Properties of working life

For everyone working, a major part of life is spent at work. Besides the actual professional activity, there are lots of rules, laws, regulations, and codes of manner without which successful and satisfying working is impossible. Important elements are:

• Health aspects, like bullying, burn-out, work-life balance
• Career-related issues, like networks, family, communication with bosses and colleagues, competencies
• Parameters of employment contracts, like kinds of work, working hours, vacation, income, labor law
• Working conditions, like location, mobility, workplace design, working atmosphere, health and safety, codetermination
• Special demands of women, disabled, foreigners, and people aged 50+
• Future matters like employability, development of job market and occupations, working methods and conditions
• Independent businessmen and their special problems

Tips, Checklist

• It is not sufficient to look into these subjects at the start of your working life. Check every now and then in how far the different aspects yield accordance of reality and your ideas, and “re-adjust” if required, also by changes of jobs, repeated negotiations, or communicating with bosses and colleagues
• Not only your own framework conditions can change, but also those of the job market. So keep yourself informed about changes in your occupation and your branch, in order to act in time
• Talk about these subjects with your boss in annual talks, and also have them covered in your objective agreements