Jenn Lim, CEO of Delivering Happiness and bestselling author of 'Beyond Happiness', joins Cheddar to discuss Gallup’s new State of the Global Workplace report that suggests the emotional side of work has not healed from the pressures of the last two years.

On the Job

Stress Levels Remain High in the American Workforce

back to on the job presented by ADP feeling stressed at work. Unfortunately, that is not a surprise if you are according to gallup's latest state of the Global workplace report. Us workers are some of the most stressed employees in the entire world by all accounts. We've seen that the world is returning to normal so why has the emotional side of work still not healed joining us now to discuss just that is jenn lim ceo of delivering happiness and best selling author of Beyond happiness, why our stress levels spiking in the workplace. I have to ask you, jen, thank you so much for coming on because like we mentioned, we are seeing that post pandemic world where people are still really stressed out here. Yeah, it is true and I'm glad that you mentioned the gallup new state of the global workplace report because That is telling us 44% of employees are experiencing stress a lot during the previous day, that's their technical term a lot and in general, that means just negative emotions are still really super high. So it's not just stress, it's worry, it's anger, it's sadness, you know, all these things are factoring into our day to days and then that kind of leads up to the question why. So we're, you know, trying to get out back to some sense of normalcy in some ways, like you walk around the streets of new york or san Francisco or whatever airports, you know, there's, there's kind of like this sense of like, oh wait things are normal again, but the reality is that, that we haven't processed these things yet. There's two things we haven't processed, one is the state of the world is not back to normal and to be real, it might not ever be. And then the second thing is that we as human beings and our inner being are not normal and we haven't had time or made time to really just process and heal and make sense of all these things that are affecting our well being. Like our mental state, emotional state, physical state, financial state and that's just causing high stress levels like all around. Is this surprising to you at all Sadly. I mean no because the way I call it, we all got 20-2020. I mean the whole world got 2020, let alone the US and what that means is that the recession pandemic, climate change, social unrest like futurists all predicted that but they did not predict it would happen in all one year. So that's what I mean when we got all that 2020 and it takes a lot longer for us as human beings to process that than a year or two, that kind of changes really gets stored up in our minds and in our bodies. And the thing is that this volatility is not over yet. You know with the war the inflation that's rising and looming recession and you know who knows what next um strain of Covid from the greek outfit alphabet will be. But put in another perspective and this is something I really wanted to share in my book beyond happiness is that everyone in this world has experienced some kind of loss or trauma and I don't mean it by a sense of just a loss of a human being because of course we all have had experienced that, but some sort of loss in terms of hope or expectation or even you know, a job or relationship. These things all amount to something that's really big in terms of what actually sustains us as human beings to be happy, which is a sense of control. And that's the ultimate sense of loss that we all experienced. And so for us to get back to some sense of sustainable happiness in our world is to get back on a stable sense of ground and foundation again that we have not gotten to yet, why does the data show that working women in America are significantly more stressed on a daily level compared to working men in this country. Yes. So what's interesting is that the Bureau of Labor statistics, the BLS shared that four times more women Then men dropped out of the labor force in 2020 in the later time basically since COVID and that affected disproportionately women of color young women, women with disabilities, poor women. And we have to ask why so glaring and case in point happened just last week and no matter what side or where you stand on these issues of abortion, the ruling, the scotus ruling really highlighted the reasons why women have more everyday stresses than men. I mean, just think about like the level of stress is for humankind, there's one level, but then if you just happen to be a woman, there's another layer of stresses that are specific to you and so knowing knowing the realities before Covid, Like women were already getting paid less and less likely to be promoted and that's stressful. But then add on what happened after Covid. Um, we saw studies from like Harvard and London business schools that showed women, especially mothers, spent a lot more time on childcare and chores during Covid and that was directly linked to a sense of lower well being. So, of course, you know, with this loss of support system, there's no surprise that it's just hard for men are sorry, hard for women and easier for them to get burned out more than men. And we're certainly seeing that with all the research that we're seeing from analysts and experts jen lim ceo of delivering happiness and best selling author beyond happiness. Always love when you come on, thank you so much