Causes and effects of workplace stress
This domain tests whether you can identify the organisational causes of work-related stress and trace their effects on individuals, the organisation and wider society. Marks come from naming specific hazards and consequences, not from repeating that 'work is stressful'.
Causes: the six hazard areas
The HSE Management Standards group the main causes of work-related stress into six areas of work design:
- Demands - workload, work patterns, working hours, and the physical and psychological environment.
- Control - how much say a worker has over how and when work is done, and use of skills.
- Support - encouragement, sponsorship and resources from managers and colleagues, including training.
- Relationships - bullying, harassment, conflict and unacceptable behaviour.
- Role - ambiguity, conflicting roles and unclear responsibility.
- Change - how organisational change is managed and communicated.
Additional causes include job insecurity, violence and aggression from clients or the public, lone working, poorly designed technology, and a culture that tolerates long hours.
Effects
- Individual: anxiety, depression, burnout, cardiovascular and musculoskeletal problems, unhealthy coping behaviours, fatigue and errors.
- Organisational: sickness absence, presenteeism (working while unwell with reduced output), leaveism, turnover, recruitment costs, poor performance, accidents and near misses, grievances and compensation claims.
- Societal: pressure on health services and lost economic output.
Worked example
A warehouse introduces higher pick-rate targets and a new shift pattern. Within three months, absence rises, picking errors increase and agency staff leave quickly. Demands and control are the hazards; the effects are absence, error rates, turnover and presenteeism. Blaming staff 'resilience' would miss the design causes entirely.
Traps that cost marks
- Listing only individual causes such as poor time management.
- Confusing the hazard (the work characteristic) with the harm (the health effect).
- Describing individual effects but ignoring organisational and societal costs.