Stressed!!
It’s not exactly a news flash that a lot of people feel stressed and overworked these days. But the trend may be costing employers more than they know, from higher healthcare costs to the loss of dedicated managerial talent.
A study from the University of Massachusetts has found that employees who work overtime are 61% more likely than other workers to be injured or get ill. “Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that long working hours indirectly precipitate workplace accidents through a causal process, for instance, by inducing fatigue or stress in affected workers,” said co-author of the report Allard Dembe, associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (Britt, 2005; “Long,” 2005). The study also pointed to research showing that long work hours are associated with increased risk of heart disease, stress, depression, musculoskeletal disorders, infections, and a range of other health problems.
Another recent study, this from the nonprofit group Families and Work Institute, found that a third of U.S. employees say they are chronically overworked, and over half (54%) had, sometime during the previous month, felt overwhelmed by all the work they had to complete.
“Ironically, the very same skills that are essential to survival and success in this fast-paced global economy, such as multi-tasking, have also become the triggers for feeling overworked,” said Ellen Galinsky, president of Families and Work Institute and a lead author of the study. “Being interrupted frequently during work time and working during non-work times, such as while on vacation, are also contributing factors for feeling overworked” (Families and Work Institute, 2005).
The Families and Work study notes that 36% of those who reported feeling highly overworked suffered high stress levels (Galinsky, et al., 2005). And nearly 40% of these overworked people say their health isn’t good. “We know in the short run that if you feel overworked, you are more resentful and angry and make more mistakes,” Galinsky told Newsweek. “In the long run, we’re talking about the effects on health” (Ozols, 2005).
What should worry employers is that job stress only seems to be getting worse. One study from the UK’s Health and Safety Executive found that there’s been a 500% surge since 1950 in the number of working days lost each year through absences due to stress (“How,” 2004). Similarly, Paul Landsbergis of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine cites studies showing that, between 1977 and 1997, there were significant increases in the percentage of U.S. employees who don’t have enough time and are working hard and fast (Couillard, 2004).
There are several schools of thought about how to deal with long work hours and the stress that often goes with them. First, there’s the school that says that these problems are so out of control that more governmental regulation is desirable. Prof. Dembe, for example, supports European Union initiatives to restrict working hours, though he thinks the same kind of directives are unlikely to occur in the U.S. (Britt, 2005).
Another school of thought says that it’s up to employers to do a better job of managing their workforces, partly with an eye toward reducing labor costs. Worker stress has been linked to absenteeism, presenteeism, poor performance and worker disengagement as well as health problems. These add up to huge – though sometimes hard to measure – costs. By one estimate, 70% to 80% of visits to primary care doctors are the result of stress (Scott, 2005).
What’s more, stress can cause the burnout and loss of talented and motivated people, often at the managerial level. “Burnout is not a symptom of work stress, it is a result of severely unmanaged work stress,” reports Supervision magazine. “Burnout happens to highly motivated and committed people.... There is a connection between idealistic dedication to a job and a heightened tendency to burnout” (Stanley, 2004).
Still, many employees are skeptical that management truly cares about the issue. In fact, 71% of 2,500 respondents to a UK survey by the law firm Peninsula say they think their employer doesn’t take stress seriously. Even more say they’re not paid enough to deal with the stress of their jobs (Millar, 2005).
A third school of thought states that employees should take some responsibility for dealing with their own stress. Bill Atkinson, author of Eliminate Stress in Your Life Forever, notes that “stress is a choice” (Casison-Tansiri, 2005). And Dr. Carol Scott of the George Washington University School of Medicine argues that employees must find ways to manage their own stress once they’re given the right information and self-care tools by human resources.
