Free Happy Hour is 9 to 5 by Alexander Kjerulf Page B

ultimate job security.
It’s terrible!
People end up stuck in a rut. Their world gets smaller and smaller, their focus gets more and more narrow. They also resist any and all change, no matter how small or how innocent. I hate to say this, but in many cases I really feel that firing that person would actually help them, because it would force him or her to move on.”
    In studies that ask people what makes them happy at work, job security often figures high on the list. It’s obvious that spending each workday in fear of being fired will make you desperately unhappy. However, the kind of job security that means you’re almost certain to hang on to your job no matter what happens is also bad for people’s happiness at work.
    Rosenbluth International, a US corporate travel agency that employed 6,000 people, faced this very dilemma. As an organisation, they had decided to put their people first and make their employees’ happiness the company’s top priority. But, if you’ve put your people first, how can you fire them?
    CEO Hal Rosenbluth did not see this dilemma. To him, putting your people first entails a responsibility to fire people who don’t fit in. Employees shouldn’t be fired at the first sign of trouble — training, coaching, guidance, or a new position inside the company could help to motivate them. However, when these things don’t work, a commitment to your employees’ happiness means that you have to fire employees that don’t fit in. Too much job security will actively make an organisation a less happy place to work. When people stay working in jobs where they don’t fit in, you get:
     
Lower performance.
Higher workloads.
More conflicts.
Apathy.
    Allowing an employee to stay in a job that doesn’t make that employee happy is not only bad for the employee, but for everyone around that person. The unhappy employee will perform poorly, and their unhappiness at work will spread like a contagious disease.
    Too little job security makes us unhappy at work because it leads to fear, avoidance of conflicts and stress. However, surprisingly, too much job security is also bad, leading to apathy, cynicism

4. Warning: may cause severe unhappiness

    We’ve looked at what we think makes us happy at work but doesn’t, and what actually makes us happy. But what makes us unhappy at work, and what can we do about it?
    You can look at the things mentioned in Chapter 2. Results and relationships make people happy at work, and their absence makes people unhappy. Imagine going to work every day knowing that you will not make a difference and that you will spend the day around people who don’t much care for you. Not an enticing prospect, huh?
    However, aside from a lack of these positive factors, what are the major things that make us miserable on the job?
    Bad bosses
“I used to be the Public Relations Coordinator and Editor for a local non-profit organisation. A couple of months before I threw in the towel my grandmother became very ill. After a phone call from a family member I was told to come to her bedside, as death was imminent.
I told my boss that I needed to leave for a family emergency and explained the situation and how close I was to my grandmother. My boss replied, “Well, she’s not dead yet, so I don’t have to grant your leave.” And I was told to complete my workday. Suffice to say I did not finish my workday 8 .”
    The uncontested, number-one reason why people are unhappy at work is bad management. Nothing has more power to turn a good work situation bad than a bad boss. Sadly there are quite a lot of them around. A British study accused 1 in 4 bosses of being bad, while a Norwegian study said 1 in 5.
    According to workplace researchers Sharon Jordan-Evans and Beverly Kaye, when people quit, they don’t leave a company, they leave a bad boss. Surveys show that up to 75% of employees who leave their jobs do so at least in part because of their manager. In the exit interview dutifully