Our SEO-fairies, Team Empathy, tell me that ‘stress ball’ is one of the few under-used words in an exhausted field (and therefore, I should try to ‘squeeze’ it into this article. Boom - done. My work stress is over).
Apparently, work-related stress is so common it’s not even worth writing about any more.
Artist credit: Liz Climo (story board revisionist for The Simpsons, and comic artist of the wonderful, uplifting, Little World of Liz series).
Stress: so ubiquitous, the idea of preventing it altogether might seem a bit like trying to hold back an incoming tide.
But stress doesn’t need to be an inevitable part of life, and it definitely doesn’t need to be an inevitable part of work.
For more on why stress is a work-related psychosocial hazard that employers should focus on controlling, rather than an individual resilience issue, see our previous blog “Stress and Burnout, What’s the Difference?”.
For more on how employers can control for, prevent and manage work-related stress, read on.
How can employers control work-related stress?
Sometimes, getting tangled up in the idea that mental health is complicated can stop us from making a start.
The starting point to addressing a hazard, whether physical or psychosocial?
We need to know what we’re dealing with before we can put preventative strategies in place.
Artist credit: Dinosaur Couch, formerly dinos and comics.
This comic is a play on government mental health resources (vs encouraging awareness) but it applies equally to employers. Talking about mental health and being aware of the impact of stress and stressors is important, and a great first step, but it isn’t enough. We need to DO something.
How can we risk assess stress?
Methods of risk assessment will vary depending on the size and nature of the organisation, but risk assessing a job role for stress will take the same general shape as other risk assessments.
WorkSafe NZ recommends the Plan - Do - Check - Act method.
Firstly, identify your hazards, who is likely to be impacted, and to what degree. Then, implement your plan. Check that it works (measure the outcomes) and finally, act when needed, to investigate issues when they arise and update your prevention strategy.
Include your people
It is ideal to include your team members in this process. They will be better placed to describe work as it is actually done rather than how it should be done.
Including employees in the hazard identification process will not only ensure a more realistic view of the hazards, but also engage them in the process. Employees who are engaged in the process from the outset will be far more likely to engage with and implement preventative measures.
Hazard controls are not much use if nobody uses them !
For a much more detailed investigation about ‘work as done’ and the power of involving your workforce in hazard identification and control implementation, check out Clive Lloyd’s excellent book, Next Generation Safety Leadership: From Compliance to Care.
What might hazard identification for stress look like?
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
How do you identify what causes stress in a job role?
Stop thinking about stress as one great big horrible ‘thing’ that just seems to exist for everyone and causes problems. Take a pause and break it down.
Common work-related stressors
sourced/adapted from an EU analysis on the drivers and barriers for psychosocial risk, published by the European Agency for Health and Safety at Work, 2011
Work content: one reason stress occurs as a result of a mismatch between the role and the person doing it. This can either be because the work is monotonous and repetitive, OR because it is out of an individual’s capability, without measures in place to help that person grow into the role (i.e the job is too hard, with no mentorship or training).
Artist credit: Work Chronicles
Workload: We know from Jarrod Haar’s research that working more than 55 hours per week, irrespective of how we feel about it at the time, increases our chance of burnout. In Haar’s population, the risk was 416% greater in the 55+ hour per week bracket.
The first global analysis of loss of life and health due to long working hours (published by the WHO in 2021) found that in people working more than 55 hours per week the risk of stroke is increased by 35% and ischemic heart disease by 17%.
According to the above-mentioned study, workload is the risk factor that carries the highest burden of occupational disease.
A too-heavy workload will get to everyone eventually, but the way we communicate and support periods of heavier workload will be a contributing or mitigating factor to stress levels. Being dishonest or ‘roping people in’, or unclear communication regarding deadlines are factors that can increase stress around workloads.
Artist credit: Chris Hallbeck aka Mini Mumble
Work Schedule: Shift work, working unsociable hours and working at times that impact our family life or exacerbate other stressors (e.g having to start and finish onsite at a time that puts us regularly in peak traffic).
Control: Having low job control (for example, working to machine-based schedules, or simply being constantly micro-managed) causes stress.
Role conflict: Handling conflicting priorities, such as multiple departments insisting on competing priorities that the worker must juggle (having a good leader or system to buffer this will help). Conflict can also be built into the role, for example a teacher in a large class juggling the conflicting needs of different learning levels, or an over-worked doctor choosing who of two patients to treat first.
Image credit: Work Chronicles
Environment and equipment: Working in uncomfortable or dangerous situations - such as health workers in uncomfortable PPE, tradespeople in wet and muddy conditions, office workers using non-ergonomic computer set-ups.
Hybrid / remote work: Working remotely or in a hybrid role can reduce many stressors, but it can also create others. It’s important to consider factors such as work/life balance (are people really switching off when they finish work?) and social factors when looking at stress factors in remote roles.
