According to a UK government’s 2012-published data, 7-11% of workers were absent from their workplace due to alcohol-related illness. While lunchtime drinking was a usual practice in British culture but recently Lloyd, a British giant insurance company, banned office working hour drinking. One reason could assume why Lloyd took this decision is because the company believes that intoxication resulting from drinking may hamper its employees’ performance. It is not this particular company’s belief. But a prevailing impression regarding boozing before doing a job is that drinking will not boost someone’s performance. However, is this impression applicable to every job? Let’s find it in this article.
There are several industries like the medical profession, finance, insurance, and stock brokers where drinking is an implicit condition to sustain in those businesses. It is because working in these industries involves doing your job in a team. And, if you want to keep the team member happy, you must drink. Sometimes this drinking culture creates anxiety among employees who don’t like drinking. Even instances are available where employees quit their job because drinking causes illness for them. A financial analyst, for example, told to a BBC journalist( who was working on a writing assignment) that she leave her job because consuming alcohol was affecting her health.
When it is about drinking to retain a job as well as perform well, the legal sector would outshine other sectors. According to a London-based lawyer, in all the firms he worked, he found a boozy culture. Why does a drinking culture exist there because a lawyer’s major responsibility is business development or BD. BD means keeping a relationship with previous clients and trying to catch new clients. In the legal profession, alcohol acts as a lubricant to loosen people so that you as a lawyer can form new bonds which means getting new clients. If you don’t drink, chances are that you will not be able to make new partners.
Some IT professionals also claimed that drinking is necessary for career progression. In the IT industry, people work in a team. So in order to belong to a group all the members of the team need to drink. White-collar employees of the property industry also admit that drinking is part of their job. However, since drinking is related to health and well-being. many high-paying employees are reluctant to admit their drinking habit publicly.
The nature of job also influences people’s thirst for drinking. If the job is, for example, working on a tight deadline, the employees feel intense pressure. After meeting the deadline, they flock together in a bar for having a drink as a celebration of meeting their target. If it means meeting the deadline on a regular basis, they don’t bother going to the bar every day.
Whatever the impact of drinking on job performance of any work, many young people are not quite interested in drinking. The reason for this is simple: young people don’t have enough to spend in bars. Another reason is the young generation is now more career focused than their predecessors. They believe drinking means draining their energy. So the aversion of young people towards drinking is bad news for the boozing industry.
