stress in workplace essay

Mental Health in the Workplace

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When is workplace stress too much?

Stress at work warning signs, tip 1: beat workplace stress by reaching out, tip 2: support your health with exercise and nutrition.

• Tip 3: Don't skimp on sleep

Tip 4: Prioritize and organize

Tip 5: break bad habits that contribute to workplace stress, be proactive about your job and your workplace duties, look for satisfaction and meaning in your work, how managers or employers can reduce stress at work, stress at work.

Whatever your work demands, there are steps you can take to protect yourself from the damaging effects of stress, improve your job satisfaction, and bolster your well-being on and off the job.

Stress isn’t always bad. A little bit of stress can help you stay focused, energetic, and able to meet new challenges in the workplace. It’s what keeps you on your toes during a presentation or alert to prevent accidents or costly mistakes. But in today’s hectic world, the workplace too often seems like an emotional roller coaster. Long hours, tight deadlines, and ever-increasing demands can leave you feeling worried, drained, and overwhelmed. And when stress exceeds your ability to cope, it stops being helpful and starts causing damage to your mind and body—as well as to your job satisfaction.

You can’t control everything in your work environment, but that doesn’t mean you’re powerless, even when you’re stuck in a difficult situation. If stress on the job is interfering with your work performance, health, or personal life, it’s time to take action. No matter what you do for a living, what your ambitions are, or how stressful your job is, there are plenty of things you can do to reduce your overall stress levels and regain a sense of control at work.

Common causes of workplace stress include:

• Fear of being laid off
• More overtime due to staff cutbacks
• Pressure to perform to meet rising expectations but with no increase in job satisfaction
• Pressure to work at optimum levels—all the time!
• Lack of control over how you do your work

When you feel overwhelmed at work, you lose confidence and may become angry, irritable, or withdrawn. Other signs and symptoms of excessive stress at work include:

• Feeling anxious, irritable, or depressed
• Apathy, loss of interest in work
• Problems sleeping
• Trouble concentrating
• Muscle tension or headaches
• Stomach problems
• Social withdrawal
• Loss of sex drive
• Using alcohol or drugs to cope

Speak to a Licensed Therapist

BetterHelp is an online therapy service that matches you to licensed, accredited therapists who can help with depression, anxiety, relationships, and more. Take the assessment and get matched with a therapist in as little as 48 hours.

Sometimes the best stress-reducer is simply sharing your stress with someone close to you. The act of talking it out and getting support and sympathy—especially face-to-face—can be a highly-effective way of blowing off steam and regaining your sense of calm. The other person doesn’t have to “fix” your problems; they just need to be a good listener.

Turn to co-workers for support. Having a solid support system at work can help buffer you from the negative effects of job stress. Just remember to listen to them and offer support when they are in need as well. If you don’t have a close friend at work, you can take steps to be more social with your coworkers. When you take a break, for example, instead of directing your attention to your smartphone, try engaging your colleagues.

Lean on your friends and family members. As well as increasing social contact at work, having a strong network of supportive friends and family members is extremely important to managing stress in all areas of your life. On the flip side, the lonelier and more isolated you are, the greater your vulnerability to stress.

[Read: Social Support for Stress Relief]

Build new satisfying friendships. If you don’t feel that you have anyone to turn to—at work or in your free time—it’s never too late to  build new friendships . Meet new people with common interests by taking a class or joining a club, or by  volunteering your time . As well as expanding your social network,  helping others—especially those who are appreciative—delivers immense pleasure and can help significantly reduce stress.

When you’re overly focused on work, it’s easy to neglect your physical health. But when you’re supporting your health with good nutrition and exercise, you’re stronger and more resilient to stress.

Taking care of yourself doesn’t require a total lifestyle overhaul. Even small things can lift your mood, increase your energy, and make you feel like you’re back in the driver’s seat.

Make time for regular exercise

Aerobic exercise—activity that raises your heart rate and makes you sweat—is a hugely effective way to lift your mood, increase energy, sharpen focus, and relax both the mind and body. Rhythmic movement—such as walking, running, dancing, drumming, etc.—is especially soothing for the nervous system. For maximum stress relief, try to get at least 30 minutes of activity on most days . If it’s easier to fit into your schedule, break up the activity into two or three shorter segments.

And when stress is mounting at work, try to take a quick break and move away from the stressful situation. Take a stroll outside the workplace if possible. Physical movement can help you regain your balance.

Make smart, stress-busting food choices

Your food choices can have a huge impact on how you feel during the work day. Eating small, frequent and healthy meals, for example, can help your body maintain an even level of blood sugar. This maintains your energy and focus, and prevents mood swings. Low blood sugar, on the other hand, can make you feel anxious and irritable, while eating too much can make you lethargic.

Minimize sugar and refined carbs. When you’re stressed, you may crave sugary snacks, baked goods, or comfort foods such as pasta or French fries. But these  “feel-good” foods quickly lead to a crash in mood and energy, making symptoms of stress worse, not better.

Reduce your intake of foods that can adversely affect your mood, such as caffeine, trans fats, and foods with high levels of chemical preservatives or hormones.

Eat more Omega-3 fatty acids to give your mood a boost. The  best sources are fatty fish (salmon, herring, mackerel, anchovies, sardines), seaweed, flaxseed, and walnuts.

Avoid nicotine. Smoking when you’re feeling stressed may seem calming, but nicotine is a powerful stimulant, leading to higher, not lower, levels of anxiety.

Drink alcohol in moderation. Alcohol may seem like it’s temporarily reducing your worries , but too much can cause anxiety as it wears off and adversely affect your mood.

Tip 3: Don’t skimp on sleep

You may feel like you just don’t have the time get a full night’s sleep. But skimping on sleep interferes with your daytime productivity, creativity, problem-solving skills, and ability to focus. The better rested you are, the better equipped you’ll be to tackle your job responsibilities and cope with workplace stress.

Improve the quality of your sleep by making healthy changes to your daytime and nightly routines . For example, go to bed and get up at the same time every day, even on weekends, be smart about what you eat and drink during the day, and make adjustments to your sleep environment. Aim for 8 hours a night—the amount of sleep most adults need to operate at their best.

• Make sure your bed is comfortable. Experiment with different mattresses, toppers, pillows, or an adjustable base .
• Turn off screens one hour before bedtime. The light emitted from TV, tablets, smartphones, and computers suppresses your body’s production of melatonin and can severely disrupt your sleep.
• Avoid stimulating activity and stressful situations before bedtime such as catching up on work. Instead, focus on quiet, soothing activities, such as reading or listening to soft music, while keeping lights low.

Stress and shift work

Working night, early morning, or rotating shifts can impact your sleep quality, which in turn may affect productivity and performance, leaving you more vulnerable to stress.

• Adjust your sleep-wake cycle by exposing yourself to bright light when you wake up at night and using bright lamps or daylight-simulation bulbs in your workplace. Then, wear dark glasses on your journey home to block out sunlight and encourage sleepiness.
• Limit the number of night or irregular shifts you work in a row to prevent sleep deprivation from mounting up.
• Avoid frequently rotating shifts so you can maintain the same sleep schedule.
• Eliminate noise and light from your bedroom during the day. Use blackout curtains or a sleep mask, turn off the phone, and use ear plugs or a soothing sound machine to block out daytime noise.

When job and workplace stress threatens to overwhelm you, there are simple, practical steps you can take to regain control.

Time management tips for reducing job stress

Create a balanced schedule.  All work and no play is a recipe for burnout. Try to find a balance between work and family life, social activities and solitary pursuits, daily responsibilities and downtime.

Leave earlier in the morning.  Even 10-15 minutes can make the difference between frantically rushing and having time to ease into your day. If you’re always running late, set your clocks and watches fast to give yourself extra time and decrease your stress levels.

Plan regular breaks.  Make sure to take short breaks throughout the day to take a walk, chat with a friendly face, or practice a relaxation technique . Also try to get away from your desk or work station for lunch. It will help you relax and recharge and be more, not less, productive.

Establish healthy boundaries. Many of us feel pressured to be available 24 hours a day or obliged to keep checking our smartphones for work-related messages and updates. But it’s important to maintain periods where you’re not working or thinking about work. That may mean not checking emails or taking work calls at home in the evening or at weekends.

Don’t over-commit yourself. Avoid scheduling things back-to-back or trying to fit too much into one day. If you’ve got too much on your plate, distinguish between the “shoulds” and the “musts.” Drop tasks that aren’t truly necessary to the bottom of the list or eliminate them entirely.

Task management tips for reducing job stress

Prioritize tasks.  Tackle high-priority tasks first. If you have something particularly unpleasant to do, get it over with early. The rest of your day will be more pleasant as a result.

Break projects into small steps.  If a large project seems overwhelming, focus on one manageable step at a time, rather than taking on everything at once.

Delegate responsibility.  You don’t have to do it all yourself. Let go of the desire to control every little step. You’ll be letting go of unnecessary stress in the process.

Be willing to compromise. Sometimes, if you and a co-worker or boss can both adjust your expectations a little, you’ll be able to find a happy middle ground that reduces the stress levels for everyone.

Many of us make job stress worse with negative thoughts and behavior. If you can turn these self-defeating habits around, you’ll find employer-imposed stress easier to handle.

Resist perfectionism. When you set unrealistic goals for yourself, you’re setting yourself up to fall short. Aim to do your best; no one can ask for more than that.

Flip your negative thinking. If you focus on the downside of every situation and interaction, you’ll find yourself drained of energy and motivation. Try to think positively about your work, avoid negative co-workers, and pat yourself on the back about small accomplishments, even if no one else does.

Don’t try to control the uncontrollable.  Many things at work are beyond our control, particularly the behavior of other people. Rather than stressing out over them, focus on the things you can control, such as the way you choose to react to problems.

Look for humor in the situation. When used appropriately, humor is a great way to relieve stress in the workplace. When you or those around you start taking work too seriously, find a way to lighten the mood by sharing a joke or funny story.

Clean up your act. If your desk or work space is a mess, file and throw away the clutter; just knowing where everything is can save time and cut stress.

When we feel uncertain, helpless, or out of control, our stress levels are the highest. Here are some things you can do to regain a sense of control over your job and career.

Talk to your employer about workplace stressors. Healthy and happy employees are more productive, so your employer has an incentive to tackle workplace stress whenever possible. Rather than rattling off a list of complaints, let your employer know about specific conditions that are impacting your work performance.

[Read: Mental Health in the Workplace]

Clarify your job description. Ask your supervisor for an updated description of your job duties and responsibilities. You may find that some of the tasks that have piled up are not included in your job description, and you can gain a little leverage by pointing out that you’ve been putting in work over and above the parameters of your job.

Request a transfer. If your workplace is large enough, you might be able to escape a toxic environment by transferring to another department.

Ask for new duties. If you’ve been doing the exact same work for a long time, ask to try something new: a different grade level, a different sales territory, a different machine.

