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Australian
Financial Review, May 3, 2002 Friday Unemployment is a major cause of stress, but having a job can induce stress too. Cherelle Murphy looks at why the modern worker feels pressured. For stressed CBD office workers, the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney now offers a guided stroll - no charge - through its leafy paths on weekdays at lunchtime. But is stress really such a problem in the Australian workplace? Yes, is the resounding answer from the experts. Combine a downturn in the labour market with longer working hours, more intense job demands, an increase in workplace bullying plus positives such as growing job opportunities and better technology and you have a picture of a tense workforce in 2002. The situation is not helped by the recent volatility in financial markets which, as well as directly affecting some employees' work, is also toying with retirement nest eggs and personal balance sheets. Many employee surveys suggest workers are tense at work. Early results from a survey of health and safety representatives conducted by the Australian Council of Trade Unions suggest that stress is among the five top-ranked workplace injuries and that other physical and psychological injuries are often caused by stress. But unlike a fall from a ladder, stress can be hard to detect. It does exist, though. Just ask the 4,527 people who were compensated for mental stress injuries in the workplace in 1999-2000. Bankers, lawyers, accountants and other business professionals are subject to the same workplace pressures as others with the additional pressure of long hours and accountability. "Employees brag to each other they have been putting in 80-hour weeks it's a crappy ideal," says associate professor at the University of South Australia and director of the work and stress research group, Maureen Dollard. http://www.unisa.edu.au/workstress/ An employee's financial rewards, which although substantial in many professional roles, do not necessarily counter stress, she says. Stress can be caused by a mismatch between the effort people put into their job and the rewards they get. "That's not just about monetary rewards, it's about self esteem rewards," Dollard says. High-level professionals and managers are not necessarily the ones who suffer the most. The White Hall studies a comprehensive analysis of British workers conducted by the department of epidemiology and public health at University College, London found that health problems related to stress were higher for employees in the bottom third of an organisation's hierarchy, partly because those employees felt they had little control over their work. But workplace experts say that stress varies between individuals, depending on their personalities. The head of human resources and corporate affairs at AMP Henderson Global Investors, Peter Gooding, has seen it all. "Some people are really good at managing fast paced, highly demanding, highly exacting, high consequence type jobs and they love it and they are good at it," he says. "It's the people who struggle to manage the stress that tend to become victims." Many firms admit that stress is part of their employees' work life from time to time. Law giant Allens Arthur Robinson is an example. It attracts staff on the basis of its high-profile position in the market and expects them to maintain the firm's high standards. This translates as long working hours when transaction deadlines are looming. But the firm actively tries to prevent employees from suffering stress. Human resources director, Nicole McKenna, says Allens offers gym membership, evening meals and paid leave on top of normal annual leave after hectic times. "There are also programs available on stress management and support networks within the firm," she says. Even for employers who recognise stress as a workplace issue there is a difficulty of decoupling the stress that stems from work with that which is sourced from the home. This issue was raised at last year's national stress symposium, hosted by the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission. The chairman of the NOHSC, Dennis Else, says employers sometimes feel pressured to take responsibility for areas where they feel that they do not have control. "You can't identify stress solely circumscribed to the workplace," he says. But employers cannot ignore workplace stress. They face liability under statutory and common law if they inadequately deal with workplace stress, says industrial relations and employment lawyer at Mallesons Stephen Jaques, Bruce Moore. "In the last few years, stress has been increasingly recognised as a legitimate and serious workplace concern, which may create a responsibility on the part of employers to develop adequate mechanism for preventing and dealing with it," he says. Recently, some workplace stress has been blamed on the global economic slowdown that has made many professionals' work life harder. The labour market dip meant many employees had to work harder or longer hours to make up for their retrenched colleagues, with less training and fewer benefits. Paradoxically, although jobs were cut, labour productivity increased. That is, the economy kept growing, (by 4.1 per cent from December 2000 to December 2001) even though 73,300 jobs were slashed from the workforce over the same period. In other words, fewer workers did more work increasing work intensification across the economy. Workplace intensification is more than just a cyclical phenomenon, says the deputy director of the Australian Centre for Industrial Relations Research and Training, John Buchanan. He said individual case studies on the Australian labour market, as well as international evidence, proves employees are working harder. "There has been a structural shift in work intensification in the 1990s," he says. While the productivity numbers look good now, Buchanan said productivity increases are unlikely to be sustained across the economy with part of the workforce burnt out. A partner with Deloitte Corporate Finance, John Matthews, used to work full-time but found that his productivity was waning because he resented being deprived of time with his two young daughters. He now works four days a week or 80 per cent of a normal workload and believes he is more productive than when he worked full-time. "I'm more conscious of being in the office less hours so I tend to do more when I'm there," he said. Workplace bullying is another factor compounding employee stress. During the Bullying in the Workplace campaign in October 2000, the ACTU Occupational Health and Safety Unit was flooded with about 2,000 calls in two weeks about workplace bullying. Workplace stress stems from more than structural changes and negativity in the workplace. As technology improves and governments and employers emphasise the need to upgrade skills, employees are confronted with expanded opportunities. A labour market specialist at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, Mark Wooden, cites this as a source of stress for some. "Once upon a time you could stay in the same job doing the same task for a long time," Wooden says. "Nowadays many jobs have a renewal content in them that makes life much more difficult to predict. Some people will find that stressful and some people will find that great." One result of workplace stress is desk rage. A survey of 6,000 workers by TMP Worldwide found that 16 per cent of workers say yelling and verbal abuse happens frequently in their workplace, while 10 per cent reported being victims of violence at work. "Longer hours and greater workloads mean we spend more time in the office and people are less likely to control outbursts and stress-related behaviour," says head of human resources at TMP Worldwide, Lisa Donohoe. Stress in the workplace also brings economic costs as employee creativity is crushed. "Organisations are not innovative if people are afraid to be creative and think of new ways of doing things," University of South Australia's Maureen Dollard says. And stress leave costs twice as much as general workers' compensation claims because employees are off work much longer, she says. Greens NSW MP, Lee Rhiannon, says that overworked, stressed employees also cost the community. "There is more productivity within the firms, but you are privatising the profits and socialising the costs," she says. So, what can be done about workplace stress? The NOHSC's Dennis Else advocates good management practices, which include providing employees with a clearly defined role and good feedback. And professional service firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu has formal programs in place to support its staff and counter stress before it becomes a problem. Its work-life choice scheme means employees have no formal work hours, flexible work arrangements, free access to counselling and a resource and information service provided by an independent consultant. Workplace blues * Employees are working harder: case studies of the Australian labour market and international evidence prove employees are working more intensely. * Labour market weakness: many employees had to absorb the workload of their retrenched colleagues during the recent downturn in the labour market, even though national output continued to grow. This created growth in the labour productivity numbers, but workplace experts doubt whether it can last. * Workplace bullying: the ACTU Occupational Health and Safety Unit received about 2,000 calls in two weeks from people who wished to talk about bullying when the unit ran its "Bullying in the Workplace" campaign. * Increased career opportunities: technology upgrades combined with pressure from governments and employers to upgrade skills can be a source of stress.
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Copyright © 2002 Macquarie Institute, Australia
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