How You Can Be Happier at Work

How You Can Be Happier at Work Beautiful days seem gray. Your six dollar coffee tastes like mud. And the soothing voices on NPR do little to quell the impending twitch in your right eye. Youre panicked, yet resigned, as you take that last sighing breath before opening the door. Jury duty? A funeral? Dinner with the in-laws? You wish. Youre at work and youre miserable. It seems like at some point in time every individual finds himself or herself in an intolerable, yet inescapable, job. Maybe you dont trust the job market enough to call it quits right now. Maybe youre waiting for that seemingly perpetually out-of-reach promotion. Whatever the reason, youre sticking it out and you might as well make the most of it. We want to help you make the most of a less-than-ideal situation. So here are five things to look at when you just hate your job. Attitude can seriously affect job performance. While you try to find a job or tough it out with a promotion in mind, dont let negativity turn you from victim into the problem. First things first: Whats making you miserable? Is it the actual work, your boss or a coworker? Can anything be done to remedy it? If its your actual job, talk to your coworkers. More often than not, theres an aspect of their responsibilities that theyre struggling to enjoy. Swapping small responsibilities for one youre more suited for will not only improve your mood but office productivity as well. If you stop looking at your job as a chore and see it as an opportunity to work toward a purpose youll notice a huge difference in your daily outlook. Get Involved. Are you involved in office life? Do you even know your coworkers last names? Jobs arent unlike college and grade school. Making friends, or at least someone you can chat with, makes a huge difference. Here are a few suggestions: Suggest an office outing once a week. Bring a treat to share with everyone. Join your offices fantasy football league (sports-related managerial skills or not). A little friendly effort can go a long way. Having something in common with your coworkers besides a mutual disdain for your careers will break up the monotony of your conversations, and hey, who knows, maybe youll mix a smile in every here and there. Working toward something is very different from working through something. Where do you want to be in five years? Can you achieve that with your current company, and are you on track to do so? Give yourself a timeline of what you want to achieve and by when, then clearly lay out your goals and speak with your supervisor. Generally a boss wants their employees to do well and advance. If they can help you on your path to personal success they will. If they cant, at least youll know that its time to look elsewhere either within or outside of the company. Dont take your misery (your job) home with you. Make sure that there is a distinct difference between your work life and home life. Finish sending those emails before you leave the office instead of bringing any negative energy or stress home with you. If you arent expected to be available at all times, disable any work-related push notifications on your cell phone. The stress of simple notifications slowly building up can have you dreading the next workday before you even get home from todays. Your home should be a happy and calm place for you to unwind. Also, your family and friends arent your therapists. Sharing negative feelings only breeds more of them. Focus on the good parts of your day (it was Taco Tuesday!) rather than the dismal. The same way that negativity can cut things down, a positive demeanor at home will build up your personal and family relationships. Sunshine and exercise can do wonders for a stressed mind and body. Sunlight promotes endorphin and serotonin production in the body. Both of these majorly contribute to a positive mood. According to the Mayo Clinic, exercise is a healthy coping mechanism that“gets your mind away from the cycle of negative thoughts that feed anxiety and depression.”Physical exercise also releases endorphins and positive neurotransmitters. Going for a jog, playing a game of pick-up basketball or walking your dog after work are all healthy ways to wind down from the stress of your job. Before your unhappiness affects your work and results in termination, step back and assess how youre handling these five things. Are you working to keep a positive attitude, staying involved and pursuing your goals? Are you keeping a healthy body, mind and home environment? Its important to not allow yourself to feel like youre in a helpless situation, as you are not. Take control of yourself and your situation. Your job doesnt have to be a negative aspect in your life, and it all starts with you. Related: 12 Kickass Ways to Love Your Job. Shelley Davenport is a copywriter for Barnes Employment Group, a staffing company headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. You can follow Barnes Employment on Twitter: @BarnesJobs. Image: Shutterstock

