What is stress?

Stress is a biological reaction that naturally occurs in humans and animals when they perceive a threat or a demand. It is the reason why we are here today.  If it wasn’t for the stress response our early ancestors would have become extinct.  In days gone by the world was a more physically dangerous place where you may have encountered a wild animal who was looking for their dinner. The stress response gave our ancestors the capacity to either ‘fight’ off the offending beast or ‘flight’; run like hell to get away from it.  

Hans Selye, a famous endocrinologist in the 20th century discovered the biological stress response. When a person detects a threat or demand the sympathetic nervous system kicks in.  Messages are sent from the brain to the adrenal glands and adrenalin and cortisol chemicals are released. These chemicals provide us with the wherewithal to deal with the threat or meet the demands. When we have done this, then the parasympathetic nervous system releases noradrenalin and restores the body to a state of calm.   

Stress, when it happens naturally and not too often can motivate you to carry out tasks productively and efficiently.  You are given a certain job to do, your sympathetic nervous system initiates the stress response by releasing the necessary hormones, (sort of like putting your foot on the accelerator), you meet the demands of the task and feel great. What should be happening now is that the parasympathetic nervous system does its thing and calm is restored.  Unfortunately, in 21st century, 24/7 life, it’s a rare occasion that calm is ever fully restored.

Case study

Martine, a married mum of two, works full time in a wholesale manufacturing company.  Her day starts with the alarm ringing on her phone at 7.30 am (stress response activated), she gets her husband and children up and hurries to get them breakfast.  Making sure the school lunches are made, homework is in the schoolbags, all electrical devices unplugged, house locked, into the car and away. (home stressors).

Martine is already thinking of the meeting she has to go to at 9.30 am, where she has to make a presentation to the senior managers and an important client. (stress response continues).  If all goes well the children are left at school and she heads for the office.  Oh dear!!  She has a puncture.  Having done the damsel in distress move, a nice young man changes the tyre, however if is now 9.28 and she is going to be late. (stress response continues).  She tries to ring into the office to say she will be late, but doesn’t get through.  At last, at 9.50 she arrives in the car park to find no spaces available (stress response continues). Eventually at 10.01 she gets the car parked, runs into the office and heads for the meeting.  The meeting itself is tense.  Being more than half an hour late has caused anxiety and her boss is glaring at her from across the room. (stress response continues).  Somehow or other, she gives an excellent presentation, the client places a large order and she starts to feel a lot better. (parasympathetic nervous system restores calm). Martine has a well earned cup of tea and heads down to her office feeling not too bad.

The girls in the office give her the run down on what the boss said about her being late. (stress response initiated again). She is made aware that the boss is going to give her a verbal warning and her anxiety levels rise again.  

Because her colleague is on long term sick leave due to stress, Martine’s workload is extremely high.  Her colleague was responsible for the purchase ledger, however even though Martine has never been trained on the software, she does her best to keep it up to date.  She spends her morning juggling to two jobs and with the underlying anxiety about the potential disciplinary meeting with the boss, she skips lunch and keeps working. No-one in the office offers to help her with the workload and she can hear them having a great laugh at the other side of the office.  Martine’s day continues like this until home time.  She has not been able to get all of the work done, some of her own tasks which were urgent are still outstanding and to top it all, her boss stopped at her desk and asked if she would attend a one to one meeting with him tomorrow morning at 9.00 am sharp. 

Martine gets into her car at 5.30 pm and feels that all the worries in the world are on her shoulders. She takes a minute to shed a few tears.  Puts the car into reverse and heads for home. She knows she has dinner to make, homework to supervise and so, with this anticipation her stress response continues to act.   The parasympathetic system has never kicked in, so the stress hormones continue to be released and the chronic stress is a problem.  This continued and chronic stress response greatly increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, low immune system, decreased bone density and obesity. Mentally chronic stress often results in anxiety and/or depression and worse...

With regards to work, her employer could definitely have reduced the risk of the workplace causing harmful stress; e.g.

Demands

Martine was expected to carry out a task (accounting) for which she was not trained which had the potential to cause stress. She was also trying to do the work of two people.

Control

Martine had no control over her job, she just had to get on with doing what she was told.

Support

There appeared to be no-where to turn for poor Martine. If there had been a clear support route she could have taken, to discuss her difficulties, a manager could have intervened before Martine became distressed and anxious.

Relationships

The fact that the boss discussed with Martine’s workmates that he was going to give her a verbal warning would indicate that confidentiality did not exist is the office.

Role

Martine had to assume two roles, one of which she was not trained to do.  Previously she was very competent at her job and thrived on the challenges but with all the extra pressure and expectations, she felt inefficient and much less productive than when she had a defined role with understood expectations.

Change

Martine was terrified that she might lose her job. With her manager having mentioned to the team that Martine was in trouble and the fact that he wasn’t going to speak to her about it until tomorrow had Martine in a state of nerves.

I would not expect that calm would be restored for Martine that evening, I can imagine she would not sleep well and that anticipation for the next day would lead to further stress.  And the next day looks as if it might be even more stressful.

Can you see how poor management of stress at work has the potential to cause harm to Martine?  The fact that a fellow worker is absent from work due to stress would indicate to management that stress may be a problem in their organisation. There is a reasonably foreseeable risk that others in the team may be suffering from the harmful effects of stress and that if something was not done about it, this could cause significant problems for the workers, management and indeed the business.

Managing Stress at work is every bit as important as managing physical hazards.  Out of 1.6 million workers who were reported to be suffering from a work related illness in 2021 in the UK, more than half of those were due to work related stress, anxiety or depression. According to the World Health Organisation, 51% of those who felt stressed reported feeling depressed and 61% reported to feeling anxious.  Of those people who said they had felt stress at some point in their lives, 16% had self harmed and 32% said they had suicidal thoughts and feelings.

Another heart breaking statistic highlighted by the BBC recently was that suicide is the single biggest killer of men under 45 years old in the UK, with approximately 84 men taking their own lives every week.  I am aware that every person’s reasons for ending their torment is different and that many factors of life contribute to that decision. However, this blog aims to raise awareness of the ‘stress response’, specifically with regards to the workplace and work related stress. 

Work related stress is real and it is killing people.  It is time to do something about it.