Peace, passion and progress: are they compatible?

Voice Project is a research and consulting team based in the Department of Psychology, Macquarie University. We specialise in using organisational surveys to diagnose leadership, culture and human resource management. As part of an ongoing research project we recently compiled data from 10,021 employees from 876 business units across more than 700 organisations.While the implications of the research are quite varied, we found some extremely surprising results that conflict with much of the current excitement about wellbeing and work/life balance in the workplace. As a society, as organisations and as individuals we are choosing passion and progress before peace. We are putting in the hard yards and we enjoy doing so. Indeed, if our schedule empties a little or our job isn't inspiring us to get up earlier, then we find more goals or another job. Although we may seek pockets of peace to help us momentarily recover from a particularly heavy load, we aren't looking for the quiet life. Peace may be a legitimate goal for ethical or moral reasons, or in an attempt to reduce direct costs associated with stress claims. We may, however, be doing ourselves a disservice, as individuals and as a profession, if we continue to argue that peace is a primary method for enhancing productivity, morale, attraction and retention. Through years of practical experience managers appear to have intuitively grasped the disconnect between peace, passion and progress.