A recent German study has revealed a surprising fact: doing unpaid volunteer work outside of the bounds of your paid job not only has great mental health benefits, the extra helping of happiness and self-esteem can even boost your performance in your paid job, potentially even leading to a pay raise.
Business Week reports:
TUESDAY, Feb. 16 (HealthDay News) — Volunteer work offers mental health benefits and may even help you perform better in your paying job, the results of a German study show.
The study included 105 people who worked an average of five days a week and who spent an average of 6.7 hours per week volunteering in activities ranging from fire departments to church groups.
For two weeks, the participants completed two daily questionnaires, one after work and the other before going to bed. They detailed how much time they’d spent volunteering and recorded their feelings on need satisfaction, psychological detachment from work, learning experiences, and well-being at work.
What do you think – what emotional, spiritual and even career benefits might volunteer work bring?
2 thoughts on “Volunteer Work Helps Your Paid Job”
Pingback: Alina Mikos - Is Your Career/Job Turning You Into Someone Else? — A Celebration of Women
Thanks for sharing this, Krishna Bill…I totally agree with the study!
What most of us truly want in life is fulfillment of some kind. Some are lucky enough to find at work, but many have to find other ways to get it. It only makes sense that if you get more out of one area of life, that satisfaction will find its way into other areas.
In my own experience, my job is fulfilling only part of the time. It is more difficult to get my work done when I don’t feel like I’m getting as much out of it as I’m putting into it. Fortunately, I have other outlets to use my skills to help people and I can see the connections between what I am doing at work and as a volunteer. If I know am working hard and it pays off for more than just me, then I am definitely likely to continue to do it.