In recent years stress at work has become a major reason for employee absence and according to the CIPD’s Health And Wellbeing At Work Report 2022, stress is in the top three causes of short term absence for 30% of businesses and in the top three causes of long term absence for 38% of businesses. Information gathered by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) shows that 13.7 million working days are lost each year in the UK because of work-related stress, anxiety and depression at an annual cost of £28.3 billion. Therefore, it is vitally important that organisations understand and manage stress effectively in order to support their employees and prevent stress related absence.
What does stress at work actually mean?
Stress at work affects people differently. A certain level of stress and pressure can be healthy as it enables employees to feel engaged, motivated, productive and challenged. However, when pressure becomes unmanageable and employees feel that what is being asked of them is unrealistic then stress can manifest itself negatively. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) define stress as, “the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed on them”.
What causes stress at work?
The Workplace Health Report 2023 commissioned by Champion Health reveals that 76% of employees have suffered at some point in the last 12 months from moderate to high, or high levels of stress at work. This is clearly serious for employers who need to examine the causes of this stress in order to reduce it. The same report cites ‘workload’ as by far the greatest reason for stress at work with 73% of respondents selecting that reason from the list of available responses. ‘Lack of control’ was chosen as one of the causes of their stress at work by 31% of respondents, with ‘lack of support’ being third on the list of causes as it was selected by 29% of those completing the survey.
What are the signs of stress?
Signs of stress will vary from person to person but there are some typical signs to watch out for. An employee who is unusually quiet and withdrawn, or likewise unusually tense or irritable could be suffering from stress. Stressed employees are likely to struggle with concentration and may not be able to focus on tasks or prioritise effectively as their thoughts are jumbled and disorganised due to their feelings of being under excessive pressure. Staff may appear to lack their usual confidence and motivation if they are stressed at work and performance standards may also slip. Employees with previously excellent attendance records could also start to have an increasing number of instances of short term absence to help themselves to cope with stress but may disguise this and give the reason as some other minor illness if they don’t want to admit that they are stressed.
How can an employer help their staff to manage stress at work?
The HSE identify six areas of work design which can impact on the levels of stress experienced by employees, they are:
- Demands
- Control
- Support
- Relationships
- Role
- Change
In order to manage and reduce stress, employers should assess the risks in these six areas and take targeted action as and when needed. This action will usually follow a three step process of engagement, understanding and support. Staff should be encouraged to talk about stress and if stress is identified then employers need to show concern and listen, in doing so this will allow them to understand what is going on. When having conversations about stress employers should mainly listen and facilitate the conversation so that they can fully understand the issues. Once that has happened relevant support can be put in place to alleviate the cause of the stress, that might be additional support to reduce workload, increased employee involvement in decision making to improve feelings of control or adjustments to an employee’s role. If required employees can also be signposted to professional help that will assist them to manage their stress and hopefully remain in work. Employers can use wellbeing action plans, training and employee assistance programmes as additional means of positively impacting on stress.
There is no one size fits all method to tackling stress at work so it is important that employers take the time to listen and engage with staff rather than take a blanket approach as that will ultimately fail and potentially make things worse.
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