Employers should take all these points of view into consideration when designing a multidimensional approach to stress. A single yoga class, for example, is unlikely to be seen as more than a token effort at stress reduction. A more holistic set of approaches might include tactics such as ensuring that employees actually take their vacation time, limiting overtime, allowing schedule flexibility, educating workers and supervisors about stress, reducing unnecessarily stressful work factors, and providing stress-reduction programs. The idea is to look at the whole system and to keep employees healthy, productive and capable of managing the stresses that inevitably come with work.
For an article on how long work hours raise the risk of injury and illness, click here.
To read “The Impact of Overtime and Long Work Hours on Occupational Injuries and Illnesses: New Evidence from the United States,” click here.
For a press release entitled Overwork in America: When the Way We Work Becomes Too Much, click here. For the PDF executive summary of the report, click here.
For a Newsweek interview with Ellen Galinsky, click here.
For an article on how many UK companies may fail to take stress seriously, click here.
Documents used in the preparation of this TrendWatcher include:
Britt, Chantal. “Study: Long Work Hours Raise Illness, Injury Risk.” seattlepi.com, August 22, 2005.
Casison-Tansiri, Jeanie. “Sad and Sick on the Job.” Incentive. ProQuest. June 2005.
Couillard, Lauren. “Speaker Says Rising Stress in Workplaces Increases Negative Health Effects on Workers.” Human Resources Report, November 14, 2004, p. 1239.
Families and Work Institute. “New Study Reveals One in Three Americans Are Chronically Overworked.” Press release. March 15, 2005.
Galinsky, Ellen, et al. Overwork in America Executive Summary, Families and Work Institute, 2005.
“How to Tackle Work-Related Stress.” Hospitality. ProQuest. March 2004.
“Long Working Hours ‘Health Risk.’” BBCNews, August 17, 2005.
Millar, Michael. “Employers Fail to Take Stress Seriously.” PersonnelToday.com, August 31, 2005.
Ozols, Jennifer Barrett. “At Risk.” Newsweek, March 15, 2005.
Scott, Carol. “Helping Employees Become Wellness CEOs.” Workspan. ProQuest. May 2005.
Stanley, T.L. “Burnout: A Manager’s Worst Nightmare.” Supervision, Business Source Premier, May 2004.
A study from the University of Massachusetts has found that employees who work overtime are 61% more likely than other workers to be injured or get ill. “Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that long working hours indirectly precipitate workplace accidents through a causal process, for instance, by inducing fatigue or stress in affected workers,” said co-author of the report Allard Dembe, associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (Britt, 2005; “Long,” 2005). The study also pointed to research showing that long work hours are associated with increased risk of heart disease, stress, depression, musculoskeletal disorders, infections, and a range of other health problems.
Another recent study, this from the nonprofit group Families and Work Institute, found that a third of U.S. employees say they are chronically overworked, and over half (54%) had, sometime during the previous month, felt overwhelmed by all the work they had to complete.
“Ironically, the very same skills that are essential to survival and success in this fast-paced global economy, such as multi-tasking, have also become the triggers for feeling overworked,” said Ellen Galinsky, president of Families and Work Institute and a lead author of the study. “Being interrupted frequently during work time and working during non-work times, such as while on vacation, are also contributing factors for feeling overworked” (Families and Work Institute, 2005).
The Families and Work study notes that 36% of those who reported feeling highly overworked suffered high stress levels (Galinsky, et al., 2005). And nearly 40% of these overworked people say their health isn’t good. “We know in the short run that if you feel overworked, you are more resentful and angry and make more mistakes,” Galinsky told Newsweek. “In the long run, we’re talking about the effects on health” (Ozols, 2005).
What should worry employers is that job stress only seems to be getting worse. One study from the UK’s Health and Safety Executive found that there’s been a 500% surge since 1950 in the number of working days lost each year through absences due to stress (“How,” 2004). Similarly, Paul Landsbergis of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine cites studies showing that, between 1977 and 1997, there were significant increases in the percentage of U.S. employees who don’t have enough time and are working hard and fast (Couillard, 2004).