Take time off. If burnout seems inevitable , take a complete break from work. Go on vacation, use up your sick days, ask for a temporary leave-of-absence—anything to remove yourself from the situation. Use the time away to recharge your batteries and gain perspective.

Feeling bored or unsatisfied with how you spend most of the workday can cause high levels of stress and take a serious toll on your physical and mental health. But for many of us, having a dream job that we find meaningful and rewarding is just that: a dream. Even if you’re not in a position to look for another career that you love and are passionate about—and most of us aren’t—you can still find purpose and joy in a job that you don’t love.

Even in some mundane jobs, you can often focus on how your contributions help others, for example, or provide a much-needed product or service. Focus on aspects of the job that you do enjoy, even if it’s just chatting with your coworkers at lunch. Changing your attitude towards your job can also help you regain a sense of purpose and control.

Employees who are suffering from work-related stress can lead to lower productivity, lost workdays, and a higher turnover of staff. As a manager, supervisor, or employer, though, you can help lower workplace stress. The first step is to act as a positive role model. If you can remain calm in stressful situations, it’s much easier for your employees to follow suit.

Consult your employees.  Talk to them about the specific factors that make their jobs stressful. Some things, such as failing equipment, understaffing, or a lack of supervisor feedback may be relatively straightforward to address. Sharing information with employees can also reduce uncertainty about their jobs and futures.

Communicate with your employees one-on-one. Listening attentively face-to-face will make an employee feel heard and understood. This will help lower their stress and yours, even if you’re unable to change the situation.

Deal with workplace conflicts in a positive way. Respect the dignity of each employee; establish a zero-tolerance policy for harassment.

Give workers opportunities to participate in decisions that affect their jobs. Get employee input on work rules, for example. If they’re involved in the process, they’ll be more committed.

Avoid unrealistic deadlines. Make sure the workload is suitable to your employees’ abilities and resources.

Clarify your expectations. Clearly define employees’ roles, responsibilities, and goals. Make sure management actions are fair and consistent with organizational values.

Offer rewards and incentives. Praise work accomplishments verbally and organization-wide. Schedule potentially stressful periods followed by periods of fewer tight deadlines. Provide opportunities for social interaction among employees.

More Information

• STRESS… At Work - Causes of stress at work and how to prevent it. (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health)
• Stress at Work - Help and advice for dealing with job and workplace stress. (Acas)
• Coping with Stress at Work - Common sources and the steps you can take. (American Psychological Association)
• Workplace stress management strategies for business managers - Actions you can take to relieve stress for your staff. (Bupa)
• Trauma- and Stressor-Related Disorders. (2013). In Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders . American Psychiatric Association. Link
• Maulik, Pallab K. “Workplace Stress: A Neglected Aspect of Mental Health Wellbeing.” The Indian Journal of Medical Research 146, no. 4 (October 2017): 441–44. Link
• Bhui, Kamaldeep, Sokratis Dinos, Magdalena Galant-Miecznikowska, Bertine de Jongh, and Stephen Stansfeld. “Perceptions of Work Stress Causes and Effective Interventions in Employees Working in Public, Private and Non-Governmental Organisations: A Qualitative Study.” BJPsych Bulletin 40, no. 6 (December 2016): 318–25. Link
• Wang, Wei, Kiroko Sakata, Asuka Komiya, and Yongxin Li. “What Makes Employees’ Work So Stressful? Effects of Vertical Leadership and Horizontal Management on Employees’ Stress.” Frontiers in Psychology 11 (2020): 340. Link
• Choi, Dong-Woo, Sung-Youn Chun, Sang Ah Lee, Kyu-Tae Han, and Eun-Cheol Park. “Association between Sleep Duration and Perceived Stress: Salaried Worker in Circumstances of High Workload.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 15, no. 4 (April 2018): 796. Link
• Can, Yekta Said, Heather Iles-Smith, Niaz Chalabianloo, Deniz Ekiz, Javier Fernández-Álvarez, Claudia Repetto, Giuseppe Riva, and Cem Ersoy. “How to Relax in Stressful Situations: A Smart Stress Reduction System.” Healthcare 8, no. 2 (April 16, 2020): 100. Link
• Saleh, Dalia, Nathalie Camart, Fouad Sbeira, and Lucia Romo. “Can We Learn to Manage Stress? A Randomized Controlled Trial Carried out on University Students.” PLOS ONE 13, no. 9 (September 5, 2018): e0200997. Link
• “Stress, Social Support, and the Buffering Hypothesis. – PsycNET.” Accessed November 15, 2021. Link
• Salmon, P. “Effects of Physical Exercise on Anxiety, Depression, and Sensitivity to Stress: A Unifying Theory.” Clinical Psychology Review 21, no. 1 (February 2001): 33–61. Link
• Toussaint, Loren, Quang Anh Nguyen, Claire Roettger, Kiara Dixon, Martin Offenbächer, Niko Kohls, Jameson Hirsch, and Fuschia Sirois. “Effectiveness of Progressive Muscle Relaxation, Deep Breathing, and Guided Imagery in Promoting Psychological and Physiological States of Relaxation.” Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2021 (July 3, 2021): e5924040. Link

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9 Ways to Cope With Work Stress and Avoid Burnout

Elizabeth Scott, PhD is an author, workshop leader, educator, and award-winning blogger on stress management, positive psychology, relationships, and emotional wellbeing.

Rachel Goldman, PhD FTOS, is a licensed psychologist, clinical assistant professor, speaker, wellness expert specializing in eating behaviors, stress management, and health behavior change.

 Getty Images

Create a Pre-Work Ritual

• Understand Expectations
• Avoid Conflict

Plan Ahead to Stay Organized

Create a comfortable work environment, choose chunking over multitasking, walk at lunch.

• Do Your Best
• Listen to Music

Research has indicated that the percentage of Americans who are stressed at work is high—and it’s only getting higher. According to a survey of more than 2,000 full-time U.S. employees, ages 18-79, more than half of employees find themselves stressed during at least 60 percent of the workweek.

Work stress has significant health consequences that range from relatively benign (like getting more colds and flus) to potentially serious (such as heart disease and metabolic syndrome).

While stress at work is common, finding a low-stress job is hard (if not impossible). A more realistic approach is to adopt effective coping strategies to reduce stress at your current job. You can take steps to manage work stress by sticking to a positive morning routine, getting clear on requirements at work, adopting smarter time management techniques, and other strategies outlined in this article.

On May 19, 2022, Verywell Mind hosted a virtual Mental Health in the Workplace webinar, hosted by Amy Morin, LCSW. If you missed it, check out this recap to learn ways to foster supportive work environments and helpful strategies to improve your well-being on the job.

After scrambling to get the kids fed and off to school, dodging traffic and combating road rage , and gulping down coffee in lieu of a healthy breakfast, many people arrive to work already stressed. This makes them more reactive to stress in the workplace.

You might be surprised by how affected by workplace stress you are when you have a stressful morning. When you start off the day with planning, good nutrition, and a positive attitude , you might find that the stress of your job rolls off your back more easily.

Get Clear on Your Expectations for the Day

A factor known to contribute to job burnout is unclear requirements for employees. If you don’t know exactly what is expected of you, or if the requirements for your role keep changing with little notice, you might become extremely stressed.

If you find yourself never knowing if what you are doing is enough, it may help to have a talk with your supervisor. You can take the time to go over expectations and discuss strategies for meeting them. This can relieve stress for both of you!

Avoid or Reduce Conflict With Colleagues

Interpersonal conflict takes a toll on your physical and emotional health. Conflict among co-workers can be difficult to escape, so it’s a good idea to avoid conflict at work as much as you can.

Don’t gossip, don’t share too many of your personal opinions about religion and politics, and steer clear of "colorful" office humor.

When possible, try to avoid people who don’t work well with others. If conflict finds you anyway, make sure you know how to handle it appropriately.

Even if you’re a naturally disorganized person, planning ahead to stay organized can greatly decrease your stress at work. Being organized with your time means less rushing in the morning to avoid being late as well as less hustling to get out at the end of the day.

Keeping yourself organized can also mean avoiding the negative effects of clutter, and being more efficient with your work.

Another surprising stressor at work is physical discomfort, often related to where you perform most of your daily tasks (such as your desk).

You might not notice you're stressed if you're sitting in an uncomfortable chair for just a few minutes, but if you practically live in that chair when you’re at work, you might have a sore back and be more reactive to stress because of it.

Even small things like office noise can be distracting and cause feelings of low-grade frustration. Do what you can to create a quiet, comfortable, and soothing workspace.

Multitasking was once heralded as a fantastic way to maximize one’s time and get more done in a day. However, people eventually began to realize that if they had a phone to their ear and were making calculations at the same time, their speed and accuracy (not to mention sanity) often suffered.

There is a certain "frazzled" feeling that comes from splitting your focus and it doesn’t work well for most people. Instead of multitasking to stay on top of your tasks, try another cognitive strategy like chunking .

Many people feel the ill effects of leading a sedentary lifestyle. You can combat the physical and mental effects of work stress by getting some exercise on your lunch break .

If your schedule allows for it, you might try taking short exercise breaks throughout the day. This can help you blow off steam, lift your mood, and get into better shape.

Do Your Best and Reward Yourself

Being a high achiever might make you feel good about yourself and help you excel at work, but being a perfectionist can create problems for you (and those around you).

You might not be able to do everything perfectly, every time—especially in a busy, fast-paced job. A good strategy to avoid the perfectionism trap is always striving to just do your best and making time to congratulate yourself on your efforts. You may find that your results are better and you’ll be much less stressed at work.

Listen to Music on the Drive Home

Listening to music offers many benefits and can be an effective way to relieve stress before, during, and after work. Playing an uplifting song while you make breakfast can help you start the day off feeling better prepared to interact with the people in your life. Likewise, combating the stress of a long day with your favorite music on the drive home can help you wind down and feel less stressed when you get there.

Press Play for Advice on Coping With Stress

Hosted by therapist Amy Morin, LCSW, this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast shares how you can change your mindset to cope with stress in a healthy way.

Follow Now : Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Google Podcasts

Paychex. Work more or stress less?

Li J, Loerbroks A, Bosma H, Angerer P. Work stress and cardiovascular disease: a life course perspective .  J Occup Health . 2016;58(2):216–219. doi:10.1539/joh.15-0326-OP

By Elizabeth Scott, PhD Elizabeth Scott, PhD is an author, workshop leader, educator, and award-winning blogger on stress management, positive psychology, relationships, and emotional wellbeing.

Transforming stress through awareness, education and collaboration.

Managing Stress in the Workplace: Part One

In today’s ever-changing work environments and uncertain economic times, managing stress in the workplace has become increasingly important. Job security fears are high, workloads and required job skills are shifting, and communication needs are changing with multiple generations working together and remote work increasing .

