Stuck in traffic, giving a presentation, hosting the in-laws: Events that cripple confidence and spike stress.
Stress isn’t a foreign feeling—especially at work. We’ve all experienced workplace stress or anxiety before. In some cases, it might’ve even driven us to perform our best. However, frequent and consistent stress results in a rapid decline in productivity, and even worse, overall health. The pressure of working from home is now also creating additional stress and remote work burnout.
Chronic stress is prevalent in the workplace
Some 94% of workers report feeling stress at work, and almost a third say their stress level is high to unsustainably high. Elevated stress levels not only impact work productivity but also affect employees’ personal lives.
Despite the common perception that people perform better in high-pressure work environments, over a quarter of respondents report a decline in work quality due to stress. In other words, overly stressed employees aren’t a sign companies are getting the most out of employees—they may actually be getting less.
Workers only last so long under constant stress. Our survey reports over a quarter of employees say that they will burn out in the next 12 months if their stress levels don’t change—and burnout is expensive. Almost 50% of workers say workplace stress has caused them to “check out” or stop caring at some point in their career.
Poor collaboration is the culprit
Companies must understand the root cause of employee stress and burnout before they can address it. The top three stressors are related to breakdowns in teamwork and collaboration, according to our survey:
Poor communication
Team members not pulling their weight
Bottlenecks and waiting on others
To combat the stress epidemic, companies must change the way teams collaborate and how work is managed. A work management solution eliminates information silos and makes key work details easy to locate across an organization. This helps reduce the stress caused by missing information needed to get work done for both managers and workers.
This technology also gives management a better picture of each team member’s workload and capacity. With this level of improved visibility, managers can distribute work appropriately and easily see project statuses without interrupting team members for updates.
Head towards transformation or employees will head for the door.
Stifling productivity and losing top talent are risks no company can afford. With the job market thriving, employees are looking for jobs that enhance their quality of life—not hinder their performance.
CTTO: wrike.com
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