Every year millions of workers suffer disabling injuries and thousands lose their lives to work stress. Some would even consider stress to be America’s number one health problem.
In fact, according to the American Institute of Stress, customer service representatives rank fourth behind air traffic controllers, inner-city high school teachers and police officers as having the most stressful jobs in the United States.
It’s estimated that stress costs organizations hundreds of billions of dollars annually in lost productivity, absenteeism, turnover and the fees associated with medical insurance to support employees with health conditions.
A Little Bit About Stress
Stress is related to the human biological reaction known as the “fight or flight response.”
When an organism, like a human, experiences a shock or threat, the brain responds by preparing the body to fight the predator or to run, in a sense. As a result, the brain releases hormones that affect the heart, heart rate, blood pressure and breathing, in order to prepare the body for the fight or flight response.
And the degree to which a person is affected varies, but typically short-term reactions can include a rapid heartbeat, nervousness, inability to think clearly or exaggerated emotions. In the long-term, stress can cause serve mental, behavioral, physical and emotional problems.
In essence, the human body was not designed to be “revved up” for long periods of time.
There’s a lot of evidence that supports that stress can cause—in the long-term—physical and psychological disorders, suicide, impaired immune functions, cancer and other types of workplace injuries.
Stress can be caused by nearly every aspect of the job and the work environment.
Some of the more common causes of stress, according to experts, would include:
- Unreasonable workloads
- Extremely heavy workloads
- Extremely tight deadlines
- A conflict with co-workers or a manager
- Conflicting, confusing, ambiguous communication and roles
- Hazardous environments
- Lack of job security
- Lack of control over your work
- Rapid, un-communicated changes
In my next Insight, I’ll discuss some steps you can take to reduce stress in your workplace.