have the impression that their career overwhelms everything else. Which has an impact on their level of satisfaction with their professional life, as a new survey reveals.
The American computer and printer manufacturer HP wondered whether work is always a vector of well-being and fulfillment. To do this, it surveyed more than 12,000 employees in office jobs from 12 countries, including France, India, the United States and Japan. Only 27% of them believe they have a healthy relationship with their work. Overall, workers are more satisfied with the place of their career in their lives in emerging economies. Thus, 50% of Indians say they have a healthy relationship with their job, compared to only 5% of Japanese.
A job that is increasingly exhausting
This dissatisfaction with work is not without consequences on the physical and mental well-being of workers. Nearly half of them (48%) say their career takes up so much of their lives that they feel emotionally and physically exhausted after their work day. As a result, they end up neglecting their family and social obligations (45%), as well as their leisure activities (59%). Caught between work and personal life, employees also tend to neglect their health: 62% say they don’t exercise as much or eat as healthily as they would like.
Du “quiet quitting” au “job hopping”
This situation is all the more worrying because it has repercussions beyond the personal sphere. Workers who are unhappy with their professional life tend to invest less in the office. Thus, a third of respondents who say they have an unhealthy relationship with their job admit to doing the bare minimum at work. In other words, they are in “quiet quitting” (“silent resignation”, in French). Nearly 40% of respondents also say they are disengaged and not very invested in the life of their company.
This lack of motivation can only accentuate the phenomenon of “job hopping” (frequent job changes), which has been growing in recent years. In fact, 76% of employees unhappy with the relationship they have with work are considering leaving their current job. Only 35% of them still see themselves with their current employer within two years. It is therefore in the interest of bosses and managers to ensure that their employees feel fulfilled in what they do. Their attractiveness on the job market is at stake since currently, only 24% of workers would recommend their company to someone else.
Thriving at work: more important than salary
However, all over the world, working people are just asking to be more invested in their professional lives. Their desire to reduce the space occupied by work is not a sign of generalized laziness, but rather an expression of the difficulties they encounter because of their career. Workers say they are ready to make many compromises if they are guaranteed to flourish in their careers. As proof, 83% of them say they are ready to earn less if it allows them to like their job more.
