Whats all the fuss about work stress

2006-05-26T07:21:00Z

Stressing About Work?

I have been stressing out all week about what to write today. Not what to write here but for work. The pressures of the impending deadline inducing the all-too-familiar sensations of fear, panic and helplessness. In fact, my own stress levels were only alleviated when I read that today is National Stress Awareness Day.

The truth is that I would not have it any other way; if it were not for stress I doubt whether I would get anything done. The Health and Safety Executive, however, defines stress as "the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressure or other types of demand placed on them". This sounds fair enough, except that assessing what might be considered "excessive pressure" is bound to be problematic and, let's be honest, open to abuse. An estimated 13.5 million days are lost each year due to self-reported work-related stress, depression or anxiety, costing the econom in sick pay, lost productivity and health costs. The stress industry is clearly big business but rather than challenging complaints about stress in the workplace the government - whose own civil servants take an average two weeks' sick leave a year - has laid out a new code for reducing stress; one that will put employers at risk of legal action if they ignore it.

So, why are we all so stressed? There are, it seems to me, two possible explanations. The first is that the demands of modern living and the pressures of today's work culture are greater than at any time in history; the second is that we have all become a nation of wimps. Those who buy into the first explanation claim that Britain has the longest working hours in Europe - that the impact of management-efficiency drives has left employees drowning in their work. That may all be true, but I find it hard to believe that today's office employees are really the most over-worked group in history.

As a young boy I remember my father coming home after having worked a 12-hour shift at the Vauxhall car plant. Each night he would get home, eat and then work till the small hours of the morning helping my mother as she made dresses on her sewing machine. Four hours of sleep later, he would be up again for work. That was his life, seven days a week, yet I don't once recall him complaining about suffering from stress or threatening to sue General Motors for the "excessive pressure" they were putting him under. He understood that our jobs are called work for a reason: that is meant to be what they are. There is a word for doing things that is pleasurable, and that is a hobby.

There are, of course, jobs that I would agree are unreasonably stressful - cockle-picking for example - and many others that are brutalising in their monotony. In most cases, however, what we now refer to as stress would once have been called life. As our jobs have become less physically dangerous there has been a corresponding rush to claim that our office-based lives are liable to lead to psychological problems. Opportunist lawyers and trade unions have been quick to claim stress as a medical ailment and yet it seems to me that if stress is a disease, it is a disease of affluence. It is a byproduct of too many choices and unrealistic expectations about work.

With our long working hours, with more and more people living alone, our jobs define who we are to a greater degree than ever before. Because they mean so much more they need to be more fulfilling; it is not enough that they pay the mortgage. If they are not fulfilling - if they are challenging or frustrating - it is now not only acceptable but almost required that you complain and bemoan how work is not making you feel "included" or "in control". That, I think, might be the reason why it is usually white-collar workers who complain loudest about work stress: it is not that blue-collar workers are blissfully relaxed, they just have different expectations about their jobs.

There is a depressing defeatism in the attitude that the best response to challenges at work is to call them stress and chuck a sickie. It is an attitude that assumes that we need professional help to cope with stress; when stress is simply an umbrella term that could describe all manner of normal emotions. It is hard not to be suspicious that many of the days taken off and the compensation claimed in the name of stress in truth have their roots in frustration, boredom and insecurity. Not to mention incompetence.

Stressed to the Max

Whats all the fuss about work stress