Written by Amy Rothwell – Happiness Ambassador, Boo Coaching & Consulting (June 2023)

At the first ever GM Good Employment Conference this year, Ian MacArthur, Director of the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter described the extraordinary levels of job satisfaction reported by employees of schoolwear manufacturers “One+All”.

“You’d think they were saving lives!” He said. I’ve visited this company and I know what he means. If I didn’t already have the best job in the world at Boo, I’d be pretty pleased to go and work at One+All.

But what about the people who ARE saving lives?

What about the people we trust with our children’s lives?

How do we want the people operating on our partner, nursing our parents, facilitating our loved one’s birth or caring for our babies to feel when they are at work?

These services that we all depend on at some point – nearly always when we are at our most vulnerable – are some of the industries in which it is most difficult to satisfy the conditions of good employment as set out in the Charter. In particular, the areas of pay, health & wellbeing and flexible work.

Now, I’ve got more than one horse in this race.

I work for a company that helps make bosses better bosses and create happier, healthier workplaces. At Boo we are fully bought into the principles of good employment because we simply know it’s beneficial for business as well as being beneficial for the world.

I sit on the Greater Manchester Women and Girl’s Equality Panel. Women make up the majority of the health and social care workforce, and in GM (as globally), women in general are disproportionately affected by lower pay and less favourable working conditions.

I also serve as the Chair of Bolton Maternity Voices Partnership, a role which has solidified what I’ve learned at Boo about the significance of workplace culture and wellbeing in influencing outcomes for service users, patients and families.

And finally, I have nursery-aged children. I desperately wish there was something I could do to help resolve the challenges faced by early years childcare providers and support the wonderful people who work in that industry and who are often forced to leave it - even when is it their passion.

That’s the thing, there are many elements contributing to job satisfaction. Loving your work, being good at your job and doing something the world needs are all powerful incentives to show up and do your best each day.

The foundations on which these things are built include being paid enough to meet the costs of living and being able to work and also attend to the other things that make your life rich and meaningful.

So before we form our opinions about whether one group deserves a pay rise or another deserves greater flexibility let’s ask ourselves  - those professionals to whom we entrust our lives and our loves, how do we want them to feel at work?