Corporate Cultures – How Stressful is Your Workplace Environment?

Stress in the workplace leads to significantly detrimental impacts on overall business results. According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, workplace stress contributes to a number of adverse physical and performance consequences among affected employees including:[wcm_restrict plans=”60681, 25542, 25653″]

• Headaches
• Sleep disturbances
• Difficulty concentrating
• Short temper
• Job dissatisfaction
• Low morale

Studies¹ show a number of factors lead to high employee stress including:

• Task Design: heavy workload, infrequent breaks, long hours and shiftwork, routine and repetitive tasks with little apparent importance, assignments that do not utilize the worker’s skills and/or that offer the worker little control
• Management Style: lack of worker participation in decision-making, poor organizational communications, and a lack of family-friendly policies
• Interpersonal Relationships: low workplace interaction and lack of support from supervisors and coworkers
• Work Roles: conflicting or uncertain job expectations, too much responsibility, too many collateral duties
• Career Concerns: job insecurity, lack of opportunity for growth and advancement, frequent changes for which the employee is unprepared
• Environmental Conditions: unpleasant or hazardous physical conditions including crowding, low lighting, high noise, air pollution, and/or ergonomic issues

So how stressful is your workplace environment?

Workplace stress factors often go unmeasured. Quantifying these, however, can provide executives and managers with significant insight into the pressures their employees feel and consequently provide tangible information on both the existence of stress factors as well as helping pin point opportunities to alleviate these conditions. Consider the following stress factors and possible performance measures:

Leading Indicators

Task Design

• Overtime rate by department or workgroup (Also see StrategyDriven article, Resource Projection Warning Flag 1 – Assumed Discretionary Effort.)
• Percent of time spent away from the local office (traveling employees)

Management Style

• Percent/Number of individuals involved in company identified strategic initiatives by level
• Percent/Number of individuals involved in company, business unit, division, department business planning by level
• Percent of individuals not receiving personalized corporate communications (e.g. visit/presentation by a corporate officer)

Interpersonal Relationships

• Percent/Number of personnel participating in company sponsored family and team-building events
• Frequency of company sponsored family and team-building events by company, business unit, division, department, or workgroup

Work Roles

• Percent/Number of individuals in positions without up-to-date job descriptions (Also see StrategyDriven article, Talent Management Best Practice 2 – Maintain Up-To-Date Job Descriptions.)
• Percent/Number of individuals in positions without up-to-date performance expectations/standards documents (Also see StrategyDriven topic, Standards and Expectations.)
• Percent/Number of individuals receiving formal and informal management feedback within a predetermined timeframe (Also see StrategyDriven topic, Management Observation Program.)
• Number of non-executive or management personnel assigned to ‘acting’ executive or management roles

Career Concerns

• Percent/Number of individuals receiving company sponsored recognition by level
• Percent/Number of individuals assigned to developmental opportunities by level
• Percent/Number of individuals participating in the succession plan program by level
• Percent/Number of individuals advanced/promoted by level

Environmental Conditions

• Percent/Number of individuals working in low lighting/dark and windowless locations
• Percent of the workforce receiving periodically recurring safety training
• Employee density (number of workers per unit of space) by level and location
• Percent/Number of individuals working in hazardous (noise, air, physical) locations
• Percent of time individuals working in hazardous locations are exposed to a hazard

Lagging Indicators

• Organizational productivity rates
• Production error rates
• Error-related production costs
• Percent absenteeism
• Average number of sick leave days taken
• Average number of on-the-job injuries incurred
• Health-related business costs
• Attrition rates, particularly among top talent and key personnel

For additional workplace stressors related to diverse and inclusiveness of the organization see StrategyDriven articles, Diversity and Inclusion – What Does Your Environment Communicate? and Diversity and Inclusion Best Practice 2 – Performance Measurement.

While these performance measures provide insight to the stressors affecting an organizational unit or workgroup, they are not necessarily designed to reflect an individual employee’s stressor factors that may be very different from the norm. Consequently, executives and managers should identify two or three key stress factors particularly relevant to their organization and periodically review their application and impact to each individual for whom they are responsible. This information allows a leader to better assess and manage a subordinate’s workplace environment and should also be used as an input indicator to an employee’s attrition risk. (Also see StrategyDriven article, Talent Management Best Practice 4 – Know Your Artificial Employment Retainers.) Such data, when combined with that from the succession and workforce planning programs and other observable retention factors, can guide organization leaders’ choices in managing the organization’s critical talent assets.

References:

1. “Stress …at work,” National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, pp. 9[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”60681, 25542, 25653″]

Hi there! Gain access to this article with a StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription or buy access to the article itself.

[/wcm_nonmember]

About the Author

Nathan Ives is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.