Quick Takes

Published: July 2011

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Work Stress – What Is It?

• "Work stress is the harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when the requirements of the job do not match the capabilities, resources, or needs of the employee." ¹

Stress in Today’s Workplace

• 68% of employees are stressed to the point of feeling extremely fatigued and out of control.²
• 27%% have constant but manageable stress levels.³
• 64% come to work 1-4 days per year when they are too stressed to be effective.⁴
• 62% take frequent "stress breaks" at work to talk to others.⁵

Causes of Work Stress ⁶

Stress and Productivity

• 44% of employees report losing 1 hour or more a day in productivity due to stress. ⁷
• 22% of employees say they miss more than 6 work days a year due to stress.⁸
• 19% of employees say they come to work 5 or more days a year too stressed to be effective.⁹
• 20% percent of employees reporting high overwork levels say they make a lot of mistakes.¹⁰
• 28% of employees felt overwhelmed by how much work they had often or very often in the past 3 months.¹¹

Women and Stress

While men work longer hours, and tend to have jobs with characteristics leading to more stress, women report being interrupted more frequently and experiencing more multitasking challenges. Too much multi-tasking appears to be one cause for women’s greater likelihood of being overworked.¹²

Parents and Stress

2010: Working Parents with Children under 18 in Labor Force ¹³

• 34% of the labor force consists of parents with children under 18.¹⁴
• Parents with school age children who experience a high amount of Parental After-school Stress (PASS) are more frequently interrupted, distracted, and drained of energy at work; make more errors; miss meetings and deadlines, and rate their productivity and quality of work lower than parents with lower amounts PASS.¹⁵

Workplace Stress Programs

• 10% of workplaces offer stress reduction programs (but 8% are planning on cutting or reducing that benefit over the next 12 months). ¹⁶
• A stress-reduction program was the only preventive health and wellness benefit offered by more companies in 2006 than in 2010.¹⁷
• Workplaces that offer full-intervention stress management programs (i.e., programs that include assessment, face-to-face sessions, and feedback to employees) saw a reduction in healthcare use by employees of 34%.¹⁸
• "Resilience training may be a contender to replace stress management. This model focuses on teaching employees how to become ’steeled‘ to stressful situations before they manifest as stress, and to learn from stressful experiences."¹⁹

Cost of Stress

• 75 to 90 percent of all physician office visits are for stress-related ailments and complaints. ²⁰
• Stress is linked to the six leading causes of death--heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, and suicide. ²¹

Sources

¹ U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention., National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Stress at Work. (Washington, DC: 1999).

² ComPsych Corporation, StressPulseSM Survey, (2010).

³ ComPsych Corporation, StressPulseSM Survey, (2010).

⁴ ComPsych Corporation, StressPulseSM Survey, (2010).

⁵ ComPsych Corporation, StressPulseSM Survey, (2010).

⁶ ComPsych Corporation, StressPulseSM Survey, (2010).

⁷ ComPsych Corporation, StressPulseSM Survey, (2010).

⁸ ComPsych Corporation, StressPulseSM Survey, (2010).

⁹ ComPsych Corporation, StressPulseSM Survey, (2010).

¹⁰ Galinsky, E., Bond, J., Kim, S., et. al. Overwork in America: When the Way We Work Becomes Too Much: Executive Summary, Families and Work Institute (2005).

¹¹ Galinsky, E., Bond, J., Kim, S., et. al. Overwork in America: When the Way We Work Becomes Too Much: Executive Summary, Families and Work Institute (2005).

¹² Galinsky, E., Bond, J., Kim, S., et. al. Overwork in America: When the Way We Work Becomes Too Much: Executive Summary, Families and Work Institute (2005).

¹³ Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Table 5. Employment status of the population by sex, marital status, and presence and age of own children under 18, 2009-10 annual averages, " (2011).

¹⁴ Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Table A-1. Employment status of the civilian population by sex and age and Table 5. Employment status of the population by sex, marital status, and presence and age of own children under 18, 2009-10 annual averages"

¹⁵ Brandeis University Community, Families & Work Program, Report of Findings: Parental After-School Stress (PASS) Project (Waltham, MA: 2004).

¹⁶ SHRM, 2010 Employee Benefits: Examining Employee Benefits in the Midst of a Recovering Economy. (2010)

¹⁷ SHRM, 2010 Employee Benefits: Examining Employee Benefits in the Midst of a Recovering Economy. (2010)

¹⁸ Rahe, R.H., et al. "A Novel Stress and Coping Workplace Program Reduces Illness and Healthcare Utilization," Psychosomatic Medicine, vol. 64 (2002).

¹⁹ Atkinson, William (2011). "Turning Stress into Strength," HR Magazine, 56:1.

²⁰ American Psychological Association, How Does Stress Affect Us?

²¹ American Psychological Association, How Does Stress Affect Us?

UPDATED July 18, 2011