Is Working in an Office Good or Bad for You? Part II. The Benefits

If you’re an office misfit like me, it may be hard for you to believe this, but hand-in-hand with the challenges that the typical office job poses to the worker’s health and well-being go aspects of the situation that can actually enhance them. Here are some of the benefits of having a job like yours:
 
Security: True, in today’s economy nobody’s job is completely secure. Nevertheless, having at least some degree of confidence that a given amount of money will arrive in the mail or appear on your bank statement at regular intervals can be beneficial, for however long it lasts. And having health insurance is a huge plus, not only because it reduces worry about what will happen if you get sick, but also because of the regular checkups it may pay for, not to mention appointments with a therapist or psychiatrist if you need them. Finally, as you head towards the retirement years, it’s good to know that the dollars are piling up in your pension fund. While the stresses and deprivations of office employment may be formidable, those of having no paycheck or benefits are likely to be even greater.

Structure: If you’ve ever been self-employed or worked as a homemaker, you know how difficult it can be to structure your own time. Although at the office, you may still have to prioritize tasks on your own, chances are other people may sometimes help you with this, if only by giving you deadlines. Knowing what you're to do when frees you from the stress of deciding on your own. And if nothing else, an office job with regular hours gives you a reason to get up in the morning, which is good for all of us.

Safety and Comfort: You’re not straddling a steel beam hundreds of feet above the ground or crawling around at the bottom of a mine. Unless your building’s heating system has serious problems, you’re probably not in danger of frost-bite or heatstroke. Nor is your spine being slowly rearranged by hours of shoveling or vacuuming. Now think about how it would feel to get this job after years of dealing with such challenges. Imagine coming in out of the cold, sitting down in your nice comfy chair, safe and warm. Enjoy!

Order: In working with clients with clutter problems, I’ve often witnessed the positive effects that creating more order can have on people’s moods. The human mind is wired to respond positively to order. Although your own work area may be overwhelmed by a sea of papers, getting the piles under control can be empowering, and you may feel reassured by order in your workplace as a whole. The message of all those neatly labeled file drawers and alphabetized rows of procedure manuals is that in this crazy, chaotic world, there are at least some small pockets of order.

Connection: Although some workers feel lonely or abused in the office, this is by no means universal. Many, in fact, find soul mates whose company makes their workdays happier. Assistants with empathic bosses often come to love them, and workers may also enjoy feeling part of their work teams. Positive connections at work are enormously beneficial to individuals as well as organizations and may make all the difference in how effectively you deal with the challenges.

Learning: Are you taking full advantage of whatever learning opportunities your workplace affords? Even in what may seem like a tedious, dead end job there are always new things to be learned. You can learn about how to do your work better and how to use new tools and technologies. You can learn about your organization, its inner workings, and its place in the universe. You can learn about the people around you and their variations in language, culture, neurochemistry, and personality. Finally, you can always learn new things about yourself. If you’re lucky, you might even be able to take trainings, workshops, or even classes at your employer’s expense. To learn is to keep your mind alive.

Achievement: Nothing is better for your health and well-being than the satisfaction of a job well-done. It’s especially empowering to succeed at something you didn’t think you could do. (Creating this blog made me, a confirmed technophobe, for example, feel like a million dollars!) What’s important is to make sure you let yourself experience a sense of accomplishment as often as possible. While an unrealistic workload may tempt you to just jump right into the next task as soon as you’ve sent the report off that you worked so hard on, don’t. Instead, take a breath and let yourself enjoy what you’ve achieved. And of course it goes without saying that promotions, awards, and merit raises can feel great.

Opportunities: Although you may think your job is a blind alley, you might be surprised. You never know when a new opportunity might appear from around the corner. It might arise from a new project that allows you to shine, a coworker going on leave, a new supervisor appearing on the scene, an idea that pops into your head. It’s all a matter of keeping your eyes open and being willing to step forward when something inside you shouts, “Go for it!!!”

Flow: Most of us have had a few workdays when time went much faster than it normally does. When this happened, you may have been experiencing what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow.” This is when you become so caught up in what you’re doing that you feel at one with the task and forget all about everything else. While it might be easier to achieve this dancing, cooking, or writing poetry than it is doing routine office work, it’s not impossible, and when flow happens, it’s the greatest feeling there is.

These are just some of the benefits of working in an office – you may be able to think of others. If you want to feel better at work, do yourself a favor: make a personal list of office benefits and tape it to your wall. Then, when a particularly formidable challenge closes in on you, look up and remind yourself of why you took this job in the first place.

Coming next: Food in the Office.