Managing stress: Introduction
Section one of the Personnel Today Management Resources one stop guide to managing stress, covering: the difference between pressure and stress; physical and psychological symptoms; and the prevalence of stress. Other sections.
|
|
The size of the problem
The effects of work-related stress, both to individuals and organisations, are extensive. Work-related stress may affect individuals physiologically, psychologically and behaviourally. Outcomes include lower levels of self-esteem and reduced job satisfaction and motivation, along with higher blood and cholesterol levels, depression, ulcers and heart disease.
Depression and anxiety are the most common stress-related complaints presented to general practitioners, and affect 20 per cent of the working population of the UK.1
As well as causing considerable pain and suffering for individuals, there is a substantial burden on the community as well as significant effects on absenteeism and productivity within organisations.
Surveys of employers in the UK show that absenteeism costs UK businesses around £10.5bn. According to the Employee Absence Survey 2004 by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD),2 stress is the biggest cause of absence among non-manual employees. The HSE estimates that 13.4 million working days were lost in the UK in 2001/2002 due to stress, depression or anxiety ascribed to work-related stress.3 This can have severe consequences on organisations, leading to spiralling effects on the rest of the workforce, who may be burdened with the workload of absent colleagues.
Stress has become a major problem for UK businesses. Like other 'soft' people issues, it is difficult to define and difficult to measure. One of the pioneers of the medical understanding of stress, Hans Seyle, described it as follows:
"The word stress, like success, failure, or happiness, means different things to different people and no-one has really tried to define it, although it has become part of our daily vocabulary."4
The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) defines stress as: "The adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed on them."5
According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), work-related stress is caused when there is a mismatch between job requirements and the individual's abilities, resources or needs.6
The difference between pressure and stress
Pressure can have a positive effect in stimulating motivation and alertness, providing the incentive needed to overcome challenging situations. However, extreme, persistent and unrelieved pressure can lead to stress and feelings of anger, fear and frustration. This can cause a variety of short- and long-term illnesses, with damaging effects on individual mental and physical well-being.7
Pressure and stress are related, but are different. We often confuse the terms.
Pressure is a subjective feeling. It is the tension or arousal that results from a stressful situation.
Pressure is what most of us mean when we say we are feeling stressed. That is, when faced with a stressful situation we experience some tension/arousal. In most cases we are feeling pressure and not damaging stress.
Positive pressure is known as 'eustress'. It gives us the motivation and drive that we need to perform. When we feel too little pressure we are not likely to feel motivated or inclined to strive towards our goals, leading to boredom and 'rust out'. As the level of pressure rises we become more motivated and will perform better. For example, athletes often report that they do better when they are competing and/or when they are being watched. This is because they are under pressure to perform well.
Pressure is positive and desirable (up to a certain level). When the pressure becomes too great is when we experience stress and burn out.
In the eye of the beholder
It is often the case that managers confronted with a stressed member of their team can't figure out why others in their team are not also suffering from stress. The stress response is dependent upon what is described as 'cognitive appraisal' - the reaction of an individual depends on how a person interprets or appraises (consciously or unconsciously) the significance of a harmful, threatening or challenging event and whether they have the resources to cope with it. A whole range of different factors, including past experiences and personality, influences the appraisal.
The reason cognitive appraisal is important in understanding the causes of stress is because it means that stress is in the eye of the beholder. Evaluating stress, therefore, needs to take into account what the beholder believes to be a threat and whether they believe they can cope with the situation. It is for this reason that subjective evaluations of stress, such as those found in validated stress surveys, are more successful in identifying stress problems than data such as absence rates, accident rates, or attrition rates. Measurement of stressors must be a measure of the perception of a threat by the individual.8
The stress response
The stress response is a normal biological
response to stressful or traumatic events, environmental stressors and
interpersonal conflicts that we experience.9
Stress poses a risk to health when it occurs frequently or is intense, prolonged or mismanaged.
The stress response has four combined effects:
Blood flow is redirected from the skin, intestines and other vegetative organs to the muscles and brain
Glucose and fatty acids are mobilised from storage sites into the bloodstream to provide readily available energy
Alertness is increased through a sharpening of sensory processes such as vision and hearing
Functioning of the immune system, restorative processes and routine maintenance functioning, such as digestion, is reduced.
In all cases, the biological response is preparing the body for the fight or flight response. This is an evolutionary response and has been part of our everyday biological make up for millions of years. All advanced animals react in this way to the perception of threat.
The suppression of the immune system under chronic or severe stress leads to what Hans Selye called 'general adaptation syndrome',10 which leads to a generalised, rather than specific, health risk. A person may experience a range of medical, psychological and/or behavioural disorders, depending on their vulnerabilities, as a result of this generalised response.
The prevalence of stress
There are many statistics associated with the prevalence of workplace stress. The HSE has published a report into the incidence of workplace stress. This large-scale study, of more than 17,000 people, shows that 20% of respondents suffered from stress at levels described as 'very' or 'extremely' stressful.11
High-quality research is also emerging to show that some jobs are more stressful than others. A report by Robertson Cooper12 shows that teachers, police officers, social workers, paramedics, call centre staff and prison officers are the most stressed workers in the UK. The least stressed are private sector executives. The research suggests the most stressful jobs involve contact with the public in emotionally intense situations, where the working environment is governed by strict rules of engagement.
There is also evidence that, in the main, a boss job is much less stressful than a worker role. For example, the scores on a standardised stress audit show that teachers experience higher stress levels and lower job satisfaction levels than head teachers. One possible reason for this is that teachers are working in close contact with children every working day and, therefore, will be experiencing consistently high levels of emotional pressure. It seems that workplace stress is as much dependent upon the nature of the work as it is about the volume or quantity of work.
The HSE has published research showing demographic differences in the experience of stress.8 For example, men on lower incomes with no secondary school qualification report higher levels of stress. (Downloads available from the HSE: www.hse.gov.uk/stress/standards/downloads.htm ).
A less robust way of measuring work-related stress is to use proxy indicators such as stress-related absence (see Section 3 ).
References
1. Fast Facts - Stress and Strain, Quick & Cooper, Health Press, 2003
2. Employee Absence Survey 2004, CIPD
3. HSE (2002) Health and Safety Statistics Highlights 2001/2002, Misc 472, 12/02 C40 (www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/overpic.htm)
4. The Stress of Life, Seyle, H, McGraw Hill, New York, 1956
5. www.hse.gov.uk/stress/index.htm
6. Stress... at work, DHHS publication no. 99-101, NIOSH, 1999
7. 'A participative approach to developing comprehensive stress management interventions', Occupational Health Psychology: Empowerment, participation & health at work, Giga, Faragher & Cooper, European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology Conference Proceedings Series (1473-0200), 2002
8. 'Let the Survey take the strain', Jordan, J,Safety and Health Practitioner, October 2002.
9. Fast Facts - Stress and Strain, Quick & Cooper, Health Press, 2003
10. The Stress of Life, Seyle, H, McGraw Hill, New York, 1956
11. The Scale of Occupational Stress: The Bristol Stress and Health at Work Study, HSE Contract Research Report 265, HSE Books, 2000
12. 'The Experience of Work-related Stress Across Occupations', Millet, C. (2005) Journal of Managerial Psychology, 20 No. 2)
|
Physical early warning signs
Psychological early warning signs
|
|
Section one: Introduction Section three: The business case for a stress prevention strategy Section four: What to do about workplace stress Section five: Developing a strategy
|
