If you have a full-time job then it's likely you spend more time at work with your colleagues than at home with family and friends.
As such, it can make a real difference to your performance if you have a role you enjoy and co-workers you get on with, given you'll be working in such close quarters.
Unfortunately, this isn't the case for everyone and some people may find that their job, or more specifically their boss, is actually making them unwell.
This is according to Professor Sir Cary Cooper, an organisational psychologist from the University of Manchester, who has spoken to The Mirror about this 'critical' issue.
The expert, who is chair of The National Forum for Health and Wellbeing at Work, explained that his research has found there are two main factors that cause people to get stressed and ill at work - line managers and emails.
"There are lots of things that cause people to get ill at work and be less productive and one of those is your line manager or boss," he said.
"Managers are the most significant people in the workplace in terms of your job satisfaction, productivity, and health but if you think about a manager in a workplace, most people are promoted to this sort of role or recruited for it based on their technical skills and not their people skills.
"But it's people who don't have good social skills that create stress for others as they don't have the emotional intelligence to recognise when people's workloads are unmanageable or they have unrealistic deadlines."
Professor Cooper went on to claim that if something was done about this then "we wouldn't have as many stress-related problems".
"My National Forum recognised that managers can be a bit of a problem and if we had people in managerial roles who had good emotional quotient, we wouldn't have as many stress-related problems and we would get higher productivity as a country," he continued.
"When promoting people in the future there should be parity between their people skills and technical skills, as for an individual if they have a bullying, controlling boss it's a critical issue, it'll make them ill."
So how should you deal with a boss that is always looking over your shoulder all the time and not giving you any control or autonomy over your own work?
According to the Professor, there are two key questions you need to ask yourself in this situation.
The first is, whether or not your boss is changeable.
He explains: "You ask yourself this question and consider whether you can give them feedback at an appropriate time, what the impact of this feedback will be, and what their behaviour will be like towards you after you give this feedback.
"Will he or she change? If the answer to that is no, then the second question is where should I go to work?
"Should I go to another department in this organisation or do I get a job elsewhere? If they are not changeable look for another job.
"A bad boss is a killer, they will make you ill and they can damage your outside life with your family, kids, and other relationships because you're so worried about your boss all the time. You don't need that."
However, if you think your boss is changeable then you need to do something about it.
Start by picking a time at work when your boss isn't stressed out and ask if you can have a chat, ideally, this would be after "something positive" had happened for your manager.
"Use that time and be specific about what your boss does that upsets you," urges Professor Cooper.
"Don't be accusatory but give constructive feedback to your boss, because they can't change if they don't know you're unhappy with the way you're being managed."
He goes on to share an example of how you might do this, saying: "I've just felt a bit unhappy recently, because do you remember when you did that? And you told me to do that in front of everybody, it upset me a bit..."
The expert adds that if you do have a conversation like this and your boss doesn't change then you should leave for your own sake.
"There's that old euphemism, people do not leave an organisation they leave a boss, and it's true.
"This relationship between you and your boss is so fundamental in the workplace as that person can make you feel good about your performance and motivate you or make you feel lousy and undermine your self-confidence.
"The evidence is clear on bullying at work, it really does damage people."
Do you have a story to share? We want to hear all about it. Email courtney.pochin@mirror.co.uk
