“Back to work” tips will not save us from this stress epidemic
Karin Tenelius
11 September 2024
Right now the ‘back to work’ tips are everywhere on LinkedIn. The undertone is: how can we protect the poor employees so they don’t stress themselves to death? There is talk that managers should book micro-breaks for their employees so in case they forget. To let them mix remote working and working from the office in the beginning. Why? So they can slowly get used to an unreasonably stressful working climate. As a manager, you are encouraged to apply an arsenal of weapons against stress management. Here’s how I interpret this.
1. It's like we've all resigned ourselves to the fact that working life has to be stressful.
2. Since it is the way it is, managers must take care of their (adult) employees' stress. Isn’t it time we look at this from another perspective? Since 2005, stress-related sick leave has increased 60%. Stress is still handled as an individual problem and a disease despite the fact that it arises due to systemic failures.Why aren’t we all more outraged at the fact that we are stressed? What do we really need to work at a reasonable pace? What needs to change? Can we change how we’re organised? What structures stress us out? What myths are we stuck in? Is it really proven that a constant fast pace gives the best results? If our culture is stressful, how can we change it to something that makes us feel good? If we really wanted to solve the problem of this devastating stress, we could. There are many interdependent factors that have brought us to the point where 20% of all sick leave is stress-related. Can we really afford to let it go on in our organisation? Where everyone is so important to what we want to achieve? We see stress claim victims every day out at our customers' organisations and so we are very committed to the question of how to overcome it from the perspective of systemic failures.
Here are some approaches:
Our working climate – how does it contribute to stress?
The organisational structure – how does it contribute to stress? Are there ways we are misorganised?
How leadership is acted out - in what ways does this contribute to the stress? (I remember one study from years ago that measured how employees’ heart rates were more elevated on the days their manager was in the office!)
The myths we’re stuck in – what are the myths that create stress? (E.g. That working faster or longer hours equals better results)
The mindsets we have about our stressful system, i.e. our organisation – are we powerless in the face of it? Or do we see it as something we can influence?
So the challenging question we could ask when we kick-off our work project again could be: should we continue to try to take care of the symptoms of stress? Or should we get to the bottom of the systemic failure? Shall we face the truth that our organisation causes stress, has done so for a long time and it does not seem to be slowing down?