Wisconsin Builder | Job Satisfaction

TIME WELL SPENT

Chris Thompson

Time compresses when you have a child.

Sleep disappears.

Baby songs spin through your head. Baby food appears in your hair.

Every day grows rife with complexity as you string together hours in a circle around daycare. And that golden moment, when you sit alone on the couch, slips away with a baby's cry.

Life as they knew it fades to the periphery for new parents, and work sometimes becomes an afterthought, a source of income the details of which are lost in the haze of exhaustion.

And it's not just new parents who feel the tug between personal responsibility and professional obligation. It's everyone. It's the job-site superintendent who has a terminally ill relative. It's the sales person who wrecked her car in an accident. It's the office assistant who's worried he's wasting his business degree.

This is the real work force. These are the people who staff every company in every city.

And while their professional motivations start with security, pay and insurance, they don't end there. Every single one of these people needs something more from work.

They might say they're just working for the paycheck, but there's always an untapped reservoir of aspirations. They might say their focus is on life at home, but their sense of well-being sways with the winds of work.

It only makes sense that it would. These people give the majority of their life to the work they do. To think it all comes down to money is a gross underestimation of the depth and needs of the average person.

Call it job satisfaction. Call it career fulfillment. People need to know they make a difference. They need goals to work for and rewards when they reach them. They want recognition. They want affirmation not just that they're doing good work but that the wobbly balance they strike every day between home and office means something more than just being on time.

And when they leave work at the end of the day, when they return home, they need to know that the time they were away was worth it.