(Translation: What’s Up with Woeful Underemployment?)

There was a day last autumn when the Department of Labor reported that 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs in one month.  On that same day, I was in the audience for a webinar detailing mental health issues in the workplace.  The webinar was sponsored by a business publication.  The presenters were employed by a local health care concern.  The email invite was first rate, the presenters were sincere and passionate about the subject and the slides were produced by a talented graphic artist.  As such webinars go, it was a first-rate presentation.  

As the attention on employee mental health is growing (along with the number of webinars) to rival that of the attention given to Diversity & Inclusion, there is a major component of employee well-being that is totally ignored.  That component is Woeful Underemployment (WU).  

What is WU?  It’s the concept that individuals with ambition, talent and in possession of a creative soul are employed at jobs that provide little or no inherent satisfaction or sense of creation and accomplishment.  And the webinars discussing the subject to workplace mental health are totally ignoring the impact WU has on a percentage of their employees.

What is that percentage?  Hard to determine but a prudent estimate may be 20% to 20%.  What is the result of WU?  Physical and mental stress that leads to “presenteeism,” poor sleep, “quiet quitting” and unhealthy post-work and weekend activities that bleed into one’s personal life.  Those behaviors, in turn, have a negative impact on home life, too.  A percentage of those that quit jobs—and are no longer in the “labor participation rate”—did so because they could (thanks to a healthy 401(k) balance and a spouse still working) but also because their job provided no sense of satisfaction, creation and, to quote John Mellencamp’s Small Town, “little opportunity.”

Think how important one’s job is to one’s identify—one of the first questions we are asked when me meet somebody is, “What do you do?”  Not only do we spend a large percentage of our waking hours at our jobs or with our jobs, we are thinking about them to some extent even when we’re not physically doing them.  If one is in the WU category, those thoughts aren’t happy ones.  Larry O’Brien, who was one half of the highly entertaining radio team of O’Brien and Garry on the long gone (but certainly not forgotten) radio station WTAE, once discussed an office job he had before he started his radio career.  He shared with the audience that he got an uneasy pit in his stomach on Sunday afternoon knowing that he was going to have to drag himself through an energy-sapping job for five whole days before there was another weekend.  I’ve had that feeling.  I know what Larry was talking about.  It’s not a healthy way to go through life.

What can employers do to reduce WU?  First, acknowledge that it exists.  Realize a percentage of employees have creative souls and need to have those souls engaged in productive, fulfilling work—at least part of the time.  Draw a map to show WU employees how they can move into a more rewarding job.  Take some time (maybe one day per month or even the last Friday afternoon of the month) and allow employees to perform at a different job in a different department.  A highly regarded manager in our baseball league had a policy of allowing each player to play different positions throughout the season.  Some of his players, who went on to become Little League and Pony League managers themselves, adopted the same policy. 

Newly hired young employees should be made aware that the new job they’re so excited about with the XYZ Corporation today may turn into a “pit in the stomach” job one year out.  The new car loan, expensive housing and credit cards used to furnish that housing may tie a young person to a job that puts them in the WU category just to make car loan and credit card payments.

There is one positive note about WU: many entrepreneurs became business owners because their bout with WU gave them the incentive and motivation to set out on their own.  We owe mind numbing, soul crunching jobs at various companies for some of the greatest products and services that make our lives better.  

The acronym EAP stands for Employee Assistance Program.  It is the substance abuse and mental health treatment component of corporate health insurance programs.  I once had a phone conversation with a woman who oversaw the EAP for a large accounting firm.  When I mentioned the concept of WU to her, she jumped from cell tower to cell tower and blasted me with, “We have volunteer days and happy hours!”  Happy hours.  Yeah, I want to consume alcohol with a co-worker who spends his time putting together the block pool for the upcoming game and discussing last night’s TV viewing.  Instead of happy hours, companies should be offering classes in Transcendental Meditation—TM.  While there are numerous meditation methods, TM has actual benefits and science behind it.  Corporations should be incorporating TM into their wellness programs.

In my life, I’ve had times when I suffered from deep depression.  I’ve lost some months of my life.  I’ve known despair and the feeling of no hope.  There was one noteworthy time when I resorted to the dopamine-producing action of cigarettes in order to keep going.  Going until tomorrow.  The one constant that got me through my personal storms was writing.  I “wrote” myself to good mental health.  As with TM, companies should incorporate writing classes into their wellness programs as a way to overcome WU.  Wellness programs—with their emphasis on weight loss contests, discounts on gym memberships and Lunch & Learns discussing the hot new supplements—could be so much better than they actually are.

In my email inboxes, there currently are invites to health care related webinars.  One email promotes a walk to raise awareness for mental health in the workplace.  These email invites are professionally prepared, aesthetically pleasing and the presenters will be well educated and insightful medical personnel.  As the number of webinar invites increases weekly, I have to be careful where I invest my time and attention.  Until the mental health field and corporations address WU, I’ll be extremely selective on the webinars I register—except the one that promises how to get higher attendance at my Lunch & Learn programs.  I’m already registered for that one.

Epilogue:

From the time I wrote this until you are reading it, I read a book titled Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull.  Ed is the co-founder of Pixar and was President of Walt Disney Animation Studios.  Ed was directly or indirectly responsible for Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo, Ralph Breaks the Internet and other classic computer-generated movies. Ed’s book is about many things, including how to promote a sense of creativity in the workplace.  Ed shares that at Pixar, employees rotate to other jobs two days per month to obtain an understanding of the techniques, processes and stresses that fellow employees work with.  Two days per month.  This piece suggests one Friday afternoon per month.  If it’s good enough for Pixar…