There are several schools of thought about how to deal with long work hours and the stress that often goes with them. First, there’s the school that says that these problems are so out of control that more governmental regulation is desirable. Prof. Dembe, for example, supports European Union initiatives to restrict working hours, though he thinks the same kind of directives are unlikely to occur in the U.S. (Britt, 2005).
Another school of thought says that it’s up to employers to do a better job of managing their workforces, partly with an eye toward reducing labor costs. Worker stress has been linked to absenteeism, presenteeism, poor performance and worker disengagement as well as health problems. These add up to huge – though sometimes hard to measure – costs. By one estimate, 70% to 80% of visits to primary care doctors are the result of stress (Scott, 2005).
What’s more, stress can cause the burnout and loss of talented and motivated people, often at the managerial level. “Burnout is not a symptom of work stress, it is a result of severely unmanaged work stress,” reports Supervision magazine. “Burnout happens to highly motivated and committed people.... There is a connection between idealistic dedication to a job and a heightened tendency to burnout” (Stanley, 2004).
Still, many employees are skeptical that management truly cares about the issue. In fact, 71% of 2,500 respondents to a UK survey by the law firm Peninsula say they think their employer doesn’t take stress seriously. Even more say they’re not paid enough to deal with the stress of their jobs (Millar, 2005).
A third school of thought states that employees should take some responsibility for dealing with their own stress. Bill Atkinson, author of Eliminate Stress in Your Life Forever, notes that “stress is a choice” (Casison-Tansiri, 2005). And Dr. Carol Scott of the George Washington University School of Medicine argues that employees must find ways to manage their own stress once they’re given the right information and self-care tools by human resources.
Employers should take all these points of view into consideration when designing a multidimensional approach to stress. A single yoga class, for example, is unlikely to be seen as more than a token effort at stress reduction. A more holistic set of approaches might include tactics such as ensuring that employees actually take their vacation time, limiting overtime, allowing schedule flexibility, educating workers and supervisors about stress, reducing unnecessarily stressful work factors, and providing stress-reduction programs. The idea is to look at the whole system and to keep employees healthy, productive and capable of managing the stresses that inevitably come with work.
For an article on how long work hours raise the risk of injury and illness, click here.
To read “The Impact of Overtime and Long Work Hours on Occupational Injuries and Illnesses: New Evidence from the United States,” click here.
For a press release entitled Overwork in America: When the Way We Work Becomes Too Much, click here. For the PDF executive summary of the report, click here.
For a Newsweek interview with Ellen Galinsky, click here.
For an article on how many UK companies may fail to take stress seriously, click here.
Documents used in the preparation of this TrendWatcher include:
Britt, Chantal. “Study: Long Work Hours Raise Illness, Injury Risk.” seattlepi.com, August 22, 2005.
Casison-Tansiri, Jeanie. “Sad and Sick on the Job.” Incentive. ProQuest. June 2005.
Couillard, Lauren. “Speaker Says Rising Stress in Workplaces Increases Negative Health Effects on Workers.” Human Resources Report, November 14, 2004, p. 1239.
Families and Work Institute. “New Study Reveals One in Three Americans Are Chronically Overworked.” Press release. March 15, 2005.
Galinsky, Ellen, et al. Overwork in America Executive Summary, Families and Work Institute, 2005.
“How to Tackle Work-Related Stress.” Hospitality. ProQuest. March 2004.
“Long Working Hours ‘Health Risk.’” BBCNews, August 17, 2005.
Millar, Michael. “Employers Fail to Take Stress Seriously.” PersonnelToday.com, August 31, 2005.
Ozols, Jennifer Barrett. “At Risk.” Newsweek, March 15, 2005.
Scott, Carol. “Helping Employees Become Wellness CEOs.” Workspan. ProQuest. May 2005.
Stanley, T.L. “Burnout: A Manager’s Worst Nightmare.” Supervision, Business Source Premier, May 2004.