April 1 is undoubtedly the most whimsical day of the year, yet it signals the start of National Stress Awareness Month. Sponsored by The Health Resource Network (HRN), a non-profit health education organization, this is a national, cooperative effort to inform people about the dangers of stress, successful coping strategies, and harmful misconceptions about stress that are prevalent in our society. If you work for a larger corporation, chances are you have heard about or been involved with workplace stress reduction initiatives over the past few weeks. Kudos to your company if it is getting active in this cause.

Reducing Stress in the Workplace is a Moral Imperative

The first step in minimizing unhealthy stress in our workplaces is to become aware of its causes. The second step is to refuse to accept stress as a fact of life, because it has the power to diminish the quality and quantity of our days. The third step is to take a collaborative approach to resolving some of the root causes of harmful stress, many of which can be found in the workplace. As human resources and department managers, we must think of reducing stress in the workplace as a moral imperative. To that end, we must first become aware of the causes, which have been well-researched in three recent national studies.

2017 APA Stress in America Survey

In 2017, the American Psychological Association (APA) conducted its annual Stress in America survey to investigate how stressed we feel, what keeps us up at night, and how we deal with the stress in our lives. The survey’s data comes from the anonymous responses of 3,440 American adults, representing the demographic makeup of the country.

According to the APA, “Though Americans’ stress levels have remained consistent, they are more likely to report feeling the effects of stress in this year’s survey than they did in the prior year.” Money (62 percent) and work (61 percent) were identified as the #2 and #3 most common sources of stress for Americans in 2017.

The most alarming prevalent effects of stress identified by respondents, in descending order, include:

• Sleeplessness: 45 percent report lying awake at night, compared to 40 percent in 2016
• Anxiety or nervousness: 36 percent
• Irritability or anger: 35 percent
• Fatigue: 34 percent

2017 APA Work and Well-Being Survey

The Work and Well-Being Survey of 1,512 American adults aimed to uncover the workplace factors that contribute to American workers’ sense of well-being in their lives. Some of the findings related to mental health and workplace stress include:

• Stress: 37 percent said they experience chronic work stress, up from 33 percent in 2016.
• Mental health resources: 48 percent said their employers provide the resources necessary to meet their mental health needs, an improvement from 41 percent in 2016.
• Stress management resources: 42 percent said their employers provide sufficient resources to help manage stress, up from 35 percent in 2016.
• Workplace relationships: 85 percent of respondents said they have a positive relationship with co-workers, up from 78 percent in 2016. This number reverses a five year decline. 75 percent have a positive relationship with their bosses, up from 72 percent in 2016.
• Leading causes of stress: In descending order by percentage of workers who cited each cause as very significant or somewhat significant:
  • Low salary (48 percent)
  • Lack of growth opportunities (42 percent)
  • Too heavy workload (39 percent)
  • Uncertain or undefined job expectations (37 percent)
  • Unrealistic job expectations (37 percent)

Interestingly, none of these (or other work stress factors) have risen sharply over the past six years. Instead, what the survey shows are gradual increases in most of the factors, consistently over time. To reduce workplace stress, this trend suggests a holistic approach must be undertaken to reducing the collective impact of many factors.

On the whole, this survey shows that worker stress levels continue to rise, but in 2017, employers began to offer employees more mental health and stress management resources. Meanwhile, office relationships appear to be improving.

Strategies are Urgently Needed to Address these Causes of Stress

The findings of a 2017 Comparably survey of hundreds of thousands of employees from U.S. organizations of all sizes suggest an urgent need for strategies and policies to reduce the dangerously unhealthy levels of stress that have been building in our workplaces:

• Unclear goals are the leading cause of stress, with 41 percent of workers citing this problem, followed by commute and bad manager (tied at 16 percent).

• Burnout is plaguing employees, with 60 percent of men and 57 percent of women reporting this problem. Minorities suffer the highest rates of burnout with 63 percent of Hispanic workers, 63 percent of Asian workers, and 60 percent of African American workers citing this problem.

• A need to unplug on vacations has been exposed as a serious problem. Among the positions claiming the highest rates of expectations to work while on vacation are executives (52 percent), business development (50 percent), communications (50 percent), and legal (47 percent) professionals. We explored the importance of vacation time in Think Wasting Vacation Days Is Ambitious? You May Be Dead Wrong. Americans receive 15 to 40 percent fewer vacation days than the global average and take only 11, leaving 27 percent unused. By contrast, the Germans, Spanish and French each get double the vacation days and use all 30. Addressing only this problem could go a long way toward resolving what is becoming a uniquely American stress epidemic.

As professionals in staffing and human resources, we have been reading studies like these for years. Though individuals have many sources of stress that can lead to declining physical and mental health, many of the studies we have seen suggest that job stress is the leading source for American adults. It is one of the reasons the United States has fallen gradually in recent global quality of life indexes. Workers feel more pressure at work than ever before, with less control, and with fewer rewards to offset their stress levels. Workplace stress has become an American epidemic, and one that we all need to work toward resolving.