Managing workload stress
Featured Products Promotional FeaturesPosted by: Dental Design 20th March 2022
Work-related stress occurs when you feel you have more on your plate than you can realistically cope with. Self-reported stress has increased in recent years with more people taking days off work.[i] This kind of absence leads to a loss of working days, which can result in business becoming affected as absent staff means a decrease in productivity.
The signs and affects of work-related stress
Suffering in silence can be detrimental to a person’s mental health with some cases resulting in anxiety and depression. In fact, from 2019-2020 it was reported that 0.6 working days per worker were missed due to self-reported stress, anxiety, or depression, which is the highest reported figure in recent years.i
Work related stress can present in a number of ways:[ii]
Physically, a person can experience sleep disturbances such as waking up during the night or struggling to fall asleep. Other physical affects include headaches and gastrointestinal upset (indigestion or heartburn). More seriously a person can experience raised blood pressure leading to cardiovascular disease. While it’s commonly known that stress can lead to anxiety and depression, as previously mentioned, there is also a risk of someone’s emotions becoming labile. A person whose emotions are easily altered can struggle in the workplace because it may lead to negative interactions with colleagues, for example.
Someone struggling with work-related stress can also experience a loss of concentration, lack of motivation, and difficulty with thought processes. As a person could be overloaded with thoughts related to tasks they can also experience loss of memory or make poor decisions as a result.
In other cases of a person suffering from work-related stress they may start to abuse substances with behaviours such as excessive alcohol intake, drug abuse, or abuse of over-the-counter medication. A lot of people turn to substances to attempt to curb the symptoms of stress in order for them to be able to switch off. Other behavioural changes may include acting inappropriately, isolating themselves, and starting to turn up late to work.
While the affects that work-related stress can have on an individual should be a concern and a priority for those involved, employees experiencing this high level of stress can also result in some detriment to the business too. Issues that a business can come across might include a high turnover of staff, which will incur added expense as new employees need to be trained. Poor performance and productivity is also something that can affect the success of a business if this continues in the long term. Other issues a business might face include low morale, high absenteeism, poor time keeping, increased complaints, and a higher number of ill-health and accidents in the workplace. These issues may not sound huge but more than half of work absences are related to stress and mental illness which costs British businesses around £25 billion per annum.[iii]
How to manage stress caused by work
Tackling stress, if you are already in a state of experiencing work-related stress symptoms, can feel like an impossible task but there are some simple strategies that may help.
If you’re experiencing problems with your workload then you can ask a senior member of staff for help. Even if you’re a practice manager, there will be someone you can turn to for support and you can discuss your workload and make realistic adjustments where necessary. Ensure that you are managing your time efficiently – take one task on at a time and that way you can work more productively as you focus entirely on the task at hand rather than half heartedly on various tasks. Rewarding oneself can be another great strategy for tackling work-related stress – once a task is completed you can grant yourself a short break to talk to colleagues or check your phone. As well as this, it’s important to be realistic too – you cannot be perfect all of the time and allowing yourself to work within your limitations while being kind to yourself can bring huge relief.
Another method to tackle work related stress could be to outsource tasks where you can. Wagemate is a fantastic payroll service that can provide you with peace of mind every month. Payroll can be a challenging and timely task of which a lot of people don’t look forward to but with Wagemate your practice’s payroll will always be on time, accurate, and secure. Other benefits include a fully managed payroll service, automatic pension enrolment, and an e-payslip portal.
In summary, work-related stress seems to be more of an issue than ever before and having strategies in place to support people is important. Nobody wants to experience mental health illness caused by stress and that’s why reaching out and working smart should be a priority for everyone.
Daniel Hull
Director – Wagemate Limited
“Money isn’t everything, but its right up there with oxygen”.
Staff are a business’s most important asset and peoples pay matters! Making sure employees are paid correctly, on time and have access to their pay information is one of the fundamentals to keeping staff happy. That is what we do and much more.
My goal is to take away the stress of payroll away from as many people as possible, making sure staff are paid accurately and on time and by adding value, providing excellent service and plenty of convenience to our clients.
To better manage your payroll, contact payroll specialists Wagemate today,
tel: 03330 102102 or email info@wagemate.com
[i] HSE. “Health and Safety Statistics.” Hse.gov.uk, 2020, www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/. Accessed 15 Dec. 2021.
[ii] Attridge, Danielle. “Effects of Work-Related Stress | Human Resources.” Cam.ac.uk, 28 Mar. 2017, www.hr.admin.cam.ac.uk/policies-procedures/managing-stress-and-promoting-wellbeing-work-policy/policy-statement/effects. Accessed 15 Dec. 2021.
[iii] Hazlegreaves, Steph. “Once Burned Out, Twice Shy: The Unaffordable Cost of Work-Related Stress.” Open Access Government, 13 Aug. 2019, www.openaccessgovernment.org/cost-of-work-related-stress/71555/. Accessed 15 Dec. 2021.