Add these heightened workplace stressors to the everyday workplace pressures and personal challenges faced daily, and these issues can lead to increased health issues and reduced productivity among employees.

Workplace stress doesn’t just affect the employees directly impacted; these issues also have consequences for the entire organization. Managing stress at work starts with understanding what contributes to these stressors. Once you understand the stressors, you can put processes and tools in place to help employees better manage these issues.

Factors Involved in Workplace Stress

A certain amount of daily stress is normal as it is a natural reaction to change. However, when stress is prolonged or reaches extreme levels, it can lead to health issues that require professional help.

A recent survey reveals profound statistics that shed light on the impact of workplace stress on the well-being of employees.

• 34% of employees report a decrease in their overall mental health due to stress in the workplace
• Stress has resulted in diminishing feelings of belonging for 37% of employees
• 37% of employees report a lower level of work engagement due to stress they experience at work

Most alarming, 26% of employees attribute their increased stress and reduced mental health to toxic work culture.

The pressures and demands of work can take a toll on employees, affecting their psychological well-being. When stress becomes overwhelming, employees may feel disconnected from their colleagues, leading to a sense of isolation and reduced engagement. This is because stress can drain an employee’s motivation and enthusiasm, making it difficult for them to perform at their best.

Toxic workplace environments such as micromanagement, lack of support, or hostile workplaces can increase these workplace stresses and have a detrimental effect on employee well-being.

These statistics emphasize the need for managing stress in the workplace so your leadership can prioritize employee mental health.

A lack of effort to manage these stressors can lead to decreased productivity, increased absenteeism, and higher turnover rates. It is in the best interest of employers to limit stress at work and find methods to help employees cope with stress in the workplace. There are numerous approaches companies can take to reduce and control stress.

Managing Workplace Stress

To ensure that stress management efforts gain attention, it is necessary to link them to business outcomes. This will allow your organization to track measurables such as productivity, absenteeism, and turnover towards monitoring how stress control techniques are working.

Before implementing a stress management program, you must first determine the root causes of stress for your employees. This can take the form of employee opinion surveys, interviews, or other means of reviewing employee input. Managing stress in the workplace effectively starts with implementing strategies that meet employee needs.

Supportive Work Environment

Develop a positive and supportive work environment to reduce workplace stress. You want a work culture that values open communication, respect, and collaboration to meet employee and organizational needs. This includes encouraging employees to share their concerns and providing resources for managing stress effectively.

Work-Life Harmony

Encouraging better work-life harmony is also essential. Employees should be encouraged to take vacations and breaks that allow them to disconnect from work and spend time with their families or pursue outside passions and hobbies.

Consider Flexible Work Arrangements

52% of employees believe that having a flexible work schedule would benefit their mental health. Offering flexible work arrangements such as hybrid schedules, remote work options, or flexible hours can help employees better reach work-life harmony and alleviate workplace stress caused by rigid schedules.

Address Toxic Behaviors

To reduce harassment and discrimination that can lead to overwhelming stress, it’s important to identify and address toxic behaviors promptly. Provide training and support to management that addresses developing interpersonal and leadership skills that will help them support employees in need.

Provide Clear expectations

Workplace stress often originates from unclear instructions. Make sure leaders set clear and realistic expectations for employees, providing regular feedback and keeping communication open. You also want to provide recognition for employee achievements to keep them engaged.

Promote Mental Health Initiatives

Your benefits package and training options can include programs geared toward employee mental health. This can include employee assistance programs, counseling services, or mindfulness and organizational skills training. Encourage employees to prioritize self-care and provide resources that support their well-being.

Avoid “Firefight” Mode

While there may be times when employees need to put in extra effort to meet deadlines or solve challenging problems, it becomes an issue when this is the norm rather than the exception. Help employees manage workloads and implement effective time management efforts to reduce pressure and balance stressful periods. These efforts will prevent employees from remaining in a constant “firefight” mode.

Prioritizing and Organization

Organizing, planning, and prioritizing work can significantly reduce unnecessary stress. Work areas and workflows should be organized so employees know what is required and can access the necessary tools to meet their goals. Work strategies should be planned out at company, team, and individual levels so goals are clearly understood and prioritized.

Identifying and focusing on the most important actions helps employees with managing their workload and managing stress in the workplace. Involve employees in setting expectations and goals to give them a sense of control.

It also helps to reduce repetitive tasks that can be easily automated. These routine tasks should be streamlined or eliminated wherever possible.

Relaying Job Security

Although job security can’t be completely guaranteed, there are measures you can take to reinsure employees and contribute to a perception of stability:

• Share positve company results
• Remain transparent with business changes
• Celebrate wins and acknowledge progress
• Recognize employee accomplishments
• Invest in training and development opportunities for employees
• Involve employees in decisions that impact them and encourage them to contribute ideas

By implementing these strategies, organizations can help employees feel secure and worthwhile in their roles.

Managing HR Initiatives to Manage Workplace Stress

By prioritizing managing stress in the workplace and improving employee well-being, organizations can create a healthier and more productive work environment. Taking action to reduce workplace stress not only benefits employees but also contributes to the overall success of your organization by encouraging a positive and engaged workforce.

If you need help implementing effective tools and resources for managing stress in the workplace, contact us to learn how we can help build these techniques into your HR infrastructure.

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8.3 Stress in the Workplace

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Compare and contrast the individual, organizational, and environmental factors that lead to stress in the workplace.
• Discuss managerial and organizational approaches to stress management in the work place.

Sources of Workplace Stress

In most surveys on stress and its causes, Money, Work, Family Responsibilities, and Health Concerns have been at the top of the list for quite a long time. All four of these factors are either directly or indirectly impact and are impacted by the workplace.

There are many differences among individuals and their stressors. Why is one person’s mind-crippling stress another person’s biggest motivation and challenge? We’re going to attempt to answer this by looking at the three sources of stress—individual, organizational, and environmental—and then add in the concept of human perception in an attempt to understand this conundrum.

Individual Factors

Individuals might experience stressful commutes to work, or a stressful couple of weeks helping at a work event, but those kinds of temporary, individual stresses are not what we’re looking at here. We’re looking for a deeper, longer-term stress. Family stress—marriages that are ending, issues with children, an ailing parent—these are stressful situations that an employee really can’t leave at home when he or she comes to work. Financial stress, like the inability to pay bills or an unexpected new demand on a person’s cash flow might also be an issue that disturbs an employee’s time at work. Finally, an individual’s own personality might actually contribute to his or her stress. People’s dispositions—how they perceive things as negative or positive—can be a factor in each person’s stress as well.

Organizational Factors

There are several organizational sources of stress (Figure 8.12):

• Task or role demands: these are factors related to a person’s role at work, including the design of a person’s job or working conditions. A stressful task demand might be a detailed, weekly presentation to the company’s senior team. A stressful role demand might be where a person is expected to achieve more in a set amount of time than is possible.
• Interpersonal demands: these are stressors created by co-workers. Perhaps an employee is experiencing ongoing conflict with a co-worker he or she is expected to collaborate closely with. Or maybe employees are experiencing a lack of social support in their roles.
• Organizational structure: this refers to the level of differentiation within an organization, the degree of rules and regulations, and where decisions are made. If employees are unable to participate in decisions that affect them, they may experience stress.
• Organizational leadership: this refers to the organization’s style of leadership, particularly the managerial style of its senior executives. Leaders can create an environment of tension, fear and anxiety and can exert unrealistic pressure and control. If employees are worried that they’ll be fired for not living up to leadership’s standards, this can definitely be a source of stress.
• Organizational life stage: an organization goes through a cycle of stages (birth, growth, maturity, decline). For employees, the birth and decline of an organization can be particularly stressful, as those stages tend to be filled with heavy workloads and a level of uncertainty about the future.

Environmental Factors

Finally, there are environmental sources of stress. The economy may be in a downturn, creating uncertainty for job futures and bank accounts. There may be political unrest or change creating stress. Finally, technology can cause stress, as new developments are constantly making employee skills obsolete, and workers fear they’ll be replaced by a machine that can do the same. Employee are also often expected to stay connected to the workplace 24/7 because technology allows it.

As a side note, it’s important to understand that these stressors are additive. In other words, stress builds up, and new elements add to a person’s stress level. So, a single element of stress might not seem important in itself, but when added to other stresses the worker is experiencing, it can, as the old adage says, be the straw that broke the camel’s back (Figure 8.13).

Individual Differences

Those are the sources of stress, but differences within an individual determine whether that stress will be positive or negative. Those individual differences include:

• This is what moderates the individual’s relationship to the stressor. For instance, one person might see a potential layoff as a stressful situation, while another person might see that same layoff as an opportunity for a nice severance package and the opportunity to start a new business.
• Job Experience. Because stress is associated with turnover, it would stand to reason that those employees with a long tenure are the most stress-resistant of the bunch.
• Social Support. Co-workers, especially those who are caring or considered to be friends, can help protect a fellow employee against the effects of stress.
• Belief in locus of control. Those who have a high internal locus of control (those that believe they are in control of their own fate) are, unsurprisingly, not as affected by stress as those who feel they are not in control.
• Self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is an individual’s belief that he or she can complete a task. Research shows that employees who have strong levels of self-efficacy are more resistant to the effects of stress.
• Some employees carry around a high level of hostility as a part of their personalities, and they’re often suspicious and distrustful of their co-workers. These personality traits make a person more susceptible to stress.

If those potential sources of stress sneak through the individual difference filters and manifest themselves as stress, they will appear in a variety of physiological, psychological and behavioral symptoms. We reviewed the physiological symptoms when we talked about the definition of stress. Add to that psychological symptoms, like tension and anxiety, but also job dissatisfaction and boredom, and behavioral symptoms, like turnover and absenteeism, and you can see how stress can become an organizational problem.

Consequences and Costs of Stress

Today’s typical workplace expects quite a bit from its employees. In a climate of layoffs and downsizing, employees are typically expected to do “more with less”—that is, additional work for the same pay, often without updated resources and in a short amount of time. Demands for increased efficiency, quality and innovation can come at quite the cost, and employees are caving under the pressure.

A study conducted by Mental Health America (formerly the National Mental Health Association) suggests that stress costs US employers an estimated $500 billion dollars in lost productivity annually.

What does lost productivity mean? Let’s take a look at how employees responded to that 2017 survey, and talk about how it can directly (and indirectly) impact a company’s bottom line.

