According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the organisation responsible for health and safety in Great Britain:
- Over a third of new health problems are due to work-related stress
- Each case of work-related stress leads to an average of 30.2 days of absence
- During the 2006/7 financial year 13.8 million working days were lost due to work-related stress, anxiety and depression.
Also, when organisations deal effectively with work-related stress it has a positive effect on productivity, staff commitment, staff turnover, staff recruitment, customer satisfaction and company image. Psychological research can inform organisations of the causes of work-related stress and this can, in turn, inform their policies of dealing with it.
There are many possible sources of stress in the workplace, these include:
- Job insecurity
- Lack of facilities or rest breaks
- Lack of support
- Lack of involvement in decisions
- Unclear job role
- Lack of control
- Role conflict
- Long working hours
- Relationships (e.g., Bullying)
- High workload
- Work too challenging or not challenging enough
- Deadlines
- Low pay
Lack of Control
Control (or lack of control) has been identified as an important factor in a person's response to stressors. Johnson and Sarason (1978), for example, found that participants with a high internal locus of control were less likely to suffer from negative effects of stress; however, Brady's (1958) executive monkey study found that having control over stressful events had a very negative effect on the monkey's; nevertheless, Weiss (1972) demonstrated that predictability coupled with control led to reduced stress in the executive rats.
Although these studies appear to be contradictory, they seem to suggest that control is beneficial in some situations and not in others. There are, however, problems with these studies if they are to be applied to stress in the workplace: none of them investigated workplace stress. Michael Marmot and his colleagues (1997), however, investigated stress in real work environments (the civil service) and found that low job control was associated with greater risk of heart attacks and other stress related disorders, such as cancer, stroke and gastrointestinal disorders. This means that giving employees greater job control may reduce stress and stress related illnesses.
Role conflict
Role conflict occurs when there is a conflict between the demands of a person's many roles, for example, there may be a conflict between a person working and spending time with their family, between work they are expected to do and their moral values or between different work roles within an organisation. Nevertheless, an interesting study by Kahn and Cuthbertson (1998) found that mothers who worked experienced less depression than those who were homemakers. The homemakers experienced more stress when their husbands did not contribute to the housework and childcare, while the working mothers had less stress because their husbands were more willing to help.
Relationships
Good relationships at work can provide support and may reduce the negative effects of a stressful workplace; nevertheless, poor work relationships and bullying can lead to increased levels of stress and illness.
