STRESSSSSEED! How many of us wake up in the night feeling stressed? Can’t concentrate at work due to our high stress levels? Have headaches, neck ache, stomach pains? Are constantly irritable and fatigued? There are so many sypmptoms and causes that it is sometimes difficult to know whether what you are feeling is down to stress and what the source of that stress is.
However, very often the cause is work:
Of the 2.4 million “speaking” calls Samaritans receives, 8 per cent of callers say they are overworked.
According to the latest National Statistics Labour Force Survey, up to 5,ooo,ooo (yes, that’s 5 million) people in the UK are "very" or "extremely" stressed at work.
Wow. That’s a very high proportion and I know I used to be one of them before I got out…
The consequences of stress at work
The consequences of stress at work are severe for the individual: the Stressed Out Survey 2007, by Samaritans and healthcare company Medicash, found that 32 per cent of respondents drank to relieve stress, up from 23 per cent in 2003. Worryingly, 12 per cent of respondents said they felt suicidal as a result of stress.
“There’s a pretty good consensus that people’s jobs have got more complicated - Society as a whole has got more complicated. ” explains Joe Ferns, interim director of service support at Samaritans. "People are very often pulled into all sorts of directions and life requires us to have a number of different masks that we put on.”
The consequences are also severe for the company: The CIPDs Absence Management 2006 survey found stress was the number one reason for long-term absence in non-manual workers. It is also high on the list of reasons for attrition rates.
What causes stress?
Confusion abounds because stress and its causes are so complex. Stress can be induced by really big life events, such as a bereavement, or the accumulation of daily hassles or our reaction to them. Often the sufferer themselves may not truly understand the root cause of their stress. Some are not aware that they have been suffering until some event triggers off an abnormal reaction either manifesting itself in a physical illness or in a workplace crisis such as a row with a colleague, a client or a manager. Some become severely depressed, seek medical advice and are prescribed anti-depressants. Although anti-depressants undoubtedly help with the effects of stress, they cannot heal the cause of the stress - especially if the cause is external workplace stress.
The sufferer has to be able to identify the cause before it can be addressed. This is not always straightforward as the stress may be caused by the individual’s own reaction to a situation as opposed to the situation itself. For example, someone with perfectionist tendencies will experience far higher levels of stress when it comes to giving a presentation than someone who has a more laissez faire attitude. The perfectionist would benefit from help/support/training/therapy in reducing their perfectionist tendency as this can substantially reduce their anxiety levels. The presentation will still be a requirement of their job, but their perception of their ability to do it will have altered.
If the individual can distinguish between what is an external trigger and what is an internal trigger, half the battle is won. They can then seek help in addressing those sources of stress.
External causes - the workplace:
Companies have a duty to look after their employees and this includes stress levels. Unfortunately, some companies still don’t realise this and, of those who do, many still don’t know what in reality to do about managing their employees’ stress. Having a policy statement in the staff handbook isn’t enough. The managers need to be trained properly in identifying, understanding and managing their employees’ stress.
Identifying the cause of stress: is it internal or external? : one of the challenges for a manager is differentiating between a typical reaction to an inherently stressful aspect of a job and a reaction which is peculiar to that particular individual who finds that aspect overwhelmingly stressful. This distinction is important as it gives a clue as to how the issue can be managed. Where one source of stress at work, for example deadlines, may be a motivating factor to one employee, to another it is a source of dread and high levels of anxiety. If the line manager is one who thrives under tight deadlines but his/her team member finds them highly anxiety -provoking, the manager may well find it difficult to empathise; the result can often be that the team member’s anxiety is ignored or dismissed as being that person over-reacting or simply not up to the job.
This is a difficult situation for management without open, non-judgemental dialogue in an environment which encourages the employee to voice their anxiety. However, if the line manager is secretly of the view that the employee simply "isn’t up to the job", then no amount of "open" conversation is going to address the issue. The organisation needs to create a culture whereby, if an employee can’t talk to their line manager about their stress, they can talk to someone who can and will listen. If an employee cannot find someone informally to talk to, they often have to resort to the company grievance procedure to address the issue; this results in more stress, more time and bad feeling on the part of both parties to the grievance. Frequently, by the time an employee has reached the end of the grievance procedure, they want out of the company who has not been able to listen to their stress without going through such a painful procedure. Ultimately, the aggrieved employee may seek redress through an Employment Tribunal; a process through which everyone suffers.
This is where management training is vital to train the manager in stress awareness and managing stress:
Firstly, the line manager may not realise the organisation’s legal obligations: along with the common law duty of care, there is also the obligation to perform a risk assessment for stress under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. Managers need to be trained in understanding their duty to their employees under the law. This may focus their attention and encourage them to be more proactive.
Secondly, the manager may not realise the extent to which absences or "sickies" are due to stress as opposed to the array of physical symptoms through which stress expresses itself eg back pain, migraine, stomach pain etc. Without this awareness, the sickies will continue unchecked.
Thirdly, the managers need to be taught how to recognise the signs and symptoms of stress so that they can intervene if the employee is reluctant to talk about their stress. Often an employee’s stress levels can be reduced by knowing that their manager is aware of their problems.
Written by Anna Kavanagh, Time4balance, 4th February 2007.
Stress strategies
The CIPD describes four main approaches to dealing with stress
at work:
• Auditing policies, procedures, and systems to ensure it provides a working environment that protects the well-being of its workforce and can identify troubled employees
• Adopting a problem-solving approach: identifying why problems have arisen and finding solutions
• Focusing on employee well-being by identifying ways to create a healthy workplace
• Working at the individual level of the employee by educating and supporting them to deal with problems at work
Source: CIPD factsheet: Stress at work
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