While working in a ‘dream job’ is little more than a fantasy for many, new research suggests that the bigger the mismatch between your unconscious needs and the opportunities provided at work, the more likely you are to suffer from burnout.
Researchers from the Universities of Zurich and Leipzig asked 97 people to write short stories to describe pictures showing people in different job roles. The stories were analysed to establish the participants’ unconscious needs, focusing on two important motives: the power motive – the need to take responsibility for others and maintain discipline – and the affiliation motive, which is the need for positive personal relations.
People who wrote sentences about positive personal relations showed evidence of the affiliation motive, while those who wrote about influence on others exhibited the power motive. Individuals whose work did not adequately fulfil their motives demonstrated higher potential for burnout – and the bigger the gap between the dream and reality, the more likely they were to burn out, the researchers suggest.
“There are always times when people have to show self-disciplined behaviour that overrules their inner needs to achieve goals or meet expectations,” says Professor Veronika Brandstätter. “But this becomes a problem when there is a chronic frustration of needs.”
Physical symptoms, such as headaches, become more common as the mismatch grows. The research stresses that a mismatch in either direction can be risky: employees can get burned out when they have either too much or not enough scope for power or affiliation compared to their needs.
“HR could talk to employees regularly about how they feel at work,” says Brandstätter. “Then they could try to change aspects of the job so they are more motive-congruent. It is always possible to improve a working situation, however subtly.”
Coaches’ backgrounds key to success
New research from the Institute for Employment Studies suggests that the type of person a coach is could influence their success just as much as the methods they use.
The study explored the factors that make an effective coach, drawing on the opinions of 146 coaches and 300 coachees. Although most coaches did not believe industry experience was relevant to their effectiveness, industry professionals and coachees disagreed.
Coachees named finding a coach with experience within their specific industry as one of their top priorities – suggesting that coaches’ personal and professional backgrounds can be just as important to a coachee as the way they actually execute coaching.
One theory is that shared industry experience makes a coach appear more credible, which could influence the coachee’s willingness to engage with the programme.
“Organisations and HR professionals should be constructing schemes and coaching initiatives with coachees at the heart of the programme, so they become engaged,” says researcher Alison Carter. “We need to be cleverer about how we use coaching beyond individual development and link it with organisational change, as well as helping people prepare for the accelerating pace of organisations.”
Millennials want to be workaholics
The portrayal of millennials as a group of smartphone slackers may be unjustified, as a new study suggests they are more likely to overwork themselves than their older co-workers, and relish their ‘work martyr’ reputation.
The survey of 5,000 full-time US employees, conducted by Project: Time Off, found millennials were more likely than other age groups to agree with statements such as: ‘I don’t want others to think I am replaceable.’ More than 4 in 10 (43 per cent) millennials identified themselves as work martyrs, compared with just 23 per cent of overall respondents.
Another 48 per cent of millennials said they wanted to be seen as work martyrs by their employers, while only 32 per cent of baby boomers did. More than one fifth (23 per cent) of millennials said they avoided taking time off because they were afraid of what their boss might think, compared to just 10 per cent of baby boomers.
Researchers suggest these findings could be a result of economic and social circumstances that have left them saddled with student debt and high levels of unemployment.
“It will take good managers who are willing to work as change agents to reap the business benefits of time off, such as more engaged employees and greater productivity,” the report concludes. “The alternative is to settle for higher stress levels and worker unhappiness – a damaging combination that will hinder any company’s success.”