Many column inches have been devoted to the decision of Jacinda Ardern to step down as New Zealand’s Prime Minister due to ‘burnout’ and this has been followed in the last few weeks by the surprise resignation of Nicola Sturgeon after 8 years in office, prompting many news outlets to speculate on the true reasons for her decision, including the state of her mental health. Whatever the reasons for their decisions, workplace stress is a huge issue for individuals, businesses and society alike: according to the latest statistics from the UK’s Health and Safety Executive, there were 914,000 workers suffering from work-related stress, depression or anxiety in 2021/22.1 It’s long been recognised that this represents an enormous cost to society and research has been done over many years to try to evaluate what works in terms of ‘stress management interventions’ (SMIs) soorganisations know where to invest their limited resources.
Research2 has identified 3 main causes of stress at work:
(1) Internal: Individual characteristics (e.g. Perfectionism, Social Anxiety)
(2) Internal: Sources of stress in the work environment
(3) External: relationships and events (e.g. family and relationship issues, outside the scope of this article).
Improving employee well-being and reducing stress can have a number of benefits for organisations, from increasing performance, improving relationships, to reducing sickness and absenteeism rates. ‘stress management interventions’ refer to a class of activities that are used by organisations to improve employee well-being and reduce stress, either by addressing the causes of stress or by reducing the impact of stress on an individual.
With regard to the focus of stress management, interventions are categorised as primary, secondary or tertiary:
So what kind of SMIs do employers usually offer and how effective are they?
Primary: at an organisational level, employers need to ensure in their Recruitment and Selection processes that they select employees who have the ‘Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and other Characteristics’ to do the job, as well as implementing Job Redesign, flexible working, and Leadership and Management training.
Secondary: employers usually offer measures such as health promotion (e.g. exercise), mindfulness training, Personal and Interpersonal skill development of various kinds (eg conflict management, communication and time management skills), peer support groups and Coaching.
Tertiary: at the individual level, employers usually offer counselling, disability management measures, Employee Assistance Programmes, vocational rehabilitation, redeployment and even outplacement where necessary.
Perhaps not surprisingly, there is a more substantial evidence base for primary-level interventions. There is also good evidence that secondary organisational/ individual-level interventions are effective in reducing stress and promoting well-being.
Although research suggests that there is a wide range of potential organisation-directed strategies to reduce stress, which can lead to beneficial organisational change, many organisations continue to be preoccupied with the consequences of the stress process (i.e. dealing with it at the level of the individual) rather than taking a more proactive approach to address the source or causal factors which might arguably arrest the whole ’stress process’.3
Research across a diverse range of professions over the last 20 years has identified the key success factors in high quality workplace stress prevention measures, including4:
In light of the sheer numbers of people suffering work-related stress, and current societal trends recognising the importance of wellbeing and good mental health in the workplace, perhaps it’s time for all employers to follow the advice of the leading authority on workplace stress, Organisational Psychologist and academic, Prof. Sir Cary Cooper:
‘…primary level interventions and the diagnostic stress audit [are] a potentially more cost-effective and more focused way of reducing stress in the workplace. It is an old but true adage that “prevention is better than cure!”’
Caroline Egan
Caroline is an experienced Leadership and Executive Coach and trainer, a non-practising Barrister, and is currently studying an MSc. in the Psychology of Work. You can contact her at www.intrepidassociates.co.uk or connect with her on Linked In
1 Work-related stress, anxiety or depression statistics in Great Britain, 2022 (hse.gov.uk)
2 Holman, D., Johnson, S., & O'Connor, E. (2018). Stress management interventions: Improving subjective psychological well-being in the workplace. In E. Diener, S. Oishi, & L. Tay (Eds.), Handbook of Wellbeing DEF Publishers.
3 Cartwright, S., & Cooper, C. L. (1997). Managing workplace stress (Vol. 1). Sage.
4 Kompier et al. (2000)
5 Cartwright, S., & Cooper, C. L. (1997). Managing workplace stress (Vol. 1). Sage.
