Happiness at Work

Are you happy with your current job or career?

Having a job or a career is good enough, but there are tons of opportunities out there that we can explore, and it is not wrong for us to just consider other opportunities offered in other industries.

But first, we need to check our level of happiness with our current job.
There are a few things that we can check whether we are really happy or satisfied with our current job, and these are the areas that we can check:

INCOME

Does our income enough?
Sometimes enough is not good enough, of course, we would like to have EXTRA.
Some of us just working to make a living and forget about our dreams.
We do have our dream house, dream car, dream vacation, best education for our children, and dream to have our luxurious lifestyle BUT being busy at work every day makes us forget our dreams.
End up, we just make a living through whatever we earn.
Think again, if we can’t buy the things that we WANT and only buy the THINGS that we need, we have to admit we don’t earn enough.
Always remember, earn more, spend less, and invest wisely.
Income is the main factor that determines our happiness with our job.

TIME

Obviously, we want to have a balance between work, family, and ourselves.
Career Goal always involves time and money.
The best is if we can have both. Not having one of that can create unhappiness, and worst if we don’t have both!
But we must remember, success needs sacrifice too.
Most successful people in the world sacrificed their time in the beginning of their career to spend more on the job or business, but they enjoy the time later in their career.
Therefore, we need to know that the time we are spending for our career or business right now is leading us to something that’s worth the sacrifice.
If right now, we are really busy for work and we know it’s going to continue like that for the rest of our life, something needs to be thought about.
Time is very limited, so choose to spend it wisely.

RECOGNITION

Does somebody recognize your work?
Recognition comes in a lot of forms.
The most common recognition a company can give us is our increment in our income.
After all the hard work and accomplishments we did for the company, the amount of increment shows how much they appreciate our work.
The problem is, some companies offer really small increments which can’t even cope with the inflation of our own expenses, leading to financial issues the longer we work.
Some companies have a company trip, even overseas, to recognize their staff’s contributions, and some give rewards in terms of bonuses and gadgets provided we deliver the results and meet expectations.
So what kind of recognition do you get from your company?
Is it worth your effort and time that you put in?

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

A good career is one that can make us better through time.
A lot of things can be learned at work—knowledge, skills, and experience in handling the job—which will be very valuable for us in the future.
Unfortunately, some jobs don’t develop us much because we are doing the same task every day, every year.
So always be up for a challenge to take on a new role or task; this way, we can really expand our knowledge, skills, and experience.
No challenge means we are not learning.
Let’s face it, no personal development means a boring job unless you choose to be like that.

CAREER GROWTH

Growth is an indicator that we are doing better.
Growth in terms of income is very obvious; growth in terms of position and roles we are responsible for also proves that we are getting better.
As much as we want to grow, some companies or industries that we are working in don’t have room for career growth.
For example, if you are working directly under the owner of the company, it means there is no position for you to be promoted to—you will never be the boss of the company owner.
Or maybe you are working in a work environment that fixes promotion by education level or certification, making it a challenge to be promoted.
The best option is to work in a company or organization that can recognize and promote us to the next position according to performance, not seniority, because we don’t want to wait for our turn to be promoted just because we are younger.

THE PEOPLE

Lastly, and most importantly, the people we work with affect our happiness at work.
Even if you earn a very high income, have time for the family, get better at your work every day, and are promoted to an important position, we can never be happy if we cannot get along with our colleagues.
Be it your boss, peers, or even the staff working under you—these relationships make a lot of difference.

What we want:

From a Boss – Understanding and working like a mentor for us, teaching us, and developing us to become better every day.
From Peers – Encouragement to be better and meet KPIs in a push & pull working environment.
From Staff – Supportive staff who understand your goals and are willing to work together to achieve common goals.

So these are 6 factors that I believe can give us happiness in our career.

Maybe there are many more things we expect from a job, but I think if you have these 6 things, it’s already GREAT.

Congratulations if you already have it all.
But if you don’t, don’t worry because you can change.
We are not trees.