Travel and Work - Wholesome or Troublesome?

Do you travel for hours together to get to your workplace? Does the travel exhaust you even before your day at work begins? Do you get stressed because of being late due to your travel woes?

Travelling might be relaxing or a getaway for some people but travelling to and from your workplace has heavy effects on your life.

The range of the effects spans from one’s inter-personal to intra-personal life. On the intra-personal front, there are major health risks involved in travelling especially if you are driving to work. The major health risks are related to an increase in the blood pressure levels, muscle pulls and spasms and skeletal disorders. The risks might not be of major concern but they affect productivity at work. Travelling for long hours also causes emotional distress, in the form of anger, resentment of work.

The chances of being late to work are also extremely high in cases where you travel from far places. The other aspect of inter-personal life that is affected is at your workplace. The interest to work, the ability to perform well and concentrate on work is lower among those who live far away from their workspace as against those who live nearby.

On the inter-personal sphere, a study has shown that the more time a person spends in travelling, the more time spent commuting, the more socially isolated you tend to be. As you will spend less time at home and more time on the road, your relationship with family and loved ones might be affected. This might not only be because of the less time you spend with them but also because of the stress and trauma of travelling.

Coping with long travel is a task that must be tackled with on various fronts. First, one must ensure they are eating healthy and getting exercise as long travel certainly involves a lot of sitting which makes people extremely inactive. Telecommunicating and Job-sharing are other options when it comes to solving travel woes.

If there is no respite from travelling, some ways to ease the stress and ensure one is less drained at the workplace are to prepare for the next day in the same night itself. Changing the driving patterns by carpooling with people who live nearby will give some respite from driving every day.

Another way of dealing with travel is by nipping the problem in the bud, which employers are beginning to do by not engaging employers who live far away from the firm in the first place. But its feasibility can be questioned as to whether it is the right parameter to deny someone a job.

In Europe, travelling to work is now defined as part of the job, which proves how essential this time is and how using it judiciously and managing it is essential. This time defines one’s output at work and reactions at home. Ensuring we make the best of this time and remain stress-free and calm throughout is thus, extremely important.