New Year, New Work You?

Every year, thousands upon thousands of New Year Resolutions are made. Often, these end up broken or entirely forgotten before even halfway through the year. But sometimes they can be the motivation you need to push yourself just that extra bit further.

New Year resolutions may not usually involve your work, often they are tailored to your private life. But it can be just as helpful to create some resolutions to help improve your work life or just give you that specific goal to work towards throughout the year.

So what are common work resolutions?

A survey by Careerbuilder.com found that work related resolutions are perhaps more common than you may realise. In fact one in five employees (21%) are planning to leave their current employer, the reasons for this are unknown but it could be anything from searching for better pay to simply wanting a new fresh start.

A New Year is the best time to make a new resolution

But that is not the only resolution that involved work, 38% of the 3,252 workers that were surveyed were aiming to save more of their pay. This is a perfect example of a reachable goal, as it could easily be accomplished by simply putting away a certain proportion of your wage each month into a savings account. It does not have to be a large amount, perhaps simply £10 or £20, but over the year you will have a nice stash of money that can be a buffer for any unfortunate events, or simply the start of a holiday fund!

A harder resolution to acquire would be the 26% of people who want to get a raise or a promotion. Often New Year’s resolutions are based solely on something that the person who makes it can achieve by themselves. Something like a raise or promotion unfortunately relies on your manager and there is always the chance that no matter how hard you work, you won’t be able to achieve your resolution.

Your resolutions don’t have to be big

While these can be seen as bigger achievements that will impact your personal life, there are also plenty of ways to make smaller resolutions that can improve the atmosphere in your office. This could be something as simple as toning down, or refusing, to get involved in the office gossip.

Every office has gossip, but it’s easy to forget that the people you are gossiping about are just that – people. While it may be an amusing five minutes for you and your friends/colleagues, put yourself into the other shoes and imagine if you were the source of gossip and amusement.

Another simple goal would be to learn something new, whether in a class or simply by teaching yourself online. It is always beneficial to better yourself by learning something new as it could potentially help advance your career.

There are plenty of other New Year’s resolutions that you could make that involve your workplace, but the most important thing will be sticking to them and trying to actually achieve them. You may find that you set yourself an unrealistic resolution, but if you stick hard enough at it, there is every chance it could happen!

Have you made a work related New Year’s resolution?