Headford News and Community Spotlight - Satisfaction

Newsflash! Starting next week the Headford News and Community Spotlight will be posted every WEDNESDAY. Look out for us!


COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT

Did you know that nearly 400,000 Irish people are looking for jobs? That’s means close to 12% of our population is unemployed.

But having a job isn’t necessarily salvation, and, for many people, it’s far from satisfying. Sure, we all want income, but we don’t want to be miserable in order to get it. According to a Mercer survey reported in The Journal.ie, over 35% of Irish workers are unhappy in their jobs and want to leave. There are many complaints, of course, but the two biggest are longer working hours and less job security.

It could be worse. According to Forbes magazine, only 19% of workers in the United States are satisfied with their jobs.

While these statistics aren’t exactly shocking, they are important. Work consumes a huge amount of our lives—about 16 years in total if you work full-time—and yet growing numbers of people struggle through their days feeling impoverished from lack of employment, or extremely unhappy with the employment they do have. It’s a recipe for disaster. Or change…

That’s where the Community Employment Scheme comes in. The CE Scheme offers unemployed people jobs within the community for limited amounts of time. While the jobs aren’t meant to be permanent replacements for full-time employment, neither are they the misery-makers those 35% of Irish workers are so unhappy about. And, although the pay for CE jobs is very low, there are other benefits to being on the scheme. 

In the Headford area, over the last six years, one man in particular has been responsible for increasing the numbers of local people employed by the CE Scheme from 21 to 34. As Supervisor of the Headford Community Employment Scheme, Ignatius Egan—‘Iggy’ for short—endeavours to keep people off the ‘live register’ by putting them to work in the community. Part of the compensation for this work is on-the-job experience. ‘It gives people a sense of well-being by being actively employed,’ Iggy says. Plus, the programme allows people to get training in areas of interest so they can get back to work, hopefully doing something they like.

Ignatius 'Iggy' Egan

On an average day, Iggy organises projects and distributes responsibilities to people, like building and landscape maintenance, overseeing a large amount of work for various locations around Headford. His domain is extensive, and includes Cloughanover, Claran and Kilcoona, as well as Headford. Iggy is also responsible for budgeting and acquiring materials—everything from lawn mowers to paint—for all sorts of projects.

To help him with all this work, Ann Forde is Office Administrator.

And Kevin Lee is Assistant Supervisor.

Working a bit like the three musketeers—all for one and one for all—Iggy, Ann and Kevin process wages, organise training and do a monumental amount of paperwork. Basically, they are the local CE Scheme.

In his previous business-life, Iggy was the Operations Director for the Services Division of Hewlett Packard, working closely with customers and software. This is where he says he ‘developed people skills and business management skills.’ But, as Supervisor for the local CE Scheme, there is ‘zero stress,’ and Iggy says, ‘I really enjoy working with the local community. We have a great staff and I’ve made many new friends.’  

The tiny Headford Community Employment Office

You could say that Iggy is helping people not to become part of that 35% of unhappy workers. ‘As a result of what we do—training and skills developed—people go on to get work, and I love that.’ A shy smiles spreads over his face, and he says those words again, almost as if he’s pleasantly surprised by his own good fortune. ‘I love to help people get work when they move on from the scheme. That’s the best piece of job satisfaction you can get.’