In 2015, a new study revealed clearly that working at a bad job was bad for a person’s health, causing an increase in cardiovascular disease and other issues. We have also found over time, however, that working at a bad job can have a serious impact on an entire family’s health.
Some of this is obvious; if a person is unhappy for 8 hours of every day, they’re not going to be very pleasant when they get home. Some ways that the work environment affects family life are more subtle.
Let’s look at four ways that tolerating a bad work environment can make an entire family more stressed.
Too Much Stress
The first problem is the most obvious. If someone is continually stressed about their job, either with keeping it, or doing their work in the first place, they won’t be particularly healthy. Doctors tell us over and over again that reducing stress is key for living a long and healthy life, and reducing stress at work is particularly key.
After all, many of us spend the bulk of our working hours there. It would be difficult to have less stress overall if work were continuously stressful.
No Time
Families need to spend time together to maintain a successful relationship. If someone is spending all of their time at work, or is always thinking about work even when they’re not there, maintaining that relationship will be difficult. When a family goes through a time of stress, they may not have the emotional resources they need in order to manage their crisis successfully.
Workers often feel like they don’t have the ability to say ‘no’ to their boss’s demands. An employer can’t assume that just because they told employees that the company picnic was optional, the employee knows that they really have a choice about whether or not they go.
Lack Of Support
Good employers know that their employees are people first. When their employee has a crisis, which everyone does from time to time, they work with their employees to help them get what they need to do done.
Whether it’s extra time off for an illness or death in the family or supporting the employee through connecting with community health or legal resources, many great companies use employee assistance programs (EAP) to manage this.
Some companies look to cut corners by not offering these resources; this is flat out a mistake. Every person, at some point, ends up in a crisis. Businesses which don’t help their employees through these times will lose those employees, and will therefore pay the exorbitant cost of onboarding a new person.
In an ideal world, your loyal employees could become your best brand advocates and ambassadors. Over time, this can cause serious financial problems for a company.
This can cause family problems for an employee because they aren’t able to access the resources they need when they need them.
Not Resting From Illness
When employees feel that they need to be in the office absolutely every second of their work day, they often struggle around illness. They might need to send a child back to school before they’re really well, or they might head into work even though their cold or flu is probably infectious. One bug can wipe out an entire office, causing serious staffing problems that could have been avoided if the employee were just able to stay home.
We often discuss work-life balance in terms of time management, but employee health is also an important cornerstone of pushing an organization to improve its policies around time off, work assignments, and communication.
Very few companies really require employees to be onsite to do their work. With a laptop, cloud computing, and reasonably secure internet connection, most work is just as doable at home as it is in the office, especially if there is a companywide messaging system that can be available.
By giving employees the power to determine when they’re healthy enough to come back to work, or their kids are healthy enough to go back to school, they not only keep their own families healthier, but they protect vulnerable members of the community by keeping germs out of public spaces.
And for the employee, if you have a bad job? Get out if you can. The negative effects on the health of yourself, your family, and the world at large are just not worth it. There are times when there really isn’t another job out there, but more often than not, lateral moves are possible.