Stress is part and parcel of life. However, just as distress can cause disease, it seems plausible that there are good stresses that promote wellness. Stress is not always necessarily harmful. Getting a new job can be just stressful as losing it, or more so, but may trigger very different biological responses. Increased stress results in increased productivity up to a point. However, this level differs for each of us.
Numerous surveys and studies confirm that occupational pressures and fears are far and away the leading source of stress for American adults and that these have steadily increased over the past few decades.
The American Institute of Stress offers some findings that underscore the growing stressfulness of the working environment. For example, a 1999 government report found that the number of hours worked increased 8% in one generation to an average 47 hrs/week with 20% working 49 hrs/week. U.S. workers put in more hours on the job than the labor force of any other industrial nation, where the trend has been just the opposite. According to an International Labor Organization study, Americans put in the equivalent of an extra 40-hour work week in 2000 compared to ten years previously. Japan had the record until around 1995 but Americans now work almost a month more than the Japanese and three months more than Germans. We are also working harder. In a 2001 survey, nearly 40% of workers described their office environment as "most like a real life survivor program."
According to a survey of 800,000 workers in over 300 companies, the number of employees calling in sick because of stress tripled from 1996 to 2000. An estimated 1 million workers are absent every day due to stress. The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work reported that over half of the 550 million working days lost annually in the U.S. from absenteeism are stress related and that one in five of all last minute no-shows are due to job stress. If this occurs in key employees it can have a domino effect that spreads down the line to disrupt scheduled operations. Unanticipated absenteeism is estimated to cost American companies $602.00/worker/year and the price tag for large employers could approach $3.5 million annually. A 1997 three year study conducted by one large corporation found that 60% of employee absences could be traced to psychological problems that were due to job stress.
A 1999 government study reported that more jobs had been lost in the previous year than any other year in the last half century, and that the number of workers fearful of losing their jobs had more than doubled over the past decade. That was several years ago and the problem has worsened considerably since then. A February 2000 poll found that almost 50 percent of employees were concerned about retaining their job and with good reason. There were massive layoffs due to down-sizing and bankruptcies including the collapse of over 200 dot.com companies. The unemployment rate by the end of that year was the highest it had been in 16 months.
This, in a nutshell, is the stress situation in the American job scene. Eliminating the causes of stress will prove to be an impossible dream. The only real solution is changing the attitude of the workforce towards most stressful situations and this will require an army of on-the-job counselors. This will admittedly entail a gargantuan amount of funding from employers concerned, but with the support of government it is not impossible to achieve. After all, it’s the only way!
Levada Steinin
Leveda Steinin is the webmaster of stress
stress http://www.fisiostress.com