With every passing survey, it is observed that employees are disengaging from their work. Suffering at work seems to be inexorably increasing, and rare are the efforts to recreate job satisfaction that wind up being crowned with success.

It might be the time to return to the excellent article by Yves Clot, L’aspiration au travail bien fait (The aspiration for a job well done). The psychologist underlines that performance and health are wholly compatible. When we make an effective effort, one that meets the goal we had set ourselves or accepted, we may be tired, but also satisfied. Unless the load is a chronically unbearable one, we then recover from this healthy fatigue to take on another motivating project the following day. On the other hand, producing an ineffective effort is exhausting and demoralizing. Work fatigue is compounded by stress and ruminations about doing the same job again the next day, in an equally ineffective manner. It then becomes necessary to redouble our efforts to manage to get back to work—without even being in a condition to give the best of our capacities.

Yves Clot thus invites us to first remedy the organization’s dysfunctions: the idea is to treat what is preventing people from doing quality work, without limiting ourselves to offering psychological support to “help make unbearable situations bearable”.

Source : L'aspiration au travail bien fait (The aspiration for a job well done), Yves Clot, Journal de l'École de Paris du management, n° 99, January-February 2013.

To learn more :

¬ Stimulate job satisfaction (Manageris’ Synopsis No.212a)