Stress in the Workplace

The Effects of Workplace Stress

Workplace stress affects individuals, but it also has knock-on effects on relationships within teams and with customers.

Unchecked stress can therefore have major effects on organisations, including on their bottom line.

High levels of stress in the workplace can lead to:

Poor decision-making by individuals.
An increase in mistakes, which in turn may lead to customer or client complaints. This is likely to produce more stress.
Increased sickness and absence, with ongoing costs to the organisation.
High staff turnover.
Poor employee/workplace relationships.

Stress in the workplace also has a knock-on effect on individuals’ relationships at home: with their partners and children, and wider family and friends. These effects, in turn, ripple outwards, affecting more people via other relationships. It can also have effects on both physical and mental health and well-being (see box).

Panic Attacks

In cases of extreme or continual stress, people can suffer what is known as a panic attack.

A panic attack is a brief but extremely frightening spell of severe anxiety. Lasting only a few minutes, the symptoms can include:

Feeling faint;
Trembling;
Dizziness;
Pounding, fast heart rate;
Feeling hot and sweaty;
Legs turning to jelly;
Butterflies (a 'fluttery' feeling) in the stomach;
Shortness of breath; and
Dry mouth.

Panic attacks often occur when the person is unaware of being particularly anxious. Recognising panic attacks for what they are, learning how to cope with them, and dealing with the underlying problems of stress are essential to the sufferer.

Anyone who experiences such an attack, or thinks that they may have done so, should seek medical advice.

Not All Stress is Harmful

Stress affects people differently. Some people seem to thrive on extremely stressful lifestyles, while others struggle to cope with everyday life.

Everyone has an optimum level of stress. Too little excitement and too few challenges may lead to boredom. Too much stress can lead to health problems.

A certain amount of stress, however, tends to be good for individuals.

Positive stress can act as a spur to achieve better results than would otherwise be attained.

Plenty of situations are potentially stressful but also enjoyable: think about the birth of a child, forming new relationships, and undertaking new and stretching challenges.

Stress is also extremely useful in acting as an enabler to avoid problems and dangers. It is a motivator to solve problems and an important warning signal that something is wrong, allowing individuals to take some action to address those problems.

However, while some stress is good, too much stress is bad. Prolonged stress is almost always bad.

Every individual has a different level of tolerance of stress, and organisations and individuals have a responsibility to ensure that nobody is exposed to too much stress.

Monitoring and Reducing Workplace Stress

In the UK, the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) has issued a guide entitled Tackling stress: The Management Standards Approach (2005) and a workbook to help. These outline six key areas of the workplace that should be monitored to assess levels of stress:

Demands - Including such issues as workload, work patterns and work environment. See our page Work–Life Balance for more information.
Control - How much say individuals have about how they do their work. Research shows that feeling that we are not in control is perhaps the biggest cause of stress, so it is helpful to assess the levels of control available to individuals.
Support - Includes encouragement, sponsorship and resources provided by the organisation, line management and colleagues (our pages on Coaching and Mentoring provide more ideas here).
Relationships - Includes promoting positive working to avoid conflict and dealing with unacceptable behaviour. See our pages on Mediation Skills and Workplace Bullying for more.
Role - Whether people understand their role within the organisation and whether the organisation ensures that the person does not have conflicting roles.
Change - How organisational change is managed and communicated within the organisation. (Our pages on Change Management explain organisational change in more detail.)

As an employee (in the UK), you are entitled to support for workplace stress. It may be useful for you to check your own working environment to see if any of these areas is a cause for concern. You can find more detailed information about the HSE guidelines on stress on the organisation’s website.

The UK Government, through the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), has introduced management standards for stress in work-related situations.

Further information on these standards, and other issues related to stress and how to manage it, can be found on their website at www.hse.go.uk/stress.

Coping with Stress

There are a number of things that individuals can do to help them to cope with workplace stress.

These include:

Exercising regularly and eating well. ‘A sound mind in a sound body’ may be a cliché, but clichés exist for a reason. It is much easier to deal with stress if you are physically well. Looking after yourself, and particularly making sure that you take time to exercise and eat well, is a good way to ensure that you remain fit and healthy. Exercise also helps to remove stress hormones from your body.
Talk to someone. Admitting that you may have a problem is a good start to solving it. Your manager has a responsibility to ensure that you are not suffering from too much stress, but it harder for them to act if you don’t tell them that you are struggling to cope.
Be prepared to say ‘no’. An awful lot of workplace stress is the result of people taking on too much. Be prepared to say ‘no’ to demands that you do more—or at least to negotiate deadlines.

There are more ideas to help you to manage workplace stress in our pages on Stress and Stress Management, including Tips to Manage Stress.

There are also behaviours that may be tempting, but which ultimately do not help at all.

These should therefore be avoided if possible (see box).

Unhelpful stress management behaviours

When stressed, individuals often indulge in behaviours which may relieve the immediate feelings of anxiety in the short-term, but which only add to their problems in the longer term.

For example, people may turn to alcohol, drugs, smoking and/or over-eating. Avoiding, ignoring or failing to recognise underlying problems is also a common occurrence.

When too many work demands are placed upon people, they may work harder for longer hours and attempt to keep up with an impossible schedule instead of trying to reduce the demands.

In the long term, these behaviours will only serve to increase the physiological symptoms of tension and deplete physical energy reserves.

Taking Control and Managing Your Life

Ultimately, the best thing that any of us can do to reduce and manage workplace stress is to take control.

If possible, you should try to take responsibility for your working life, and also for maintaining a healthy and appropriate Work–Life Balance. This is not always easy, but talking to your manager, and asking for help when needed is a very good first step.

The Skills You Need Guide to Stress and Stress Management