St.Louis Business Journal
IF YOU ARE IN AN UNHEALTHY WORK SITUATION, YOUR JOB IS TO CHANGE IT

By Anna Navarro

February 2005  

Data has been piling up for years about the connection between job related stress and illness. In September the New York Times ran a series of articles starting with a Sunday front-page story entitled "Always on the Job, Employees Pay with Health". The basic conclusion: Excessive stress on the job can lead to heart disease, cancer, arthritis and many other serious problems.

In my experience, the underlying causes of this stress fall into three basic categories. The first is an abusive employer who has unreasonable expectations. The second is a poor fit between the individual's needs and the requirements of the job. A third is organizational transition, including downsizing, expansion, reorganization and outsourcing. Sometimes people have to contend with more than one of these.

Regardless of the cause, whenever work related stress mounts to the level of creating physical symptoms like stomach pains or psychological effects like panic attacks, it's time to consider serious change of some kind.

One problem people face in dealing with these issues is they can become so used to the symptoms they don't take them seriously enough. A very cruel story about frogs makes the point. If you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will immediately jump out. If you drop a frog into a pan of cold water and gradually increase the temperature, it will cook to death.

Charles is a good example. He had blinding headaches that were probably the result of a crushing workload. He was the chief financial officer of a manufacturing company whose growth strategy was to acquire other companies. This strategy was working well for the company but it created mountains of extra work for Charles. The CEO, who wanted to conserve cash for acquisitions, kept putting him off when he requested help.

Charles was angry about this, but he was so worn down by his job that the idea of looking for another job was totally overwhelming. Worse yet, his stress put him in a constantly negative frame of mind, so he reached a point where he didn't believe better jobs existed. To top it off, he had two kids in college, and that increased his reluctance to contemplate making changes.

His wife was so concerned about him she gave him an introductory session with me as a birthday gift. He squeezed out the time to meet with me but it was clear he wasn't really interested in a job change. His plan was to tough it out and hope that eventually he would get more staff.

A few months later he had a minor stroke. Fortunately, it did not leave permanent damage but his recovery time gave him an opportunity to develop perspective. He realized that he was in an abusive situation and if he didn't get out, his health would continue to be at risk.

Before going back to work, we met several times to sort out what he should do next. Instead of going back full time to his old job, he negotiated an agreement to work 20 hours a week for half pay until a replacement was found. He took out a home equity loan to meet his kids' tuition payments and the family's other expenses until he found another job. The family cut back to a bare-bones budget and his kids got part-time jobs to help pay some of their college expenses. When he felt fully recovered we launched a full-scale job hunt.

It took eight months to find the right job. But this time he was clear about his needs. He was forthright with his prospective employer about wanting a balanced lifestyle. Because he helped his former employer transition to a replacement, he got glowing recommendations even as he was quitting to look for another job.

The new job wasn't perfect. The pay was about 10% lower and he occasionally had hectic periods. But he usually worked 45-50 hours a week, and took weekends off. He also liked the job and the people. He used about $35,000 of his assets to support his family while making the change. He said it was the best investment he'd ever made.

The biggest challenge when your work is making you sick is to pay attention to the symptoms you are experiencing instead of discounting them. If you find yourself in an unhealthy work situation, your job is to change it.

Anna Navarro is the founder of Work Transitions, a nationwide career consulting firm that trains independent career strategists and consults with individual clients.

This column was originally published by the St. Louis Business Journal. The actual title of the column and date in which it appeared in the Business Journal may be slightly different from what appears on WorkTransitions.com.