How to Use Google Plus in an Integrated Search, Mobile and Social Media Strategy

How to Use Google Plus in an Integrated Search, Mobile and Social Media Strategy If you’re a recruitment agency with a decent marketer, your organisation’s digital strategy right now focuses on three separate channels: Search (paid and organic), Social Media and Mobile. Now, imagine a world where search optimisation, social media and mobile can be pulled together into a single integrated digital campaign. How can this be achieved?  Here’s a big idea, use  Google+  to bring everything together! What you need: Company Website:  your company website should be able to publish every open job that your recruiters have. Google+ Profiles:  every recruiter in your organisation would need to have an active Google+ account and in their “About” page under the “Contributor To” section, would link to your company homepage. Google Authorship Tags:  â€"  snippets of code that provides verification between a Google+ profile and that individual’s published online content.  For each advertised job there should be a link to the recruiter’s Google+ profile which includes the rel=”author” tag. (Using the free  Google Rich Snippet Testing Tool  can verify whether or not Google Authorship has been set up successfully.) Once implemented, a typical search result should look like this:  Disclaimer:  The author is currently employed by Experis Switzerland as a Digital Marketing Assistant. The theory: A typical recruitment agency website will have SEO “champion pages” based around skill sets or job types, e.g. a page optimised for the phrase “.NET jobs” will list all the open vacancies relevant to that skill. For agencies where recruiters specialise in sourcing for one or two skills, it’s a great opportunity to showcase their authority in that area, and increase the exposure for their advertisements. By adding the Google+ authorship tags to these champion pages, you can increase the traffic to your website easily without having to constantly fight your way up the page ranking. Basically, the headshot of the recruiter which appears alongside the text listing in search results draws the eye and attracts clicks. The user’s attention is naturally drawn to the image of the person, which makes the issue of position in the search results ranking almost irrelevant. Google hasn’t explicitly stated this, but “Author rank” may influence search results further. So it is in the recruiters’ best interest to publish high-quality and shareable content in the form of job postings as well as stimulating interaction on their own posts on Google+. At the very least, this should increase the recruiters’ activity and number of connections on the network. So where does mobile come into play? Google has recently expanded the reach for the Google+ platform by introducing a  content recommendation for mobile sites. By adding a single line of code to your mobile site, Recommendations will start to appear on your site. Google has aimed to make content discovery as seamless as possible so that when a user reaches the bottom of an article and starts to scroll up (indicating that they have finished reading), recommendations for similar type of content will appear. The recommendations are based on content from your Google+ circles (if you’re signed in), what the content was about and the content’s author. What does this mean for a recruiter? As long as the authorship tags have been added, jobseekers will get recommendations for similar jobs published by the same recruiter as they browse through the company’s mobile site. From a candidate’s perspective, this will offer a better experience as they seamlessly discover other jobs which are more relevant to them or have been endorsed by their circle. As search results are increasingly influenced by social media, recruitment agencies can take advantage of Google+’s features to differentiate themselves in search results instead of competing solely on rankings against other agencies and job boards. By using the authorship function, it inherently promotes the recruiters and creates brand ambassadors out of them. It should also drive traffic and engagement both on the website and the recruiters’ Google+ profiles. This strategy essentially creates an ongoing loop that supports the website and the recruiters’ online visibility and credibility.

