According to the World Health Association (WHO), the majority of individuals spend 1/3 of their adult life at work. With another 1/3 of their adult life sleeping, this amounts to a lot of time!

Occupational wellness is the knack to achieve a balance between work and leisure in a way that supports health, a sense of personal fulfilment and is (for most people) financially rewarding.

Before successfully improving your occupational wellness, it’s essential to understand precisely what it is. In a nutshell, occupational wellness has to do with increasing your workplace happiness by concentrating on work that brings you a sense of joy, contentment, and accomplishment. It can be accomplished by exploring various careers pathways and positively managing working place stressors.

Since the majority of us spend a lot of time at work, it’s essential to make sure you explore what kind of a work/life balance you’ll have as well as how colleagues work together in that line of work.

Areas that can create occupational stress involve: problems with co-workers, partners or employers; ethical stress due to requests from owners, trainers or colleagues; physical or emotional fatigue; a lack of common sense of purpose or working for the greater good; working outside of your given gifts/talents/strengths; absence or neglect to personal relationships and responsibilities.  

Occupational wellness seeks to recognise these stressors so that we can correct in our life to exclude them. A series of tools and assessments are favourable in the self-discovery of occupational wellness and to create a path towards an enlightening and rewarding career. 

Signs of occupational wellness:

• Doing work that you find motivating and interesting
• Understanding how to balance leisure with work
• Working in a way that fits into your personal learning style 
• Communicating and collaborating with others
• Working independently and with others
• Feeling inspired and challenged 
• Feeling good at the end of the day about the work you accomplished 

Check in with your occupational wellness:

• Are you thinking about a major that you will find interesting and meaningful?
• What opportunities do you want to take advantage of while at UNH to propel your occupational wellness? Internships? Study abroad? Volunteer work? On-campus leadership programs?
• What’s your balance between work and relaxation? 

Explore occupational wellness: 

• Don’t settle, keep motivated to work towards what you want
• Increase your skills and knowledge to advance your occupational wellness goals 
• Find the benefits and positives in your current job 
• Create connections with your co-workers
• Avoid overworking yourself, find a work/life balance 
• Enjoy what you do, do what you enjoy
• Write out your occupational goals and create a plan to reach them – then start working the plan 
• Talk to a career counsellor if you feel stuck