Frequent Sick Days Attributed to Stress
Many employees are calling in sick at least two days a month. It is more common among men who are attributing sickness to work related stress. In fact a survey conducted by Medicash, a healthcare plan provider has revealed that men take leave due to sickness four times more than women.
Usually workload is the cause of stress. While heavy workloads are triggering stress in men, women are stressed about difficult customers and clients. Work-induced stress is the main cause for abuse of alcohol with one in five men clearly admitting that they needed to drink after work most of the days.
Over 65% of women reported headaches as the main symptom of stress as compared to about 45% of men. Stress resulted in sleeping problems for about 50% of both men and women. In fact, lack of sleep was also a primary reason for stress.
3,000 workers participated in the survey and 20% of the men expressed that they had taken two days off due to stress in the past month. An interesting fact that emerged in the survey was that both men and women found bad manners and rude behaviour outside of work to be stress triggers. They were angry and ready to retort in such instances resulting in enormous stress levels.
According to Sue Weir who heads Medicash, chronic stress could result in addiction and long term behavioural issues. While some pressure is expected for better performance, long bouts of stress could be detrimental to the health of employees giving rise to a number of health related problems.
It is vital to maintain a healthy lifestyle with good nutrition and regular exercise. It is also important to seek some counselling or share negative thoughts with family or friends to keep depression at bay. Stress busters are essential for work productivity and healthy life balance.
NEBOSH training by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health is designed to give managers and supervisors all they need to know to help handle health and safety in their teams; click on NEBOSH General to learn about the importance of promoting a positive health and safety culture in the workplace environment, and to help organisations find the best ways to reduce stress in the workplace to help boost team performance for a more effective working practice.