New research shows that, among OECD countries, Britain has relatively low levels of work-related stress. However, British employees do not take their stress lightly. The percentage of highly stressed employees in Britain who are absent from work or intend to leave their jobs in the next 12 months is among the highest in Europe.

The study of work-related stress used data from Britain, West Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Canada and Japan. The research reveals that:
– 36% of British employees work more than 40 hours a week and eight out of ten report being stressed at work. One in four stressed employees plans to leave their work in the next 12 months while one in two report being absent from work for more than one day.
– The main cause of work-related stress is long working hours. Those working between 20 and 40 hours a week are 10% more likely to experience work-related stress that those working less than 20 hours. For those working more than 40 hours a week, the corresponding figure is 45%.
– Demanding job content or dangerous work conditions play the second largest role in aggravating job stress levels. Conversely, good working relations with colleagues and/or management and non-pecuniary advantages, such as an independent, interesting or ‘useful to society’ job, reduce stress levels significantly.
– Stress has a significant impact on absenteeism and people’s intentions to leave their work. Individuals who report at least some stress in their current position are 25% more likely to intend to quit than those without, with the probability of intending to quit increasing with successively higher job stress levels. Moreover, those individuals reporting at least some stress in their current job are also overall 25% more likely to have taken periods of absence from work than those without.

The implication is that policy initiatives that shifted all individuals who report being ‘always stressed’ or ‘often stressed’ to experiencing only ‘some job stress’ would stop 530,000 employees being absent from work and retain nearly 1.3 million employees who would have left their jobs otherwise. Since certain working conditions are stressful to most people, there is therefore a case for greater emphasis on improving working conditions and for job redesign in general as the key solutions in a primary stress prevention strategy.

On average, women report higher stress levels than men.

French, Canadian and Swedish workers are unambiguously the most stressed among the 15 OECD countries. The Czechs, Danish and Swiss are those with the least stress while one in seven Portuguese report being always stressed; the corresponding number for Britain is one in 14.

Co-author of the research Dr Rannia Leontaridi commented: “What employees and government must come to realise is that work-related stress could inflict serious financial damages on individual firms and the economy in general. The emerging evidence indicates that work-related stress is a serious noxious characteristic of the working environment impairing employee performance through staff turnover and absenteeism. Its sources are intrinsic to the job itself, and individual’s role in an organisation, as well as employee relations with co-workers and management.”

The research by Dr Rannia Leontaridi and Dr Melanie Ward was presented at the Royal Economic Society’s Annual Conference on Tuesday 26 March. Dr Leontaridi is a lecturer at Stirling University.