Over a quarter of workers in the UK chose careers to avoid their office fears

That is one interesting statistic from a survey of around 3000 workers in the UK by CV Library and reported on December 31, 2015 in an article at Fresh Business Thinking. Two other articles discussed what apparently were other results from this survey. 26.2% of a national sample chose careers to avoid their office fears, as did  29.5% in the East Anglia region.

As shown above, when asked about their fears the five most common were public speaking (15.7%), delivering presentations (12.2%), cold calling (11.5%), leading a meeting (7.3%), and missing targets (6.7%). The next five were speaking on the phone (6.4%), attending social events (6.0%), managing budgets (5.7%), liaising with senior staff (4.8%), and being away from home (3.4%).   

A second article in Bar Magazine on December 30th didn’t list percentages but just ranked the ten most common fears for hospitality workers as being:

1]   Public speaking
2]   Speaking on the phone
3]   Presenting
4]   Saying “no”
5]   Making important decisions
6]   Not being able to be yourself
7]   Using new technology
8]   Working social events
9]   Managing budgets
10] Working with other people

A third article in Cambridge News just ranked the ten most common fears of workers in East Anglia as being:

1]   Public speaking
2]   Presenting
3]   Cold calling
4]   Leading a meeting
5]   Managing budgets
6]   Liaising with senior staff
7]   Speaking on the phone
8]   Missing targets
9]   Making important decisions
10] Being away from home

Public speaking was the most common fear for all three samples.

All three articles also listed the ten most common reactions by workers to their fears. For the national sample they are shown in another bar chart. Two most common and sensible reactions were to Tackle it head on (26.6%) and to Use it as an opportunity for growth (15.6%). But then came another eight less than useful reactions: Ignore it (12.2%), Avoid the situation for as long as possible (9.0%), Keep a low profile (7.6%), Panic (4.0%), Make up an excuse to get out of it (2.2%), Call in sick (2.0%), Become aggressive (1.0%) and Take annual leave (1.0%).    

For all three articles the most common reactions are summarized in the table shown above, which lists them ranked in decreasing order for the national sample. The most common reaction was sensibly to Tackle it head on. For the East Anglia sample, the second reaction was to Use it as an opportunity for growth - but for hospitality workers it instead was to Ignore it, which was the third most common one for the national sample. The third most common reaction for East Anglia was to Keep a low profile.The fourth most common and silly reaction for the national and hospitality samples was to Avoid the situation for as long as possible.   

A Detour sign was modified from one at Wikimedia Commons.