7 Ways to Support Staff With Mental Ill-Health

7 Ways to Support Staff With Mental Ill-Health We all have mental health and sometimes, like our physical health, it can become unwell. Mental health is just as important as physical health â€" and tending to our invisible ailments needs the same level of intentionality as a visible illness. But what should managers do to make sure their employees mental health is taken care of? According to MIND one in six of us report experiencing a common mental health problem (such as anxiety and depression) in any given week as we navigate the lows and unexpected things in life. We experience negative emotions arising from situations like relationship breakdowns, bereavement, and the pressures and stresses from work which can all have a great impact on our emotional well-being. Often, when we think of mental ill-health, we think of conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, or clinical depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and whilst these will affect some in the workplace, for the vast majority of us, the term often denotes the fluctuations in our emotional welfare. It’s the role of managers to make sure that employees feel comfortable in their place of work and are made to feel part of the team even if their mental health is suffering. It’s imperative for managers to be proactive when it comes to managing and supporting staff with mental health issues, so here are some steps to take when you start to spot the first signs that an employee is struggling with the pressures of everyday life: 1. Begin an honest and open dialogue Youve noticed a change in their behavior. Perhaps theyve become irritable or withdrawn, or their standard of work has dropped. Theyre not meeting deadlines like they used to. First up: start an honest conversation. “Ive noticed you havent been yourself recently, are you okay? Is there anything on your mind?” Everyone has an inbuilt need to feel seen, known and valued and your reaching out as their manager to engage them with a sincere “how are you really doing?” will communicate real care and an opportunity to be heard. Start where the person is at, listen, and ask them what they need. 2. Have regular catch-ups Make it a habit to check in with your staff to see how theyre doing â€" not just in terms of work capability â€" but about what else might be affecting them internally, or how theyre doing in other areas of their life. Establishing open lines of communication, and regularly too, will form an amazing foundation of trust so if they go through a distressing situation that affects their mental health, they know they can comfortably approach you without embarrassment or shame. Getting to know your staff will help you to recognize when something is not quite right and you can then offer support at the earliest opportunity. Its good to promote the idea that talking about feelings isn’t a sign of weakness too; it’s part of taking charge of your well-being and doing what you can to stay healthy. 3. Review work capacity Emotional strain resulting from issues outside of the workplace might mean a colleague is not able to function and complete tasks to the same standard as before, so extend grace to them and focus on what they can achieve rather than what they cant. As a line manager, discuss and introduce adjustments to their workload, and be open to some creativity in terms of what they have the head space to do. Of course, don’t offer what is not possible according to company policy, but do ensure that reasonable adjustments are made so that as few barriers remain to their recovery as possible. This could include changing their working hours or patterns of work; giving them a place to go for their break; modifying sickness absence triggers and performance targets. Consideration of a persons situation goes a long way and will, in the long run, contribute to increased employee loyalty. Kindness, when someone is passing through deep emotional waters, is not easily forgotten. 4. Keep a paper trail Its a good idea to log what you agree together, so if theres a change in personnel, your replacement can easily get up to speed with how the employee is doing. It is also important to regularly review any adjustments and amend as appropriate. A wellness and recovery plan is an excellent way to outline triggers, warning signs and information on what will keep the person well â€" which really helps if signs of emotional issues are brewing so line managers can proactively put things in place to stop the situation from escalating. This paper trail can be invaluable evidence of the support that has been provided should this be required at a later stage. 5. Be flexible Mental health issues can flare up and seem difficult in the moment, but they are often not on-going, rather episodes where people need support before they fully recover and gain their equilibrium again. 6. Create a culture of awareness Ensure resentment does not have any space to seed and grow â€" especially when others might have to temporarily take on more responsibility whilst a colleague recovers and takes steps to manage their mental health via counseling, medication or other intervention. The workplace needs to be target driven, but this doesnt exclude it from also being a place of community where compassion for employees is important too. 7. Communicate which mental health services are available Encourage people to seek advice and support from their GP or if your organization has an Employee Assistance Programme it may be able to arrange counseling. As a manager you should seek advice/support from organisations such as MIND or your in-house occupational health practitioner, if appropriate. Mental health doesnt have to be a scary phrase. It is possible to create a culture of openness and support, especially when discussing feelings, so that whatever your staff goes through and whenever it happens, it doesnt have to affect them or the business negatively in the long run. About the author: Paula Whelan is an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion specialist at RightTrack Learning.  She has an extensive background in Equality and Diversity and hands-on experience of planning to advance the inclusivity of organizations through learning strategies that develop leaders, managers, and employees.