Absenteeism

What employees are saying (Hellebuyck, Nguyen, Halphern, Fritze, & Kennedy, 2017):

• A third of employees surveyed reported staying away from work at least two or more days a month because their work environments were so stressful
• 35% said they missed between three and five days a month
• 38% said they missed six days or more

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), absenteeism alone costs US employers $225.8 billion annually, or about $1,685 per employee. This cost, they say, comes from (CDC Foundation, 2015):

• Wages associated with unreported paid time off
• High cost of replacement workers
• Overtime pay for employees picking up their additional work
• Overall administrative costs of managing absenteeism

It isn’t just the loss of productivity of the absentees, but their co-workers who are affected by this. In an article for BenefitsPro.com, Mental Health American CEO Paul Gionfriddo said, “Overstressed and unhealthy employees contribute to unhappy workplaces. This means that the indirect effects on everyone else—the people who dread coming to work—may not show up in the calculated productivity losses, but contribute to them nevertheless” (Hellebuyck, et al., 2017). Indeed, this low morale, combined with possible safety and quality issues that can result, are uncalculated effects.

Burn-out is characterized as a symptom of long-term, unmanaged chronic stress in the workplace (World Health Organization, 2019). It includes constant exhaustion, feelings of distance or negative views of the workplace, and lowered professional efficacy.  Burn-out is specific to the workplace and should not be considered as a phenomenon in other life areas.

Burn-out has become an increasing concern in the U.S. In 2021, 79% of adult workers who completed the American Psychological Association’s Work and Well-Being Survey reported experiencing stress in their workplaces. Additionally, 3 of 5 employees reported that their workplace stress also reduced their motivation, interest, and effort in their jobs and job performance (Abramson, 2022).

A 2015 Gallup poll found the main reasons for employee burn-out have to do with how employees are managed, rather than performance expectations (Wigert and Agrawal, 2018). The five factors that were most correlated with burn-out were:

• Being treated unfairly at work Unfair treatment can include mistreatment, favoritism, and bias by coworkers, supervisors, or company policies.
• A workload that is difficult to manage Employees often look to their supervisors to help regulate their workloads and look for others who can assist in completing tasks.
• Ambiguity in workplace role 40% of employees report being unsure of what is expected of them at work. Lack of clarity about job responsibilities can lead to exhaustion
• Supervisor’s lack of support and communication Supervisors who are negligent or hostile create defensive employees who are often uninformed.
• Unrealistic deadlines Supervisors who set unreasonable deadlines increase the stress their employees experience. Continually aggressive deadlines will eventually cause employees to fall behind.

Here’s what employees are saying about the effects of stress on their workplaces (Hellebuyck, et al., 2017):

• Two-thirds felt they worked in an unsupportive or even hostile environment
• Two-thirds said they didn’t often trust their coworkers to support them at work
• Two-thirds said their supervisor was unsupportive
• More than eight in 10 said the stress at work directly caused stress with family and friend relationships
• More than seven in 10 admitted they bad-mouth their employer outside of work

It’s easy to see why, considering these sentiments, that nearly three quarters of the employees surveyed are either actively seeking new employment or thinking of doing so.

The Work Institute’s 2017 Retention Report suggested that replacing an employee costs about 33% of that employee’s salary, meaning that the average worker making $45,000 a year will cost about $15,000 to replace, when you consider advertising, screening and testing applicants, training, and onboarding costs (among others). For some harder-to-fill positions, this cost could increase to 50% of the worker’s salary (Sears, 2017).

Turnover also lowers productivity in that there is a shift of work while the position is empty and even after when the new employee is learning her position, and the employee leaving takes with him knowledge of the company that may not be recaptured.

Sadly, the Work Institute’s 2017 Retention Report also captured data that led them to determine that roughly 75% of all turnover could be avoided. When surveying their 34,000 respondents, the top reasons for turnover were cited as career development, compensation and benefits…and then three that are directly related to stress: work-life balance, manager’s behavior and well-being (Sears, 2017)

Workplace Violence

Workplace violence is on the rise, and it is the third leading cause of death for workers on the job. Of course, some workplace violence, like an active shooter or even an angry retail customer who takes a swing, is not due to workplace stress. Still, this kind of activity takes a toll on businesses, adding yet another layer of stress and a price tag of about $55 million in lost wages for the 1.8 million work days lost each year due to workplace violence (Lower & Associates, 2019).

But workplace violence rears its ugly head on a smaller level as well. “Desk rage” is a term used to describe extreme or violent anger shown by someone in an office, especially when this is caused by worry or a difficult situation. This can manifest itself in screaming and shouting, throwing or angrily destroying office equipment, or it can be more subtle, like damaging water cooler gossip, theft or abuse of sick time. The people who work with someone experiencing desk rage are as much victims of workplace stress here as the “desk rager.”

These are some of the results of stress that drive down productivity, but stress also affects the cost of health benefits and medical needs that an employer will pick up by providing health insurance. Stress factors into five of the six leading causes of death in the US, and a staggering number of medical office visits will, in part, address symptoms related to stress.

It’s no surprise to hear that a company like General Motors spends more money on healthcare than it does on steel. And (surprise!) workplace stress is responsible for up to $190 billion in annual US healthcare costs.

Goh, Pfeffer, and Zenios (2016) cited ten major factors of workplace stress and then mathematically examined their occurrences (and co-occurrences), concluding that workplace stress contributes to approximately 120,000 deaths each year. That, and additional healthcare expenses related to addressing stress related problems, accounted for $125 to $190 billion in healthcare costs, or about 5% to 8% of the nation’s total expenditure.

Managerial Approaches to Stress Management

Employees don’t just get distracted from work but get distracted from work by other work. Workers are sitting down to thoughtful tasks and being lured away by client emails, experiencing a new interruption every few minutes and working at a frantic pace. “Managing your time” used to be synonymous with “managing your attention,” but the workplace doesn’t function like that anymore. Time management training needs to change with the times.

Thomas (2015) suggests that, rather than training individuals on time management techniques, managers should spend more time on clarity around role priorities rather than specific task priorities. When managers can make clear to an employee what the expectations of their role is and how they match up with the priorities of the company, the employee can gain a new clarity on how to prioritize incoming work. Job design, its initial conception and its constant evaluation, are important in managing workplace stress.

Job design is also key in motivating employees. Skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback are all components that should be considered when designing a job, no matter how complicated or repetitive the job might be. Job design should reinforce the effort-to-performance link on the expectancy framework.

If job design provides the challenge that motivates an employee, it can also tip the scales toward stress. Managers can reevaluate job design to ensure that expectations for the role don’t exceed the employee’s abilities. They can also reduce role ambiguity by aligning employees around company objectives and helping them prioritize need-to-do tasks over day-to-day minutiae (Thomas, 2015).

While certain jobs are more stressful than others—consider an air traffic controller’s daily stress versus that of a clerical worker—individual responses to stress are also very specific to an employee’s personality. Managers should take into consideration how an individual might adapt to a high-stress role during the selection and placement process. Previous experience is often a good indicator of a potential employee’s suitability.

Another motivating factor for employees is goal-setting. As we learned in module 3, individuals should have specific, measurable goals that they can achieve if they stretch themselves. Managers should take care that they’re achieving good, and not bad, levels of stress when working with employees to set goals. Goals that tie into company objectives work to clarify role responsibilities, and managers who review their employees’ progress can protect them from demotivation and stress.

Finally, there’s the managerial option of job redesign to help with stress management. Redesigning jobs to make them richer for the employees can alleviate stress and add new motivation. A job redesign that gives the team member more responsibility, more say in decisions that involve them, and more meaningful work can give an employee more control over work activities and lessen his reliance on others. Each of these managerial approaches to stress management can be used as a motivational tool for employees.

But what about the effects of an organization’s culture on stress levels? Some organizations expect an employee to put in far more than the standard 40 hours of work in a week. Employees feel an increasing need to stay connected to email and voice mail when not in the office, and often their managers expect to be able to contact them by phone or text well after working hours. International companies expect employees to navigate time differences, and employees in the U.S. find themselves staying at work late or coming in early to have necessary conversations with Europe and Asia.

Organizational Approaches to Stress Management

In addition to careful job design and managing stifling company cultures, organizations are taking steps to help employees battle stress by offering programs, benefits and office “perks” that allow workers to make choices about managing stress as it best suits their needs.

Healthcare is an expensive endeavor for employers these days, and smaller, privately held companies are looking for clever benefit package designs that reduce an organization’s costs without costing the employee too much more. Stress and stress-related illness has a significant impact on healthcare costs, given annual costs for those stress-related health issues could be anywhere from $125 to $190 billion.

It’s not unusual for a company to offer their employees smoking cessation programs or asthma management programs to help keep healthcare costs in check. Now employers are looking to implement other wellness programs, knowing that stress-related health issues are driving the cost of medical benefits. In fact, health care providers are starting to support these client endeavors, too, recognizing the need to cut spending however they can.

Wellness programs are organizational efforts to help employees improve their health and mental well-being by offering company-sponsored exercise, weight-loss competitions, health screenings and more. Some companies are looking at a more holistic view of stress release by concentrating not just on employee physical health, but also offering financial management classes and opportunities to give back to the community.

Nationwide, companies are seeing the benefits of offering their employees wellness programs. 91% of all large companies (with more than 10,000 employees) offer some type of wellness program (Figure 8.14).

They’re a cost-effective solution to a very expensive problem. Furthermore, as shown in the second graph below, a majority of employees are open to participating in them (Figure 8.15). Wellness programs are a win-win for companies and their employees.

Now, some employers offer these types of programs and then get in the way of their effectiveness. In Joel Goh’s study, he pointed out that, while US employers recognize that stress leads to costly health issues and put programs in place to combat them, those same employers sometimes undermine those programs with stress-inducing employment practices. These programs don’t work if the employee is too stressed and overloaded with work to participate!

Some younger companies are going the extra mile to incorporate wellness into their culture and work environment. Google and Apple are headliners among organizations that offer their employees multiple choices in stress-burning activities throughout the day—like ping-pong tables, foosball, bowling alleys—and other perks that allow their employees to eliminate stress from their lives, such as free meals and free rides to work. Masseuses, available for booking during work hours, and family-room like areas where employees can relax and put up their feet go a long way toward employee stress relief and comfort. These are great examples of companies taking a cue from the ways individuals pursue stress release and making some of those methods available in the workplace.

Companies can incorporate stress release into their benefits packages in other ways as well. Companies offering a nice paid-time-off package that features use-it-or-lose-it vacation time encourages their employees to step away from the office and enjoy time with their families. Discounted gym memberships can encourage employees to stay physically fit, and companies are starting to offer easy, direct-deposit college savings plans so that employees can more easily provide for the education of their offspring. Some companies have gone as far as providing on-site day care for employees, making child care convenient and cost-effective. Other companies have a dogs-allowed policy at the office, where people can bring in their pets and combat stressful situations with a furry hug.

Finally, mental health is an ever-present issue in today’s society, and employers offer employee assistance programs (EAPs) for those employees who are struggling with issues at work or in their personal lives. Employee assistance programs offer short-term, confidential counseling to employees, complete with referrals, free assessments and follow up services. Where wellness programs and company benefits can’t address mental health and wellbeing, employee assistance programs step in and make it easier for struggling workers to find help.

