The health toll of paid employment: 5 crucial reasons. Explore the impact on well-being and find solutions.

The Toll of Paid Employment on Health: 5 Key Insights

 Having a job after graduation foreshadows many positive things, but also has a negative impact on your health. See how paid employment may influence your physical state in these five ways:

5. Paid Employment is Good for Health

4. Career Graph May Vary Over a Period of Time

3. Short Work Hours Lead to Big Walking

2. Even if One Has a Perfect Worksite, Stress is Unavoidable

1. No Job Means No Health

Time-For-Money Tradeoff

Paid employment can require people to be up early, work long hours, and commute under stress. Various studies have shown that early wake-ups are associated with greater stress, and as the World Health Organisation tells us, stress constitutes a ‘major global problem’.

Financial Strain

Challenges with financial planning make it difficult for employees to get out of the pay cheque-to-pay cheque cycle. As a result of such a learning environment, employees also tend to be spectacularly financially illiterate, which in turn adversely affects their relationships, and leads to divorce, heartbreak and emotional strife.

The Heart Attack Trigger

People’s Monday morning heart attacks are related to stress and unhappiness at work. When people’s job anxieties go on for too long, the problem eventually shows up in bodily form as a heart attack. And we know that working beyond recommended 40-hour work weeks, even on weekends, only increases health risks.

Office Politics Strain

Where colleagues are competing for limited positions, people often spend a great deal of time and energy to get career promotion with office politics. This in turn has a detrimental impact on their working relationships. People who experience problematic relationships with colleagues tend to show more visible evidences of psychological stress at work, such as fighting with colagues at work and getting disoriented at unknown working environment. All of which can undermine one's physical health.

Fear of the Unknown

Fear keeps you locked down. There is great anxiety about financial stability. It sits like a claw over your bank statement. And fear of falling back into poverty traps people in jobs. When a layoff arrives, or a major restructuring, the victims can experience emotional paralysis – or worse. A survey I conducted on the transformation at Newsweek showed several cases where this leading fear turned tragic.

Secure a Healthier Path: Your Exit Strategy

A financial and time budget provides the safeguards that will allow you to stay well. When the day comes that you no longer have to be directly involved in the business day-to-day – when your managerial staff can competently handle operations and staff — you will be well on your way to a life of wellbeing. Having developed the skills to design and manage a well-run business that requires minimal physical presence assures that your family and loved ones will enjoy the gifts of a healthier, wealthier tomorrow. Aim at that vision – a life well-lived, free from stress.

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Questions and Answers:

How does paid employment affect health?

Paid work may adversely affect health by increasing stress, reducing time for one’s own self-care and perhaps increasing risk of chronic health conditions brought about by long working hours and emotional labour.

What is the connection between early wake-ups and stress?

It has also been found that waking up in the morning to go work increased stress levels because both disrupted sleep patterns and sleep loss can lead to a wide range of physical and mental health issues.

How does financial stress arise from paid employment?

As such, financial literacy among assessees can provide a learning platform to overcome the limited options to manage the pressures of finances, as most employees need to survive on salaries, forcing them to live paycheck to paycheck. Financial stress and limited financial literacy can negatively affect the mental and emotional health of the assessees.

Can job-related stress lead to serious health issues?

Indeed, chronic stress related to work is known to have physical consequences, including heart attack – Monday mornings, the peak of job tension, are correlated to new heart attacks.

How do office politics impact health?

Conflicts of interests at the work place (competitive environment with office politics and strained relationships) can be the reason behind people remaining in repressed state. Be it conflict at domestic level or at offic collective, the psychological stress brought along by these conflicts can adversely affect health.

How does fear of the unknown impact employees?

Economic fears – of bankruptcy or poverty – continue to keep employees in jobs they find detrimental. Financial concerns or job loss can result in emotional paralysis, or worse.