What makes a workplace stressful?

What makes a workplace stressful?

Feeling stressed by your job? Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior in the Graduate School of Business, answers BeWell’s questions about stress in the workplace — explaining why it is in the best interest of the individual and the organization to have a healthy and effective work arrangement.

Q: What makes a workplace stressful?
A: Research done by Sir Michael Marmot of the United Kingdom, summarized in his wonderful book, The Status Syndrome — as well as in research by numerous social psychologists — suggests that workplace stress is caused by the following:

• having little or no control over one’s job, including what you do, when you do it, and how you are evaluated;

• having little or no correspondence between effort and rewards, so that job effort and performance does not necessarily result in corresponding recognition;
• living in a random, unpredictable world in which things “happen” to you that are consequential and over which you have little control — for example, suffering from the effect of economic fluctuations;
• not having social support (e.g., colleagues to whom you can turn for both substantive help and social relationships and friendship) in the working environment.

Q: Who is typically the most at risk for workplace stress?
A: The simple answer is that people higher in the organization have less stress (because they typically have more control over their work). Busyness and demanding tasks are not the same as stress. Evidence suggests that stress is not related to doing lots of things you enjoy doing and that you find challenging; rather, stress comes from having little control over the conditions of your work.

Q: More and more, organizations are paying attention to “environmental sustainability.” Should organizations also start paying attention to, well, “employee sustainability?”
A: Of course. Research over the past several decades done by epidemiologists (and summarized in Marmot’s book, as well as in other places) finds that the conditions of work, and life, affect mortality and morbidity — and have larger effects than “lifestyle” factors. If you believe that organizations should not be killing people — literally —and that we should care as much about human beings as we do about polar bears and snail darters, then organizations should worry about the mental and physical health of their workforce, which comes from more things than having smoking cessation and exercise programs, although these are obviously important.

Q: In doing so, what is the benefit to the organization?
A: It becomes a “great place to work,” which, as research summarized on Great Place to Work Institute’s website shows, produces more productivity and profitability. Also, it is simply the ethical and moral thing to do.

Q: What is the benefit to the employees?
A: Healthier and longer lives, and better relationships with their families.