UK Employees Face High Levels of Stress in the Workplace

Media Release

18th October 2005

A new Europe-wide survey shows that 20% of British workers face high levels of workplace stress, with males, older workers and those in steady jobs under the greatest pressure.

The Kelly World at Work survey, conducted by global recruitment agency, Kelly Services, sought the views of almost 19,000 workers in 12 countries across Europe.

It found that 20% of British workers in the survey said that the workplace was either ‘too stressful’ or ‘far too stressful’.

This was lower than the average of 27% across all of Europe.

The highest incidence of workplace stress was in Switzerland and Sweden (both 33%), followed by Norway (31%), Germany and France (both 28%), Italy (26%), Russia (24%), Belgium (23%) and Denmark (22%).

Lowest levels of stress were recorded in Netherlands (16%), Spain (19%) and UK (20%).

According to Steve Girdler, marketing director of Kelly Services UK, workplace stress is a hidden threat that can cause significant harm to individuals and organisations.

"A certain amount of stress is inevitable and can be a good thing when it pushes people beyond their comfort zone to work harder and smarter.

"But high levels of prolonged stress are not good because they impact on productivity and are associated with physical and emotional illness".

Stress levels increased significantly with age, ranging from 19% in the 15-24 age bracket, to 23% for those aged 45 years and over. One of the reasons for this could be because older workers are more stressed both at home and at work because of added responsibility.

Male workers face a higher incidence of stress (22%) than women (19%).

Those with higher educational qualifications appear to be more susceptible to work related stress, with 21% of university graduates and 19% of non-graduates affected.

And it seems that workers who have been in their job the longest face increased stress. Of those workers who had been in a job less than a year, just 15% felt stressed, but this jumped to 34% of those in the same job for more than six years.

Working long hours also is also stress-inducing. Only 18% of those working less than 30 hours a week were under stress. But this increased to 34% of those working 41-50 hours, and 50% for those working more than 51 hours a week.

Workers under greatest stress were engaged in Management (34%), Sales/customer service (28%), Engineering/production (24%), HR (21%), IT (20%), Accounting/finance (18%) and General administration (8%).

"Workers facing chronic high levels of stress are not performing to their optimum, while their own situation is probably impacting on colleagues, customers or others in the organisation itself," Girdler said.

"It is important that employers identify workers facing undue stress, while employees recognise the problem and examine ways of relieving it. The key is to strike the right balance between challenging and stressful work.

There is a strong relationship between workplace stress and job satisfaction. For those workers who said they faced too much stress, just 28% were happy in their jobs. But for workers who had ‘just the right amount of stress’, the level of happiness climbed to 65%.

This suggests that people are happiest where they are given tasks that challenge and stimulate them and even push them outside their comfort zone to learn new skills and competencies.

Kelly Services, Inc. (Nasdaq: KELYA, KELYB) is a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Troy, Michigan (USA), offering staffing solutions that include temporary services, staff leasing, outsourcing, vendor on-site and full-time placement. Kelly owns and operates 2,600 offices in 27 countries. Kelly provides employment for nearly 700,000 employees annually, with skills including office services, accounting, engineering, information technology, law, science, marketing, light industrial, education, health care and home care. Revenue in 2004 was US$4.98 billion. Visit http://www.kellyservices.com.