Go hard and go home
With traditionally long hours, relentless rejection and rabid competition constantly biting at your ankles, there is little wonder that the burn out rate for this industry is high.
Recruitment is a tough gig, this is no news. For as long as the current Recruitment model has been around, it has always been a hard job to do well. With traditionally long hours, relentless rejection and rabid competition constantly biting at your ankles, there is little wonder that the burn out rate for this industry is high. But it is also rewarding, challenging, fulfilling and lucrative, let’s not forget that! Otherwise, no one would do it!
“The problem with burning the candle at both ends is that it gives off such a lovely light”
Christopher Hitchens
However, there are a few new kids on the block that now makes the job that little bit tougher and a little more prone to stress. Smartphones and social media – Take a Bow. Now we are always switched on, always contactable, always being blasted with tens of thousand pieces of information all vying for our attention and always multi-tasking to the “Nth” degree.
In fact, a few years ago, a research study announced that we absorbe5 times the amount of daily information today as we did in 1986, the equivalent of 174 newspapers. Even during our leisure time (not counting work) each of us processes 34 gigabytes, or 100,000 words, every day! The world’s 21,274 television stations produce 85,000 hours of original programming every day as we watch an average of five hours of television daily, the equivalent of 20 gigabytes of audio-video images. The facts are staggering and not even up to date for 2019! How about that for burn out? I don’t know about you, but I got a little anxious even contemplating these figures.
This is the new world we live in. A totally new paradigm where we, in the Recruitment industry must act. Put in its most bottom-line terms, failure to do so would be bad business. If anecdotal evidence isn’t enough for you, then Google “UK stress-related work figures” and feast on the mountain of evidence to back up the phenomenon. We are drowning and getting overwhelmed with stress. The struggle is real.
So what can be done?
In order to combat this new enemy, it is vital that we practice and encourage aggressive self-care. If the motto for many is “go hard or go home” then that also needs to apply to how we look after our own mental well-being and then how we look after our teams.
Gone are the days when meditation, duvet days and mental health first aiders are seen as ‘soft’. These privileges and support now need to become a standard offering in your arsenal, as if you don’t, you can be sure that your competitors will.
We introduced a 20-minute meditation session after lunch and now have one-third of our office attending on a regular basis.
This style of meditation has been passed down over thousands of years but redesigned for a more modern environment. It allows the meditator to experience deep rest that has been shown to be 33% deeper than deep sleep, so after the sessions, the participants feel like they have had the power nap to end all power naps. Energy is a finite resource each day so this allows us to recharge on the go and meet the afternoon with the same gusto as we do first thing in the morning.
This method has shown to drastically reduce stress and the ‘fight or flight response’ that is so used to firing off at any given time of the day (whether it’s warranted or not).
The results?
The end result being the ability to work from a position of response as opposed to reaction. A subtle but important distinction to be at your mental best for all the slings and arrows that we are faced with day to day and greatly enhancing our cognitive ability to make superior business decisions. It also just feels great! Especially in a group where everyone’s energy lashes together and creates a powerful, restorative and insanely chilled out experience.
Some of our staff are now swearing by it and look forward to our time meditating together and many have reported a number of positive impacts in their work AND home life as a result of continued practice… and no drawback in sight!
All it costs is the time that you give your team to do it and other than that it’s totally free. From a business perspective, it is a dream investment as the multiple benefits to you and your team will reap from this and compound over time! And if it’s good enough for Oprah, Ariana Huffington and Ray Dalio(founder of the world’s largest hedge fund) then it’s surely good enough for us.
“Any plant or flower will grow, flourish and shine given the ideal conditions to do so. The exact same can be said for humans”
By Jason Linney
Jason is our experienced Learning & Development Manager with 18 years of experience, including 6 within the recruitment industry.
