Understanding Sources of Stress in the Workplace

Workplace stress can develop when demands, uncertainty, a lack of autonomy or other pressures at work outweigh the resources employees have to deal with them. Understanding these causes of stress at work helps organisations identify avoidable stressors and create conditions that support employee wellbeing, resilience and sustainable performance.

Understanding Workplace Stress as a First Step to Building Resilience

Developing the skills to manage stress and become more resilient is increasingly important for employees. But that is only one side of the coin. Workplace stress is not solely an individual responsibility. Organisations and their leaders also need to address the conditions that contribute to employee stress.

Think of a fish in a bowl. The fish can be equipped with as many skills and resources as possible, but if the water is dirty, it will struggle to thrive and may eventually look for another bowl. The same applies at work. Building individual resilience matters, but organisations also need to identify and minimise unnecessary sources of stress in the workplace.

In another article, Understanding Our Stress Responses, we explored how one of the brain’s dominant priorities is to keep us safe. This raises an important question: which aspects of the work environment might make employees feel physically, emotionally or psychologically unsafe?

Understanding these workplace stressors helps organisations create an environment in which people have the resources and resilience to deal with pressure effectively.

Key Questions to Identify Sources of Workplace Stress

There is no single universal cause of stress at work. What one person experiences as stressful may not affect someone else in the same way. Although our automatic stress responses share common mechanisms, how we respond depends on factors such as our context, personality and past experiences.

For example, one employee may value the security of a highly predictable role, while another may find the same level of structure restrictive and prefer greater flexibility.

Even though work-related stress is experienced differently by each individual, research identifies several recurring factors that organisations and leaders can influence. The following questions can help uncover important sources of workplace stress.

Are Basic Psychological Needs Met at Work?

One potential cause of employee stress is a work environment that does not sufficiently support basic psychological needs. According to Self-Determination Theory, three fundamental needs are competence, relatedness and autonomy [3].

When people feel unable to do their job well, disconnected from others or lacking control over their work, these conditions can become sources of stress in the workplace.

• How competent do people feel when completing their tasks?
• What are their relationships at work like?
• How positively connected do they feel to the people around them? Do they feel trusted, and can they trust others?
• How much autonomy and control do they have over their work?

Are Job Demands and Resources Balanced at Work?

Another important cause of workplace stress is an imbalance between what a job demands and the resources people have available to meet those demands.

The Job Demands–Resources theory [1] highlights how demanding work situations can become stressful when employees do not have sufficient skills, resources, control or support to cope effectively [2].

High job demands are therefore not necessarily the problem on their own. The risk of work-related stress increases when demands consistently outweigh the resources available to deal with them.

• Can your employees cope with the demands they face?
• Do they have the knowledge and skills required to complete their tasks?
• Do they have sufficient support and resources available when they need them?

How Much Transparency Do Your Organisation and Leaders Provide Around Workplace Stress?

Organisational ambiguity is another potential source of workplace stress, particularly when employees lack clarity about their roles, expectations or upcoming changes. Research by Leka, Griffiths and Cox (2003) identifies factors such as unclear roles, conflicting expectations and poorly managed organisational change as potential workplace stressors [4].

This is particularly relevant as many organisations undergo continuous transformation. Change can create uncertainty, confusion and instability. Clear and transparent communication helps people understand what is changing, why it is changing and what it means for them. This also means being transparent about what is not yet known.

• How clear are job roles and expectations? Are employees dealing with conflicting demands or expectations from different stakeholders?
• How transparently are organisational changes planned and communicated?

How Do Your Organisation and Leaders Support Work–Home Balance to Reduce Employee Stress?

The work–home interface is another important factor in workplace stress identified by Leka, Griffiths and Cox (2003) [4]. It refers to how demands from work and home interact and potentially create additional stress.

Remote work and digital connectivity have made the boundaries between work and home increasingly blurred for many employees. Constant connectivity can make it more difficult to psychologically disengage from work and recover properly.

Stress can also arise when work demands interfere with responsibilities at home, or when home responsibilities make it difficult to meet expectations at work. When people feel unable to fulfil the demands of both areas of their lives, employee stress can increase.

Four common causes of workplace stress are unmet psychological needs, an imbalance between job demands and resources, organisational ambiguity, and conflict between work and home demands.

Organisations cannot remove every source of stress, nor will the same solution work for everyone. But they can influence many of the conditions in which stress develops. Reviewing psychological needs, job demands and resources, organisational clarity and work–home boundaries provides a practical starting point for identifying and reducing avoidable sources of stress in the workplace.

This is where individual and organisational resilience come together. Employees benefit from learning how to recognise and regulate their own stress responses, while organisations and leaders need to create conditions that support people rather than continuously drain their resources.

written by Caroline Thomas, Partner, Zest for Work

References:

• [1] Bakker & Demerouti, 2014; 2017
• [2] Cox, Griffiths & Rial-González, 2000
• [3] Deci & Ryan, 1985
• [4] Leka, Griffiths, and Cox, 2003