Can only farmers be happy?

In the Netherlands there are about 900000 employees (circa 12% of the Dutch workforce) that suffer from burn-out related symptoms. On average these people use up 189 days of sick-leave each year. That sums up to about 9 months of absenteeism, due to various forms of stress at work. The lion’s share of these problems are caused by relational problems, such as problems with:

• Yourself
• Your boss
• Your colleagues
• Your customers

These numbers also indicate that working in a team can often be more of a hell then a heaven, causing many team-members to become less productive, less innovative and ill more and more often.

A quite interesting point here is that farming seems to stand out as the profession in which people have far less problems with work-related burn-out symptoms. There are 5 main reasons as to why farmers have such great resilience:

1. They have no direct boss
2. They have no employees
3. They have no colleagues
4. There is a lot of regularity in their work
5. They get a lot of exercise, and work a lot outside in the great outdoors

So? Let us all get back to ancient civilization; let us all become farmers again? Or, slightly more realistic (though still nonsense), let us all become freelancers.

Fortunately there are also numerous examples of excellent teams, in the business-world, health-care, sport, family-life, and even as huge groups – where sometimes thousands of people form a great and functioning team. However, this never just happens coincidently. Well, on few occasions people actually really do meet coincidently, and form a beautiful team. Nonetheless, it is never coincidence that a team becomes and remains truly healthy and successful on the long run.