These wellness programs and benefits offerings are companies’ responses to the individual needs of their employees and their ongoing quest for work/life balance. Not only do they foster excellent perception that they care about their employees, but they also address the very costly issue of stress in the workplace.

• There are three major contributing factors to stress experienced by employees in the workplace, these are individual, organizational, and environmental factors.
• Individual factors contributing to stress are family issues, financial issues, and personality.
• Organizational factors contributing to stress are task and role demands, interpersonal demands, organizational structure, leaderships, and organizational life stage.
• Environmental factors contributing to stress are economic and political environment and technology.
• The consequences of stress include absenteeism, burn-out, turnover, and workplace violence.
• Organizational approaches to addressing stress include job design and wellness programs.

Discussion Questions

• What are the benefits of wellness programs? What are the drawbacks of wellness programs? How can companies/organizations develop effective wellness programs for their employees?
• Discuss a job in which you experienced one of the consequences of stress (absenteeism, burn-out, turnover, violence). What conditions led to this outcome? What could your job have done to prevent this outcome?
• Which factor (individual, organizational, environmental) do you think plays the biggest role in workplace stress? Why?

Remix/Revisions featured in this section

• Small editing revisions to tailor the content to the Psychology of Human Relations course.
• Added Burn-out section to Sources of Stress (Organizational Behavior – Lumen Learning).
• Replaced photos that were no longer available/had broken links
• Added photos with links to locations of images and CC licenses.
• Added doi links to references to comply with APA 7th edition formatting reference manual.

Attributions

CC Licensed Content, Original Modification, adaptation, and original content.  Provided by: Stevy Scarbrough. License: CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0

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Abramson, A. (2022, January 1). Burnout and stress are everywhere. Monitor on Psychology, 53 (1). Retrieved October 30, 2022 from https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/01/special-burnout-stress

CDC Foundation. (2015, January 28). Worker illness and injury costs U.S. employers $225.8 billion annually. https://www.cdcfoundation.org/pr/2015/worker-illness-and-injury-costs-us-employers-225-billion-annually

Goh, J., Pfeffer, J. & Zenios, S. A. (2015). The relationship between workplace stressors and mortality and health costs in the United States.  Management Science , 62(2), 608–628.   https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2014.2115

Hellebuyck, M.,  Nguyen, T., Halphern, M., Fritze, D., & Kennedy, J. (2017). Mind the workplace.” Mental Health America . https://www.mhanational.org/sites/default/files/Mind%20the%20Workplace%20-%20MHA%20Workplace%20Health%20Survey%202017%20FINAL.pdf

Lowers & Associates. (2016, May 19). The impact of workplace violence [Infographic]. The Risk Management Blog. https://blog.lowersrisk.com/infographic-impact-workplace-violence/

Sears, L. (2017). 2017 retention report: Trends, reasons, & recommendations . Work Institute. https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/478187/2017%20Retention%20Report%20Campaign/Work%20Institute%202017%20-Retention%20Report.pdf

Wigert, B. & Agrawal, S. (2018, July 12). Employee burnout, part 1: The 5 main causes. Gallup Workplace. Retrieved October 30, 2022 from https://www.gallup.com/workplace/237059/employee-burnout-part-main-causes.aspx

World Health Organization (2019, May 28). Burn-out an “occupational phenomenon”: International Classification of Diseases. Retrieved October 30, 2022 from https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseases

Psychology of Human Relations Copyright © by Stevy Scarbrough is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Annotative Bibliography

Colligan, W.T, Higgins, M.E,(2005). Workplace stress: Etiology and the Consequences. Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health. Vol. 21(2) 2005. This journal focuses on workplace stress by identifying factors that contributes to stress at workplace and the resultant impact of stress on employees productivity and personal life. Managers can play a critical role in reducing or eliminating stress on epmloyess by creating a conducive work environment, providing employees assistance program in stress management and identifying and reducing work tension between individuals or groups in a work setting. This would results to improved productivity and improved workplace dynamic. Richardson, M.K, Rothstein, R.H, (2008). The Effects of Occupational Stress Management Intervention Programs: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. New York. Vol. 13, No. 1, 69-93. This article looks at the different Stress Management Intevention (SMI) programs used by organizations and their effectiveness in managing stress at work. A stress management intervention is a program that seeks to reduce work-related stressors so as to minimize the negative results of exposure to these stressors. To determine how effective the SMI implemented in an organization is, researchers can examine the outcomes at organizational level in terms of productivity or at individual level by observing the psychological or physiological measures. Michie, S., (2002). The Causes and management of Stress at Work. Occupational Environment Medic. London. Vol. 59, 67-72. In this journal, Michie looks at some causes of stress at work and how it can be managed. Stress at work can be caused by internal factors at work such as the pressure of work deadlines, job insecurity, complex tasks, long working hours, poor relationships at work between employees, work overload or external factors such as family demands or long commuting hours. This is in employer’s long term economic interests to help minimize or eliminate stress. Since stress is likely to lead to high workers turnover, absence, early retirement, reduced productivity as well as client satisfaction. The stress can be managed at individual level like training and psychological services like clinical or occupational counseling, or at organizational level interventions like restructuring work or providing psychological support such as social supports or simply employees participation in decision-making processes. Saha D, Sinha R, Bhavsar K., (2011, April 15). Understanding the Job Stress among Healthcare Staff. Online Journal of Health and Allied Sciences. Mangalore, South India.Vol 10 (1) 2011. This research article evaluates the sources of job stress among healthcare workers to identifying measures on how best to reduce work-related stress. Small payment of employees and work overload were found to contribute immensely towards stress at work. The working conditions are the primary source of stress but with a sound management intervention such as proper workload management, adequate staffing, improved payment, recognition of efforts along with ongoing training and stress management support would improve the productivity of the workforce.

Introduction

Workplace stress is defined as the change in an individual’s physical or mental state in reaction to shifts in the work environment that pose a challenge or harm to that individual.This applies in particular when the job requests do not match the worker’s capabilities, resources, and needs. Stress can be divided into two categories; that is eustress also known as positive or good stress with positive effects on an individual. The second category, on the other hand, is distress which comes with adverse effects. Globally documented as a challenge to personal physicall and mental health,besides organizational health, stressed employees are usually found to be unhealthy, less motivated, less productive and less safe at work. An organization’s competitiveness in the market is determined by the productivity of its' workforce. It is, therefore, necessary for managers in an organization to make proper interventions and help manage the well-being of employees and provide support to them whenever in stress so as to realize their maximum potential and productivity in their work. Better employment practice should include evaluating the risk of stress amongst employees, identify causes of stress at work and determine who is at risk to be affected and finally deciding what can be done to prevent stress at work.

Stress is not only a bodily response to a difficult or stressful condition. It is a contact between that individual and the source of demand within their environment (Colligan and Higgins, p 92). Different factors contribute to workplace stress. These factors are associated with workplace stress and health risks. They can be categorized as those brought about due to the content of work and those related to the social and organizational setting of work. Example of factors associated with the job include work overload, pressure to meet deadlines, the complexity of tasks, long working hours and poor physical work conditions like space (Miche, p3). The role of the employee in an organization regarding responsibility also contributes to stress, as there are times where workers in an organization are required to perform multiple functions simultaneously, particularly when the work is unclear, and there are conflicting roles and boundaries. Other causes pertain to the promotion at workplace, work security, and career development, especially in the current time of technological changes where employees’ roles could be phased out by inventions that limits opportunities for their creativity. Aside from that, interpersonal relationships between workers in the workplace and group dynamics have been found to be among primary factors of stress. The staff’s emotional, behavioral, physiological and cognitive response to stress is directly related to the characteristic of the cause of stress, the resources available to the employee to prevent pressure, as well as the employee’s personal characteristics. Based on this, individuals can react differently to stressors in an organization. To some, stress can propel them to achieve their personal goals and come out shining through the challenging moments. However, to some individuals, it can be burdensome with significant impact on their mental, emotional and physical well-being. It is important therefore for managers to understand the causes of stress and strategies that can be implemented to help prevent or overcome them. This would result in improved employee’s performance and productivity. Even though stress at work can be external, for example, family demands or any other personal problems at home, it is advisable to the managers to show social support and care in such moments. Such encouragement or aid in time of need would still enable the employees to perform productively at work.

Recommendations

As a recommendation, to reduce or eliminate the stress within the work force, it is vital for every organization to have a Stress Management Intervention program. These interventions can be grouped into primary, secondary or tertiary interventions (Richardson and Rothstein, p70). In primary interventions, the sources of stress at work are identified. After the identification, the working conditions of the employees are changed or improved, creating a conducive environment that enables them to be productive without any undue pressure. An example, in this case, is reducing the workload by distributing work among employees or employing adequate staff to cater for the job demands (Saha, Sinha, and Bhavsar, p4). Managers should do a job analysis to determine the number of resources and skills required to complete a given task before assigning the work correctly. Where the organization falls short of the necessary manpower or financial capability to hire new resources, the work can be subdivided into small tasks and assigned to different employees with regards to their skills. The organization structure can also be altered in terms of management, in either the supervision or transfer of employees to departments they best fit in based on their skills to ease the complexity of work, flow of information in addition to distributed decision making with the focus on removing stressors from the workplace. When it comes to secondary interventions, the focus is to reduce the severity of stress symptoms by helping employees improve their transaction with the environment. This is the widely used intervention that has proven positive results based on their outcomes .Here managers provide employees with access to stress management programs or health services to help them manage stressful situations in the form of training. Employees will be trained how to use behavioral skills like the change of diet, deep-breathing, meditation, exercise, time management, goal setting and relaxation methods to get rid of the psychological and physical side effects of stress. The tertiary interventions are almost similar to the Secondary one though here programs are not just to take employees through training that can reduce stress symptoms; they are also meant to treat the health conditions of workers through free and confidential access to qualified health professionals.

Stress in the workplace has a cost to both an employee in an organization as well as the organization as a whole regarding psychological, physiological and financial costs. The performance of the employees goes hand-in-hand with the prevailing work conditions besides the well-being of an individual. Heart diseases, immunosuppression, and chronic pain are some of the physical disorders of stress that affect productivity in an employee. Depression, persistent anxiety, pessimism, and resentment are psychological disorders associated with workplace stress. The stress can lead to hostility between employees or with their managers, interpersonal conflict, small production, high staff turnover or low morale in the workplace. The cognitive behavioral training designs to educate staffs on the role of their beliefs and emotions in managing demanding situations and to provide them with skills necessary to revise their opinions to facilitate adaptive coping is touted to be one of the best intervention to alleviate stress. Successful interventions should involve both an employee and the organization by providing training that helps one to identify the stress and the cause, the approach or method to be used to tackle them. Collaborative decision-making processes and problem-solving processes in an organization increases support and improve communications in an organization reducing frictions between employees or workgroups besides on-the-job training on how to cope with stress and resolve conflicts. By creating a conducive work environment and providing social support to employees in distress, the management can be able to motivate their staff to reach their full potential with significant improvement in production. This, in turn, translates into a competitive organization in the market with a healthy workforce.

