Is moving up the pecking order good for you?

Is promotion a good or bad thing for your health? Does it give you increased discretion to meet demands or does it mean more responsibility and less popularity for next-to-sod-all extra money?

There is a long-standing argument that promotion is good for your health because it increases job discretion. The support for this idea can be found in the British Whitehall studies that examined the mental health of thousands of public servants, which found that mental health was significantly better for those higher up the ladder. In our book Stress: Myth, Theory And Research, Fiona Jones and I used this to identify "executive stress" as a myth.

However, Christopher Boyce and Andrew Oswald, from the University of Warwick, have presented evidence that challenges this finding. They looked at workers in Britain who were part of a major survey called the Household Panel. The researchers were able to track the self-reported health of the participants over time and link this to promotions they experienced.

They found that promotion is not associated with improved health as previously believed. The press release for the research states that promotion is associated with "10 per cent more mental strain". This is a bit of a worry, suggesting that it might be better for us to sit back and let some other mug take on the extra responsibility. But is a 10 per cent increase meaningful? A 10 per cent pay rise is rubbish if you are only paid $1 a week. You need to know the absolute values to know what is worth worrying about.

If you look at the absolute levels, promoted people on average experienced a 0.69 point increase on a 36-point mental strain scale over four years. The average mental strain scores were within the normal range for the population, even after promotion. Indeed it would take about 26 years on average for the promoted people to report levels of mental strain high enough to be classified as showing evidence of distress. It would take on average 56 years before the problems were "severe". In modern trends, you are likely to have moved employers several times before the health effects become serious.

When it comes to self-reports of ill health or visits to the doctor, the promoted groups on average had smaller increases compared to the non-promoted and in both cases the promoted and non-promoted were going to the doctor about once or twice a year and were still doing so at the end of the study period.

This is hardly strong evidence that promotion is bad for you. To be fair to the researchers, they want to make the argument there is not much evidence in their data that promotion is good for your health, rather than claiming it is positively poor for your health, which is how it has been widely reported. Indeed they found in the case of the public service, promotion was actually good for you, consistent with the Whitehall studies.

For me this raises the question of what we really mean by a promotion. Over the years occupational titles have received a promotion we are all now managers, directors, leaders and supervisors. It is even possible in some workplaces to be a "self-leader". The titles sound grandiose but they are hardly real promotions.

In the public service, positions and responsibilities are more explicitly delineated and the differences between levels more pronounced. Perhaps a promotion means more in the public service, with enhanced control and health.

So do not hold back on seeking a promotion but do explore first whether it really does offer more discretion in how you work.

Jim Bright is professor of career education and development at ACU National and a partner at Bright and Associates, a career management consultancy.