April is National Stress Awareness Month. And between the pandemic, spotlight on racial injustice, unemployment, and the Great Resignation, reports show that work stress is at an all-time high, but to address work stress, you have to know where it’s coming from. In this post, I’m sharing 7 causes of work stress.
The US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health defines work stress as the harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when the requirements of a job don’t match the capabilities, the resources, or even the needs of work.
Listen to the podcast episode:
7 Causes of Work Stress
Work stress has been linked to negative physical outcomes, like weight, gain, weight loss, insomnia, and body pain. On the mental health side of things, work stress has been linked to higher levels of anxiety, depression, and lower relationship outcomes.
So, we’ve seen things like higher divorce rates, lower sex drive, and even substance use. In my previous blog post, I shared how even for organizations there’s an impact when work stress is high for employees.
These can all lead to more accidents at work, higher rates of absentee, higher employee turnover, lower productivity, and higher medical, legal, and even insurance costs for an organization.
Identifying what causes you to feel stressed at work is the absolute first step in learning how to manage the stress. Why? Because if you don’t know why you’re stressed or what is causing you to feel stressed, then you can’t do much about it.
Even on the leadership side, before leaders can make any kind of organizational change and shifts that improve work culture and employee outcomes, leaders have to understand what is leading to stress and what is impacting employee performance.
Because more often than not, work stress will cost their organization.
Before jumping into the 7 causes of work stress, let’s talk about the three major categories of work stress.
3 Categories of Work Stress
A stressor is any stimulus that is external to you as the employee to it’s happening in your environment or a stimulus that’s coming internally because of your working conditions, that leads to stress.
The first category of work stress is role stressors. Role stressors are stressors that are specific to the role itself, i.e. your task/role/job, whatever it is that you’re doing individually.
The second category of work stress is organizational constraints. These are situations at the organizational level that hinder or prevent you from achieving your goals, or being able to effectively do your job.
As a result, these stressors are negatively related to motivation and performance. So, when these organizational situations exist, your motivation and performance get negatively impacted. This leads to more stress.
And finally, the third category is workplace mistreatment. This one feels a bit self-explanatory. But let me get a little more into this. Workplace mistreatment really refers to how you are treated in the workplace.
Workplace mistreatment is when the way you’re treated doesn’t align with you as a human, you feel devalued, othered, or disrespected. Usually, these tend to be related to relationships.
Now, let’s talk about these 7 causes of work stress.
Role Stressors
1. Role Ambiguity
Role ambiguity is when you don’t understand your role within an organization. It’s when you don’t know what performance behavior is expected of you. Additionally, you’re not even sure when or how you’re supposed to accomplish your role.
Because you’re doing work without being clear on if 1. the work you’re doing is correct or not and 2. the work you’re doing will show your success or efficacy in your role, it can impact your career growth and advancement moving forward.
When you're working in a role where you don't feel supported, it leads to higher levels of work stress. Share on X5. Organizational Culture and Change.
How is change communicated in the organization you’re working in?
When the physical and even mental environment that you’re working in doesn’t align with your work style, work stress can occur.
Or when you’re working in a culture where you don’t feel physically or psychologically safe, it can lead to work stress.
The way that the organization change, whether it’s small or large change is managed and communicated, can exacerbate feelings of stress.
These can be things such as:
- How activities are scheduled
- How information gets to you
- What is the lead time are you given to prepare for tasks?
- What is the availability of leadership and team members for meetings or task completion?
When any of these things aren’t communicated clearly or effectively, that can significantly increase the amount of stress that you experience at work.
Workplace Mistreatment
The sixth and seventh causes of stress fall under the workplace mistreatment category.
6. Relationships
What are your relationships at work like? Are they healthy or toxic? your relationships impact your experiences of work stress. This includes:
- How often do you experience conflict at work?
- What is the process of how work conflict is handled or dealt with?
- To what level are your working relationships positive?
- How positive are your working conditions?
- Are positive working conditions promoted at work?
- How do you observe managers or supervisors? Or even leadership handle unacceptable behavior? Is it addressed? Ignored? Maybe swept under the rug?
All of these can lead to work stress.
Regularly observing unacceptable behaviors at work, or when there’s a constant conflict like gossiping, backbiting, bullying, yelling, or being passive-aggressive – all these can lead to work stress.
Conflict makes it hard for you to build relationships that allow you to feel like you belong in the workplace.
When you are not able to develop those solid relationships that make you feel like you belong, and are a valuable member of the team, that can cause you to feel excluded. Ultimately leading you to experience higher levels of work stress.
7. Bad Management Practices
Management style is so critical when we talk about work stress.
Studies have shown, (I talked about it in episode 11 of The Fulfilling Career Podcast), that 75% of people who are looking for a new job aren’t leaving the organization. They are leaving their manager or their supervisor.
When you work in a place where you have a manager who has poor communication, occurrences such as:
- Not being included in the decision-making
- Generally lacking support from the employer
- Toxic feedback practices
- Made to feel unhelpful at work
- Being belittled at work
- Being spoken to rudely and harshly
- Not being respectful of your boundaries
- Absence of physical, professional, mental health support
When you have managers who make you feel or experience any of those, that can absolutely lead to increased levels of work stress. No doubt!
There you have it, the 7 causes of work stress. I hope that was helpful for you. Here’s a summary to keep you on track:
Honorable mention: not one of the 7, but I think it’s really important is that when you experience work-family conflict, that can lead to work stress also.
So, when the demands of work are conflicting with your responsibilities in your family. When I say family could be with friends, with a partner, with kids, whatever it may be: when there’s this conflict happening between work and home, that increases the amount of stress you experience, usually because that then comes down to a value misalignment.
When work is impacting family negatively, there’s a high chance that the company and that job are really violating your values. And so, that’s something you want to look out for.
Ultimately, all of these causes of work stress that I shared come down to a misalignment between you and the role or the organization that you’re working with.
Did one or more of the causes really hit home for you where you’re like, “dang, I really need to find a different job“? You should definitely apply to Find Your Fulfilling Career to see if it’s the right next step for you.