Colligan, W.T, Higgins, M.E,(2005). Workplace stress: Etiology and the Consequences. Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health. Vol. 21(2) 2005. Richardson, M.K, Rothstein, R.H, (2008). The Effects of Occupational Stress Management Intervention Programs: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. New York. Vol. 13, No. 1, 69-93. Michie, S., (2002). The Causes and management of Stress at Work. Occupational Environment Medic. London. Vol. 59, 67-72. Saha D, Sinha R, Bhavsar K., (2011, April 15). Understanding the Job Stress among Healthcare Staff. Online Journal of Health and Allied Sciences. Mangalore, South India.Vol 10 (1) 2011.

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Stress at Workplace

This essay will discuss the issue of stress in the workplace. It will explore its causes, effects on employees’ health and productivity, and strategies that organizations can implement to reduce workplace stress. Also at PapersOwl you can find more free essay examples related to Depression.

How it works

Stress is something which occurs or disturbs someone’s mind whether we are rich or poor it doesn’t matter the person is having wealth so it’s free from stress. Stress is a thing which takes place when others demands exceed our limitations when someone expects something favourable or of some high expectations within a short period of time and putting pressure to complete or touch their limitations than its harmful for our physical as well for our mental health too.

It’s really good to touch the lines of success but more pressure on the mind may cause depression and many other harmful diseases which would cause some serious problems to health.

• 1.1 High workloads
• 1.2 Wrong or ineffective management
• 2.1 Employment participation:
• 2.2 Impact on health:
• 3.1 Stay organized:
• 3.2 Be clear on the requirements:
• 4 HOW I HELP THE COLLEAGUE
• 5 CONCLUSION

ROOT CAUSES

High workloads.

High workloads matter a lot in every workplace because if we work at a specific workplace every leader have their own specific skills to achieve success. So in this case, they put more pressure on their employees to do the particular work in the given time. For instance: one agency has 20 employees working at the same conditions but suddenly supervisor came and ask them to complete 2000 picking in the given specific time which comes very tough as well competition among the other members.

Wrong or ineffective management

Moreover, when we start work we have to check or we can say that the management should be supportive because if the supervisor let their employees down than it comes very unprofessional and seem very unproductive.

DANGERS OF STRESS

Employment participation:.

If one of the employees have stress then he/she would put their steps back from the competitions as well they will not interact with other employees as well they can leave behind every possible opportunity regarding with success.

Impact on health:

This comes on the top because if someone has tension about work or work-related issues it comes hazardous to health like depression, insomnia, fatigue, muscular tension which affects someone’s personal and professional growth.

Stay organized:

No matter you are in stress or something else you have to be organized well know that what you have to do in the upcoming days and need more productiveness to do work in the particular time.

Be clear on the requirements:

If your supervisor gave something to do in the specific time and it seems hard for you to have to consult as well talk with your leader regarding to their requirement talk with them that what they are expecting from you.

HOW I HELP THE COLLEAGUE

Last week at my workplace I found one guy suffering from the stress I talked with him and try to know about the reason behind his stress than after some time I come to know that he is under the pressure of work than I talked with him 2-3 minutes and give him positive thoughts and influence him giving such type of examples of professional business person. Moreover, I give him surety that if you face any kind of difficulty while doing or completing this task comes straight to me. Furthermore, we also explain each and everything related to that task so that it comes easy for him to understand that what he has to do and what we expect from him so that it becomes easy for both the organization and for the employee too.

At last I would like to say that stress is dangerous so we have to be alert from this. If we have some confusions consult with our senior employees and make their work easy otherwise it cause damage to both the organization’s success as well harm the personal health and damage the professional carrier of a person.

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Perceptions of work stress causes and effective interventions in employees working in public, private and non-governmental organisations: a qualitative study

Kamaldeep bhui.

1 Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry

Sokratis Dinos

2 BPP University, London

Magdalena Galant-Miecznikowska

Bertine de jongh, stephen stansfeld.

Aims and method

To identify causes of stress at work as well as individual, organisational and personal interventions used by employees to manage stress in public, private and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Qualitative interviews were conducted with 51 employees from a range of organisations.

Participants reported adverse working conditions and management practices as common causes of work stress. Stress-inducing management practices included unrealistic demands, lack of support, unfair treatment, low decision latitude, lack of appreciation, effort–reward imbalance, conflicting roles, lack of transparency and poor communication. Organisational interventions were perceived as effective if they improved management styles, and included physical exercise, taking breaks and ensuring adequate time for planning work tasks. Personal interventions used outside of work were important to prevent and remedy stress.

Clinical implications

Interventions should improve management practices as well as promoting personal interventions outside of the work setting.

The conceptualisation of work stress is of crucial importance when developing interventions for the workplace. Work-related stress is defined as ‘a harmful reaction that people have to undue pressures and demands placed on them at work’. 1 As many as 440 000 people in the UK complain of work-related stress, depression or anxiety that makes them ill; nearly 9.9 million work days were lost as a consequence in 2014/2015. 1 The most recent Health and Safety Executive (HSE) report (2015) gives a prevalence of 1380 and an incidence of 740 per 100 000 workers, and also concludes that work stress is more common in public service institutions. 1 The estimated economic costs to the British economy as a result of stress at work are considerable, with £14.3 billion lost in 2013/2014, 2 and the higher costs in public service amount to £1.2 billion per year. 3

Work stress can lead to physical illness, as well as psychological distress and mental illness. 4 , 5 , 6 The recent increase in work stress has been linked with the global and national recession, 7 - 9 job insecurity and work intensity, all leading to greater workloads and more interpersonal conflicts, 3 and can have an impact on children's mental health through disrupted parenting. 10 Essentially, stress in the workplace may be the result of exposure to a range of work stressors and appears to arise when people attempt to manage their responsibilities, tasks or other forms of pressure related to their jobs, and encounter difficulty, strain, anxiety or worry in this attempt. 11 Work stressors can take different forms depending on the characteristics of the workplace, and may be unique to an organisation or an industry. 12 Theoretical models of stress consider it to be either related to adverse life events and stressful environments or the individual's physiological and psychological responses to stressors, or a ‘transactional’ interaction between the individual and environment. 13 , 14 – 17 Although theoretical models conceptualise stress as a result of an imbalance between perceptions of external demands and internal resources, the consensus between theoretical academic models and lay representations of definitions of stress is far from clear. Definitions of stress in the research literature as well as those reported by lay people vary considerably. For example, Kinman & Jones 18 found that there was a lack of consensus on conceptualisations of stress, and a number of different personal, social, environmental and work-related factors were used to define and interpret the meaning of stress. 11 Brooker & Eakin 19 suggest that concepts such as power or control in relation to gender and class are related to stress, yet models of stress do not explicitly take them into account. For example, Page et al 20 found that participants perceived stress as a feminine trait associated with weakness, thus few people admit to it.

Cahil, 16 Cooper et al 13 and Marine et al 21 describe categories of stress management interventions that target individuals or organisations; these can be further segmented as preventive interventions at primary, secondary or tertiary levels. 22 Primary interventions aim to prevent the causal factors of stress, secondary interventions aim to reduce the severity or duration of symptoms, and tertiary or reactive interventions aim to provide rehabilitation and maximise functioning among those with chronic health conditions. 23 Individual interventions may include stress awareness training and cognitive–behavioural therapy (CBT) for psychological and emotional stress. Organisational interventions affect groups of people at work and may include workplace adjustments or conflict management approaches in a specific organisation. Some interventions target both the individual and the organisation, for example policies to secure a better work–life balance and peer-support groups. Bhui et al 's systematic review 24 found that interventions that target individuals show larger effects compared with organisational interventions on individual outcomes such as levels of depression and anxiety. However, individual interventions did not improve organisational outcomes such as absenteeism, which is the most important indicator of loss of organisational productivity. The evidence gaps identified in this review included studies that compared different types of organisation (e.g. public, private and non-governmental organisation (NGO)), and studies that examine whether they employ and benefit from similar interventions, given that different sectors deploy very different business processes, levels and consistency of resources and profit focus, and public service or charitable objectives. Furthermore, studies tended to be based in work settings, rather than considering all interventions applied outside of work that people found helpful. 25

These evidence gaps continue to exist despite the growing body of research into work stress. Our systematic synthesis of the research evidence on managing work stress showed a wide variety of organisational settings, research methods and outcome measures, such that too many questions were being asked but few answered definitively. 24 We concluded that more empirical research was required, but that surveys were premature until there was a better understanding of:

• What work stress issues do employees and managers face on a day-to-day basis?
• What are organisations and employees already doing about work stress in the workplace and outside of work?
• What are the interventions that employees perceive to be the most effective when managing work-related stress?
• Should the approaches taken by public and private organisations and NGOs be distinct given the very different levels and consistency of resources, focus on profit, and public service or charitable objectives?

The present study used qualitative interviews to address these questions and to identify individual, organisational and personal interventions and their perceived effectiveness in managing work-related stress. Contrasts between different types of organisation were also investigated.

Participants

The sample used in this study was purposive (e.g. type and size of organisation, vocational role) and explored participants' experiences of work stress in the course of their working day. A total of 12 organisations took part in the study, of which 6 were public organisations, 4 were private organisations and 2 were NGOs. Three organisations were based outside London, whereas the remaining 9 were based in London. Organisations were from a variety of sectors, including education, health services, insurance, graphic design and betting agencies. The purposive sampling methods aimed to ensure as broad as possible a representation of organisations, levels of the organisation and types of work within the organisation.

For the organisations that met the inclusion criteria, the senior manager was contacted by telephone and informed about the nature of the study, and agreement was reached for participation in the study. The researchers selected a number of employees in different positions along the hierarchy so there is representation from different roles: 28 of the participants were in managerial roles, and the remaining were in non-management positions. We interviewed approximately 5 participants per organisation. A total sample of 51 employees (17 men and 34 women) took part in the study; 26 participants were aged 30 years or under, 17 were between 31 and 50 years and 8 were over 51 years old.

Procedure and topic guide

The topic guide was piloted on six employees who had experienced work stress. The content of these pilot interviews was used to refine the topic guide and to gain feedback from participants on clarity and appropriateness of the questions. Organisations were approached and invited to participate by e-mails containing information on the nature of the study and the data collection processes. Participation was voluntary; the interviews were conducted face to face and, whenever possible, at the interviewee's place of work. The interviews were semi-structured and lasted up to 45 minutes. The topic guide focused on factors that may cause stress and/or absence, personal experiences of and/or recommendations on managing stress at work and experiences of effective individual and organisational interventions to manage work-related stress (see the appendix for topic guide).

