5 minute read
Stress at work
from VEFF Magazine 1 2022
by Veff
Stress at work can lead to burnout
Lunch and Learn – preventing too much stress and recovering from burnout arranged at Høvik 22.3.
TEXT: LIN B. KASTEN
What is burnout? Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It can be a consequence of too much stress and too little restitution, causing longer term anxiety, lack of sleep, fatigue and an increasingly cynical perspective on work and life. (Quote from intranet article by Fenna van de Merwe).
Most of us experience stress at work from time to time. A positive thing is that most people do not go as far as a burnout.
Employees say, it was lack of time that caused stress. Although there are different causes and reactions to stress, one third answered in the recent survey by Simployer & Frankly that they experienced negative stress. This is harmless in the short term but can be harmful if last over a longer period.
POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE STRESS
Stress affects our ability to perform, and we see that performance increases under a certain amount of stress. At the same time, we see that there is a breaking point and that at higher stress levels, performance is reduced. We also see that the more cognitively demanding the tasks are, the earlier you reach the breaking point. Research shows that a moderate level of stress provides the best performance.
There are, of course, individual differences how people deal with stress. Stress only becomes dangerous if it becomes chronic and you do not manage to get down from the peaks. At the same time, we know that short-term stressful situa-
tions followed by a rest period are perceived as positive.
DIFFERENT CAUSES OF STRESS
"Employee Engagement 2022" shows that the most important cause of stress in the workplace is time pressure. Being able to perform their work tasks within the allotted time is a prerequisite for doing a good job, and thus avoiding negative stress. In second place is "lack of control", which can be explained by the fact that our ability to cooperate deteriorated during the pandemic.
Research on stress in the workplace shows that high workload and time pressure are important causes. Another reason is the combination of high
demands with a low degree of control. Employees want to perform as good as they can, but may lack the resources, time, or mandate to do so. In addition, poor relations with one's own manager are also a recurring theme among the factors that create stress in the workplace.
Bad psychosocial working environment is another important cause of stress. If we take our prehistory as our starting point, we see that not belonging to a group entailed danger to life. Lack of belonging and social insecurity is something most of us still experience, but over time it can become very stressful. One should also not forget that there are many conditions outside the workplace that create stress. The balance between work and private life is a challenge for everyone.
Many people have a vision that everything must be perfect in life, but that is not the reality.
It is instead about being conscious of stress-related behavior. If you run to work, eat fast, skip breaks, have problems prioritizing, forget things, drink alcohol to relax or think about work all the time, you should sit down to reflect on the cause. For a manager, it is first and foremost important to monitor the well-being of employees. It's about not giving those who are most efficient more work because you know it's done well. These are often employees who show that they are happy at work, but a manager should rather look for signals from employees who are overloaded or burnt out.
TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN STRESS TO AVOID BURNOUT
The first thing we skip when we have too much to do, is to stop doing everything that is fun.
We drop training, socializing, friends and what really matters to us. This puts us in a situation where we are less equipped to deal with stress. This makes it important to plan how to recover after a period of stress.
What is not good and what stresses us, we should do something about, but there is a lot we cannot do something about. Then it becomes important to be able to handle adversity from something that is outside what we can do something about. Avoid secondary thoughts about why it happened, it can trigger a spiral of thoughts that amplify the stress. One should rather practice accepting that unfortunate things can happen.
There will always be more factors than those related to work that can generate stress. These can be phases in life where you get less sleep, little time for exercise and poor diet. Such phases can be the life with small children, a break-up or illness / death of someone close to you. During such periods, you become less resistant to stress-related health problems. In such phases of life, it is important to try to be aware of this and take responsibility for your own health and consider that you must try to slow down.
MEASURES AGAINST STRESS
A good tip is to help employees find tools to prioritize work tasks.
You may also want to sit down in groups, or with the individual employee, to talk about the balance between work and private life and what creates problems in the current situation. It can also be something as simple as not having meetings early in the morning, so that you have time to get an overview of the day and how to prioritize the work tasks. Sometimes the simple solutions are the best.
Proactive measures can range from having several informal meetings while walking, helping employees adapt training programs or conducting relaxation exercises together. To avoid negative stress at work. It is important that you as a manager must have a genuine interest in how employees feel at work. With that said it is also important that we care for each other as colleagues.
