As if there could be a more perfect follow up to my teleseminar yesterday…yes, it was yesterday, not today as might have been suggested by the message that you got from me this morning :)….
Today is World Day for Safety and Health at Work. The timing could NOT be better!
Yes, this sounds at first blush like a day focused on things like leading practices for working at heights, staying alert while operating heavy equipment, or on ergonomics for repetitive tasks. It sounds like a day that doesn’t matter for managers and leaders who aren’t “in the field” or “on the floor.”
In fact, most of us, engulfed in our overbooked calendars, multitasking in meetings, and inhaling a “quick bite” for lunch while catching up on email, won’t even know this day happened.
World Day for Safety and Health at Work is recognized each year on April 28th. While it does often focus on the physical aspect of work, this year the focus is on workplace stress. This year it is all about the exact conditions that I highlighted on my call yesterday that are causing epidemic disengagement, disease, and discontent in our lives.
According to the United Nations, the World Day for Safety and Health at Work is a “campaign to promote safe, healthy, and decent work.”
Safe. Healthy. AND decent.
Generally, we would all probably say that our work is fundamentally safe, that it’s basically healthy, and as long as we’re paid and treated with a modicum of respect we’d also say it’s decent. But under the surface we’re kidding ourselves.
Our typical MO is turbo charged overload. We’re chronically fried mentally and emotionally. We can’t sleep without drugs or Johnny Walker. Our immune systems are failing. Our hearts attack us in protest and cancer threatens us. We are fried already and we continue on under increasingly intense pressure to handle all of the important, urgent, AND the not-at-all-important stuff that piles up. Is it any surprise that when we come together at work the combination of our individual irritability, burden, and exhaustion comes to a boil in the all too common “toxic” work environment?
This isn’t safe. It’s not healthy. It’s far from decent.
Can you relate?
This afternoon, consider this theme of Workplace Stress for yourself. What’s your personal current state with respect to the true safety, the genuine health, and the actual level of decency that you are either bringing to or experiencing at work? If your answers aren’t aligned to the success and fulfillment that you want perhaps this day could be your opportunity to make a well needed shift.