Artist credit: Justin Boyd, Invisible Bread
Organisational Culture: Do we vibe with our organisation’s vibe? Imagine the climate-concerned Lisa Simpson working for Mr Burns at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant - this would likely be a clear violation of Lisa’s values and a source of stress for her.
If you would like a little stroll down memory lane, here is Lisa’s protest song, They Have the Plant but we Have the Power. If you haven’t watched the Simpsons and have no idea what I’m talking about, a few seconds of the above-linked clip will sum it up.
“So we’ll march day and night by the big cooling tower / they have the plant but we have the power”
I worked in recruitment for 15 years and let me tell you, this scenario is pretty common. Many folks work in jobs that don’t totally gel with their belief systems, because the conditions are good, or because they thought they could make a change to the system from within and eventually became disillusioned.
Interpersonal Relationships at Work: Bullying, experiencing micro aggressions such as gender-based microaggressions or racism, or just not having any mates at work who you feel like you really gel with. Not being able to be authentic or show your true self at work can be a major source of stress and one that can particularly impact minority groups.
This can also include aggression or vicarious trauma from clients, for instance social workers managing a complex client-base or call-centre workers taking calls from clients that may be aggressive or emotional.
Career Development: If you’re stuck on the fast-track to go-nowhere-ville, or the only options for advancement are promotions to positions that don’t really float your boat, then this is a stressor. Sometimes the only solution for this is to move organisations. But organisations can improve their chances of keeping talent by building psychological safety and maintaining transparent lines of communication with their staff.
Let’s also take a look at this through a diversity lens - an organisation might feel that they have opportunities available, but if those opportunities have historically always been taken up by a certain type of individual (say, one who enjoys golfing with the boss), then is genuine career development really a prospect for everyone on the team, or just the people who fit the usual mould?
Artist credit: Anna Parini for the New Yorker, published in ‘the tech-industry’s gender discrimination problem’. The article states “almost half the women who get tech jobs eventually leave, more than double the percentage of men who do so.”
For more about how career development and flexible working particularly impacts women, and what employers can do about it, see our blog here.
Insecure work: Gig-based work, freelance work that feels uncertain, commission-based work where meeting targets is a struggle or even permanent jobs in the context of an insecure industry or economy. We might be in a job that feels secure right now, but feel that our choices are reduced because of the financial ramifications of changing job roles.
Jarrod Haar’s research found that respondents working in insecure roles had an even greater risk of burnout than those working 55+ hours per week - a whopping 641% increase.
Of course, people may be paddling a canoe in both rivers - working 55+ hours per week in insecure, gig-based job roles.
Yes, everybody has choices, but sometimes those choices are severely constrained by context.
For some interesting and recent research regarding job insecurity, worker anxiety and social agitation (protesting), see here.
Artist credit: Justin Boyd, Invisible Bread
Other factors: We don’t simply switch on like robots when we arrive at work. We bring ourselves and whatever we have going on in our lives with us.
Employers aren’t responsible per se for managing external stressors. But it would be naive to imagine that our employees’ external stressors do not impact their work lives, and interact with work-related stressors.
Right now, there’s a lot going on in the world and our people might be bringing more ‘stuff’ to work with them than usual and their ‘stuff’ might feel more complicated - people are dealing with climate change and eco anxiety, community trauma as a result of natural disasters and the cost of living crisis, in addition to continuing to adapt to a post-covid world.
Artist credit: Nick Seluk: The Awkward Yeti
Finally, it’s worth noting that many of these stressors interact. People who are in working in insecure job roles may be more likely to be using uncomfortable equipment (if employers do not provide personalised-fitting PPE for temporary staff, for example). People working from home might be experiencing social isolation as a stressor, in addition to a perceived lack of career development, as well as microaggression.
What can employers do?
Once you have identified and prioritised your hazards, the hard work starts - doing something about it.
Some of these will be relatively straight forward to address. If uncomfortable PPE is a stressor for your people, ensure that you are providing the right sizes or that people have sufficient rest breaks when they wear it.
If machine-based or monotonous work is an issue, use task rotation to vary the monotony and/or focus your recruitment on selecting people who prefer routine to variety.
Other factors such as organisational culture and problematic interpersonal relationships can be trickier and take time to get right, but with effort and the right processes in place, it is possible to build a working environment where work-related stress is well managed and is not reducing our work performance or our quality of life.
A work life without excessive work-related stress is not only achievable, it’s better: for the mental-health of individuals, for organisations, and for the economy and society at large.
Let’s make work better. For our selves, our people, and our communities.
Artist credit: Dinosaur Couch, formerly dinos and comics.
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Follow the writer, Ngaire Wallace, on LinkedIn here.