Causes, consequences and costs
Causes:
The sources of pressure which can lead to stress come from different areas of our lives. Some of these we can have some control over, others are things which happen and the secret with these is to learn to change our response to them.
You may like to look at the list below and identify which of these relate to you. The list is not intended to cover every single thing and may prompt you to identify others.
Work
- Job pressures and targets
- Boss - their style and behaviour
- Employees - their attitude and behaviour
- Colleagues -relationships with them
- Communication - or lack of
- Lack of direction or goals
- Lack of control over job
- Work environment
- Lack of support or training
- Pressure to work long hours
- Culture
- Bullying
- Changes to job
- Threat of losing your job
Family/relationships
- Problems in key relationship - arguing or not communicating
- Arguments with children
- Arguments with parents
- Need to care for a family member (especially long-term)
- Serious illness within the family
- Concerns about behaviour of close family member
- Dealing with an ex-partner or spouse
- Dealing with step-children or partner?s children
- No personal time or space
- Death within the family
Environmental
- Home location
- Neighbours
- Moving house
- Travel, especially commuting
- Crowded environment
- Noise
- Pollution of other sorts
- Crime threat
- Threat (eg concerns about violence)
Self - lifestyle
- Ambitions and aspiration
- Financial pressures to maintain lifestyle
- Debt worries
- Personal relationships
- Keeping up with friends
- Peer group
- Social life
- General
- Lack of fitness
- Diet
- Smoking and/or drinking
- No time for self
- No relaxation time
If you want to assess yourself and the pressures you have been handling, go to the downloads section and look at the Holmes and Rahe Inventory.
Consequences:
There are consequences to individuals and to the organisation when stress starts to become a real issue. Some of these are:
Individual:
- Demotivated
- Stops caring
- Hard to concentrate
- Relationships suffer
- Communication gets worse
- Health begins to suffer
- They make mistakes
- Decision making is hard
- Depression can start to deepen
- ..plus a wide range of other symptoms.
Organisation:
- Staff turnover increases
- Productivity and efficiency suffer
- Pressure on team members because of staff shortage or newcomers starting
- Faulty judgements made
- Quality of work goes down
- Errors increase
- Communication deteriorates
- Commitment levels go down
- Customer service and response gets worse
- Lessening of teamworking
- People are less supportive
- Morale suffers
- Absenteeism increases
- ..to name a few!
Costs:
The consequences lead to costs. The cost of stress related problems is something which is often overlooked within organisations. There are both direct and opportunity costs involved as a result of stress within an organisation. What have you ever considered within your own organisation?
Let us start with looking at some hard-nosed numbers, which are UK based but the principles will apply whichever country you are in.
- The CBI estimate that there is a cost of £4bn per annum to industry as a direct result of stress related absence.
- This figure can rise to over £7bn when you consider the loss of productivity!
- A recent survey by the HSE (Health and Safety Executive) indicated over 550,000 cases of absence as a result of stress, depression and anxiety.
- There was a loss of nearly 13m working days in total.
- 1 in 5 believe that their job is extremely or very stressful ? that is 5 million people!
- Up to 40% of absence is related to stress.
- When stressed, performance can be reduced by up to 70%
- The CIPD estimate that stress costs industry £601 per employee