The interviews were transcribed verbatim, excluding any potentially identifying information. The data collected were subject to thematic analysis in order to identify and describe recurring themes. 26 Themes and subthemes were organised using the framework approach that is commonly used in policy-relevant qualitative research. 27 Charts were generated from the themes, the range and nature of the experiences were mapped, and patterns between and within themes were revealed. Typologies were iteratively generated to accommodate the data if existing themes were inadequate or were better grouped within a higher theme. Content analysis was also performed by counting the frequency of themes in order to identify their relative prominence in the data, and also to reveal types of interventions and contexts, and views about effectiveness. These frequencies are presented only to support the strength of the findings in these data rather than to estimate prevalence more generally. With this purpose in mind, the analysis proceeded until saturation was reached, and only themes on which saturation was reached are presented.

Data were organised by three higher themes that captured the aims of the study:

• perceived causes of stress at work
• individual and organisational stress management interventions and their perceived effectiveness
• personal interventions to manage stress at work.

Causes of stress at work

The narrative data on participants' understanding of factors that may cause stress at work suggested working conditions, management practices, nature of job, life events and financial factors ( Table 1 ). The majority of participants ( n = 42/51) referred to working conditions as a main source of stress. Working conditions were mainly related to factors such as workload, the physical environment (e.g. noisy offices, lack of windows, small rooms, and offices in which the temperature was either too low or too high for comfort), long working hours, heavy workloads and understaffing.

NGO, non-governmental organisation.

‘We are short [staffed] so two people cannot go on holiday at the same time, so it's such an inconvenience and … we are trying to cover the days, nights and it's like wrrrr … really stressful place to be … ’ (female, 24, NGO).

Working conditions were the main cause of stress regardless of the sector people worked in; people working in the NGO or the public sector more often referred to the physical environment and workloads as relevant factors. Private sector employees more often referred to long working hours and a lack of structure to the working day.

A similar number of participants ( n = 40) suggested that the nature of the job itself contributed to stress, with participants from private organisations and NGOs more often reporting this as a cause of stress. Participants attributed stress more specifically to a job with high unpredictability in what may be required from day to day, or a job that demands unsociable hours.

‘Shift work … I find that quite stressful because it affects my personal life because I have to work during the weekends and that's when most of my family and friends are off … ’ (female, 26, NGO).

Management practice was proposed as a cause of stress by more than half of the interviewees ( n = 32), but was least often implicated in the public sector organisations. Participants in high managerial positions (e.g. head of unit) tended to refer to management practice as a cause of stress less often than employees in non-managerial positions. However, for all other participants (e.g. middle management positions and employees) no differences were observed. Management practice as a cause of stress related to personal style of leadership, implicating lack of warmth and support with a feeling that staff were unimportant and not respected as people; insufficient praise or confidence-building were also important omissions that caused stress. Limited opportunities for decision-making (often referred to as low decision latitude) and lack of transparency as well as unrealistic demands, poor communication and effort–reward imbalance were all implicated.

‘That's what makes you angry, because there's nobody taking my case. As soon as this phone goes to my boss and they complain about me, nobody asks me what happened. And even if I'm right, they still apologise. Why? I've done nothing wrong. It's them. They've done the wrong thing’ (male, 45, public). ‘ … the message the organisation gives to you is that you don't really matter’ (female, 40, NGO).

Life events were identified as another contributor to the level of stress experienced by employees regardless of the type of organisation they worked for ( n = 21). Life events referred to problems with family or relationships, death and sickness, as well as trying to maintain a balance between work demands and responsibilities in the social and personal or family lives of respondents.

A small number of respondents ( n = 6) reported financial factors as a cause of work stress; financial strain causing work stress was related to working for organisations that lacked a benefits package, or in which the salary did not reflect the amount of effort invested in work. Job insecurity as a cause of work stress reflected fears about losing income and facing further financial strain.

Individual and organisational stress management interventions

Participants were asked about any interventions at their workplace for managing stress. Overall, participants referred less frequently to individual interventions; such interventions were also either secondary or tertiary. In particular, they were either psychological interventions such as face-to-face telephone or internet counselling, or educational interventions or training courses that taught practical skills such as organisational management and assertiveness ( Table 2 ).

NGO, non-governmental organisation; TOIL, time off in lieu.

Some patterns emerged in the use of individual interventions by type of organisation: NGOs were least likely to deliver individual interventions to employees, perhaps owing to cost. In terms of effectiveness, those participants who received one-to-one counselling interventions thought these were effective, mainly because they could be accessed promptly when needed.

‘So [I] went to my [general practitioner] GP and they set it up through my local authority for face-to-face counselling, so I was seeing the occupational therapist, [had] face-to-face counselling and that happened on my day off. So [I] could do some work at home, because I was very tired I didn't have the stress of having to get into work, so just took a bit off. So [it was] kind of a package of things that just assisted me for a while’ (female, 49, public).

Organisational interventions were more often mentioned by workers in public sector employment and in contrast to individual interventions, they were mainly primary or secondary ( Table 2 ). Most of these organisational interventions were related to management practices ( n = 35/51). In particular, participants mentioned efforts to develop a management style that was supportive and improved communication, as well as frequent team meetings and supervision and two-way feedback.

‘[The manager is] one of those people that make you feel appreciated, even if it's a little thing she will praise you for it. A lot goes for being praised, that in itself can take away stress. If someone turns around and says what you are doing is a fantastic job you feel good’ (female, 52, public).

A supportive organisational and team culture, a collective spirit including dialogue in groups and space for discussion, and educational and training courses to improve management skills were frequently reported as effective interventions to manage stress at work ( n = 27/51).

‘ … it's good that we all sit down together and discuss anything that may be causing a problem or tension, or anything we feel needs to be adjusted’ (female, 27, public).

Flexibility in working hours, well-planned shifts and environmental or structural interventions such as a staff room for relaxation were mentioned by almost a third of the participants as effective ways of managing work stress. Participants working in private sector organisations rarely report the existence of any interventions related to work structure (e.g. flexibility in work times), whereas in the public sector there was evidence of trying to introduce more flexibility.

‘ … time off in lieu […] seems to work quite well 'cos it's about that work–life balance’ (female, 54, public).

Almost half of participants ( n = 22) said training and career development opportunities in the workplace were effective for managing work-related stress, as they made them feel adequately informed and valued. Appropriate training and adequate equipment and resources allowed employees to perform their roles effectively. A small number of interviewees ( n = 3) suggested training in stress management was a useful intervention.

‘[My manager] is very good at sending people on training courses. I've just been on one which is positive interactions, which was telling you the right way of dealing with situations’ (female, 52, public).

Finally, a small number of participants ( n = 9/51) reported that there were a number of health promotion interventions (e.g. courses, exercise) at their workplace to help them prevent work stress. Participants thought that being subsidised for gym membership or being encouraged by their organisation to exercise during their working day were very effective interventions. None of the participants working for NGOs mentioned health promotion.

‘ … we're quite actively encouraged to do lots of exercise in this trust, we get lots of emails about walking to work, or running … I think linking exercise and well-being and being healthy at work […] I think that's always good, it would be good to have that in every institution’ (female, 28, public).

Personal interventions to manage work stress

Participants were asked general questions about their personal strategies to manage work stress. We were interested in personal interventions not provided by their employers but ones that were used and considered effective.

Table 3 shows the types of personal interventions used at work. Some interventions helped employees process stressful thoughts and think through difficult situations, akin to what CBT therapists might suggest as cognitive restructuring and tackling cognitive distortions – for example, focusing on positive rather than stressful situations, and using self-reflection to gain a better perspective.

Effective personal interventions to manage stress at work (total number of respondents: 51)

‘Yeah, yeah or if something happens I try and think, erm, so there's another technique I learnt in the last place I worked at was five questions so I ask, the why questions five times, why this? why is it causing stress? … because of this, why is that? Why is that? And I usually get to the root cause and that usually chills me out a bit if I deal with the root cause rather than the thing causing me the stress’ (male, 30, public).

Support from colleagues and friends was the most frequently reported personal intervention for managing stress at work.

‘I actually had to say to a colleague, “I can't see the wood for the trees here, can you help me?” and the colleague was absolutely brilliant and helped me so we got through it. I got some excellent help from a colleague yeah and that was someone I worked with in the team who does the same job as me. My manager was very supportive and helpful as well’ (male, 41, private).

Keeping oneself organised and maintaining a structured schedule at work were thought to be very effective personal interventions. These included planning, reducing overtime, prioritising tasks and keeping a better balance between work and personal life.

‘One of the signals for me is if my desk starts getting a bit messy, it means I'm chasing between too many projects and that's often the time when I personally just take stock, think, right, what do I need to do, look at a priority list, clear the decks again and sort of take a bit of a step back and review. So that's how I manage it and I find that to be helpful for me’ (male, 47, public).

Almost half of the participants ( n = 24) pointed out the importance of a healthy lifestyle when trying to manage stress at work. In particular, exercise was the most frequently reported personal intervention. Participants also acknowledge the importance of healthy eating as a means of maintaining a healthy weight and better health in general, both of which helped people to better manage stress at work.

‘Exercise is the most important thing for me for stress. So yeah, if I'm stressed, as long as I can, I'll often leave work at a decent time and go for a run and come back to work or go take my computer home and go for a swim and then do some more work. As long as I can make sure I can get some exercise in then I'm fine. It kinda works quite good 'cause I can generally take a longer lunch break and go to the gym at lunch and then, you know, work later or whatever it is. That's probably the most important flexibility for me at work is being able to have that’ (female, 32, private).

Finally, having out-of-work interests and leisure activities was reported by more than half of the participants ( n = 31). For example, participants mentioned relaxation during lunch breaks and going on holidays as an effective personal intervention.

‘We do get inspired by going to talks and design galleries and illustration events and all that sort of thing, they're hobbies as much as they are a career but, at the same time, I think that, in a way, [this] helps to alleviate the stress levels at work because what you're doing at work is part of your hobby as well’ (male, 30, private).

A mixture of personal, organisational and individual interventions were reported in our study, but these are not often captured together, with emphasis often being given to workplace changes or separate public health approaches to lifestyle and physical activity. 28 – 30 The majority of individual and organisational interventions reported were secondary and tertiary preventive interventions, with less emphasis on primary prevention.

High-demand and low-control situations and effort–reward imbalance related to working conditions, management style and the type of job were causing distress at work. 12 , 31 , 32 It is also important to address management practices as one of the most significant and consistent work-related stressors. Management practice as a stressor was also more prominent in private and NGO sectors than in the public sector and in middle and low management positions than in higher management ones. Participants identified poor communication with management, unfair treatment and, above all, the feeling of not being appreciated as the biggest sources of stress for them. Furthermore, many participants highlighted working conditions, such as physical environment, unsociable working hours and under-staffing, as causes of their work stress, the harmful effects of which have been identified in previous research. 18 , 33 Financial factors, mainly a lack of financial recognition by the organisation, were also reported as a cause of stress. According to Stranks, 11 when workers experience insufficient rewards in the form of salary or amount of praise received, or are missing recognition, the feeling of devaluation might appear and can contribute to an experience of work stress.

Interventions used by employees to manage stress at work: perceived effectiveness

Participants in the present study tended to report mainly the presence of primary and secondary organisational interventions (as opposed to individual interventions) at their workplace. With regard to individual approaches, these were mainly psychological interventions. Although there is much research that has documented the effectiveness of psychological interventions, these are usually provided at the secondary or tertiary level rather than for primary prevention. 34 – 36

Organisational interventions were discussed by the participants more frequently and were also more often perceived as effective in managing stress at work than individual interventions. One of the main reasons that organisational interventions were identified as an effective way of managing stress was because they were primary interventions with the aim to modify or eliminate environmental stressors. Participants in the present study identified the organisational interventions to manage stress at work as: job redesign, change of organisational culture, encouragement of participative management, introduction of work–life balance policies, flexible working and reconstruction of the organisation as well as improvement of organisational communications. 11 The literature on organisational interventions does not identify management practices as an intervention. The main reason may stem from the fact that management is seen as part of organisational structures rather than as potentially subject to modification to manage stress. Our findings highlighted management practices as an important workplace intervention, especially management characteristics such as open communication, supportiveness, approachability and being appreciative; these ranked the highest in terms of perceived effectiveness. Improving management practices as an intervention and introducing flexibility in working structures were much more apparent in the public sector as opposed to the private sector and the NGOs. Content analysis suggested that there may be a relationship between reported causes of stress and individual and organisational interventions. For example, stress was less often reported in the public sector because there were more management interventions than in other sectors, and these were perceived to be effective by the participants.

Most personal interventions identified by participants were related to health behaviours such as exercise, meditation and healthy eating, as well as leisure activities and social support from family and colleagues. Although personal interventions outside the workplace were not considered by the organisations, it is important to emphasise the power of such interventions and that they should be included in future intervention packages. For example, physical activity programmes have been among the few organisational interventions that show convincing effects on absenteeism in accord with our previous reviews, but physical activity could be encouraged more generally. 24 , 30 By adapting organisational interventions to capitalise on and encourage personal individual interventions outside the workplace, stress management in the workplace may be less necessary or more effective where it is needed.

Strengths and limitations

The results suggest that employees in private organisations and NGOs report more perceived causes of stress and have fewer interventions in place to help employees manage stress compared with public sector organisations, notably National Health Service (NHS) employers. We have listed potential organisational, individual and personal interventions that were used and found to be helpful. These might be tested as correlates of better workforce health and well-being and less work stress.

A limitation of the study was related to the sample characteristics. Although there were variations, especially with regard to type, size and location of the organisations involved, the sample consisted of only 12 organisations in total. A larger number of organisations would have provided us with more variety of occupations and organisation size and location, which would have given a more complete picture concerning the causes of stress and interventions between sectors. Our study is exploratory, and although these are perceived causes, the findings should not be understood in terms of epidemiological causal relationships, but rather as important ways in which workers think about and manage work stress, providing clues as to how interventions might be developed, tested and located in these work settings.

Qualitative studies offer new insights and provide the in-depth and experience-near perspectives of participants, rather than an overtheorised and superficial analysis. The findings will contribute to future in-depth work including more varied samples, as well as survey research to test for interventions that correlate with organisational measures of health and well-being. Future work should also consider how to improve management practices, as these seemed to have the most important influence on reducing work stress. More research is needed to further explore the differences between private, public and NGO sectors and different job types such as education and healthcare to examine whether they respond to the same or different intervention techniques. Finally, research needs to take into account compositional effects including the demographic characteristics of samples, and the cost effectiveness of interventions.

Topic guide

General questions to start the interview

• How do you find your job with regard to demands, pressure, working hours, etc.?
• Are there any elements in your job that you find stressful?
• What are the common organisational factors that can cause stress at work?
• What are the common individual factors that can cause stress at work?

Managing stress at work (both managing yourself and other people)

• If you manage other people, how do you manage stress?
• How do you manage other people's stress at work?
• How do you deal with this?
• What were/are the challenges?
• Can you give any examples?

Managing return to work (managing both yourself and other people)

• How do you manage your return to work after sickness?
• How do/did you manage their return to work after sickness?
• If no experience, how would you manage their return to work?

Policies: managing stress at work and return to work

• How has this policy been put together?
• How effective is it in practice?
• What are the strong and weak points of this policy, if any? Or
• How (in what ways) would you change this policy?
• 12. What would you say are the best (individual and organisational) policies for managing employee stress?
• 13. What would you say are the best (individual and organisational) policies for managing employee return to work after sickness absence?

Declaration of interest None.

Stress and Burnout in the Workplace Essay

With the dynamic economic environments that businesses operate in, workplace stress and burnout has increasingly become common. “Three out of every four American workers describe their work as stressful” (Maxon 1). The problem is not only in America but also in all other parts of the world. Incidences of mergers, acquisitions, downsizing, bankruptcies, layoffs, etc have cost workers their jobs. After such incidences, the workplace is normally stressful and uncomfortable for workers.

Other workers may also undertake their duties fearfully due to the possibility of the aforementioned occurrences. Many workers are held up in tasks they are either uncomfortable with or unfamiliar with causing stress and burnout in their work. This paper investigates the causes of stress and burnout in the workplace and suggests ways of minimizing stress and burnout.

Among the factors that contribute to burnout in workers is the fact that workers are sometimes given too much work to accomplish in a short period. This exposes workers to performance pressure because they are worried that they cannot accomplish the task in the given time (Immen 1). Executives and managers should therefore ensure that they give workers reasonable deadlines for assignments in order to avoid stress and burnout that comes with pressure to beat deadlines.

Additionally, stress and burnout in the workplace may be caused by surveillance of workers’ production using computer systems, fewer benefits, longer working hours, and even new bosses. In every organization, workers across the hierarchy experience some form of uncertainty and tension making them vulnerable to stress and burnout.

It is therefore vital to ensure that computer surveillance systems are appropriately designed to reduce the effects they have on workers. Employers should also address other related issues like employee benefits and working hours with a view of reducing the stress and burnout that workers experience.

Executives are facing greater demands than in the past with the advent of technology. During their personal time, most executives find themselves doing office work due to the convenience offered by Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and tablets. This exacerbates stress and burnout because even hardworking people require some recovery time after work in order to manage stress and burnout effectively. Therefore, there is need for organizations to divide labor effectively so that each worker gets time to rest (Immen 1).

In some cases, an uncomfortable working environment like operating heavy and dangerous equipment may cause stress. In other cases, stress may be a result of unhealthy inter-personal relationships in the working environment.

Examples of the latter include uncoordinated teamwork, conflict among co-workers and unclear supervision (Maxon 1). Organizations should put in place proper systems to minimize stress and burnout that may come from poor relations among employees. In the case of a dangerous working environment, organizations should provide their workers with insurance and set up proper security measures.

Changes in how operations are carried out in organizations are a major cause of stress and burnout for workers. A couple of decades ago, a workers job remained constant during his/her tenure at the job. The situation is different in contemporary organizations.

Pilots are flying under pressing time demands, carrying more passengers, with more traffic, and using planes that are more complicated (Maxon 1). Other professionals like economists, accountants, finance officers, engineers, etc have to learn specialized computer software in order to work effectively. This has therefore been a source of stress and burnout for workers.

A particularly alarming cause of stress in the workplace is aggression. Millions of workers across the U.S. experience some form of violence in the workplace leading to absenteeism and lost wages. People who experience aggression at work are likely to experience higher stress and burnout levels that their counterparts (Maxon 1). Aggression may be in the form of physical assault or passive aggression. The latter is most common in organizations where workers engage in ‘cold war’.

Some workers may withhold resources from other workers, others may have a habit of ignoring invitations to meetings, and some may fail to respond to memos and phone calls. Although these causes may sound benign, they are responsible for workplace stress and burnout in millions of workers in the United States (Maxon 1). Organizations should therefore ensure that they have proper redress mechanisms for dealing with the various forms of aggressions in order to minimize stress and burnout among their workers.

The largest cause of stress and burnout in the workplace is perhaps wrong job placement. Sometimes people follow the wrong careers and end up doing jobs that are not suitable for them. For instance, an introvert who chooses marketing or sales as his/her profession is likely to experience high levels of stress and burnout than an extrovert in the same profession.

Similarly, an extrovert who chooses accounting as his/her profession is likely to experience high levels of stress and burnout than an introvert in the same profession. Worse still, management may force a person to work in a department that does not suit his/her disposition and qualifications. This usually leads to job dissatisfaction and ultimately the worker will experience stress and burnout. It is therefore important that managers assign jobs to workers according to the skills and competencies of the workers (Bowman 1).

Employees should also ensure that they evaluate their competencies and identify the areas where they fit best. In addition to this, workers may be having personal problems like bereavement, separation, divorce, sickness, etc. This will also result in stress and burnout, ultimately affecting the performance of the workers.

Stress and burnout are also common among employees who feel that they do not have enough control over what they do. Despite the fact that management must exercise control over what workers do in their organizations, it is vital that the workers are given some control over their work in order to motivate them and avoid instances of stress and burnout among workers. Management should also ensure that workers are given credit for jobs well done and that managers acknowledge the input of their juniors in every exercise.

Stress and burnout in the workplace remain a global challenge. As evidenced in the discussion above, stress and burnout have a myriad of causes and thus solutions to workplace stress and burnout depend on the cause. Causes of stress and burnout in the workplace can be classified into three categories.

These are work, self and life situations. The first class of causes is the most common and it includes issues like lack of control over work, lack of proper compensation, lack of clear supervision, etc. The second class includes issues like job placement and a person’s character, while the third includes personal issues like bereavement and divorce.

Works Cited

Bowman, Dave. Stress in the Workplace . n.d. Web.

Immen, Wallace. Workplace burnout affecting the best and the brightest . 2012. Web.

Maxon, Rebecca. Stress in the Workplace: A Costly Epidemic . 1999. Web.

• Chicago (A-D)
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IvyPanda. (2019, August 8). Stress and Burnout in the Workplace. https://ivypanda.com/essays/stress-and-burnout-in-the-workplace/

"Stress and Burnout in the Workplace." IvyPanda , 8 Aug. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/stress-and-burnout-in-the-workplace/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Stress and Burnout in the Workplace'. 8 August.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Stress and Burnout in the Workplace." August 8, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/stress-and-burnout-in-the-workplace/.

1. IvyPanda . "Stress and Burnout in the Workplace." August 8, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/stress-and-burnout-in-the-workplace/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Stress and Burnout in the Workplace." August 8, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/stress-and-burnout-in-the-workplace/.

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