Nearly half of employees in Australia and New Zealand (48 per cent) are experiencing daily workplace stress, according to recent research from Gallup. 

Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2024 report revealed that stress levels in Australia and New Zealand are 17 per cent higher than than the global average. What’s more, just a quarter of employees in this region report feeling engaged at work. Around two thirds (64 per cent) are passively disengaged, while 11 per cent are actively disengaged – i.e., taking actions that directly harm or obstruct the organisation.

“When people are stressed and disengaged, at best, they’re ambivalent, and at worst, they’re actively working against the organisation’s goals,” says Claire de Carteret, Managing Director, APAC at Gallup.

“That can have an impact on customers. It can have an impact on [the employee’s] own feelings of efficacy. And it can even go so far as to impact their physical health.”

Below, de Carteret offers research-backed advice for HR and managers to address workplace stress in the short, medium and long term. 

Short-term strategy: Intervene with the right questions

Short-term exposure to stress at work is unlikely to do serious damage – in fact, some forms of temporary stress have been shown to benefit performance and motivation. However, left unchecked, stress can cause our bodies to be in a constant state of stimulation, increasing the risk of serious harm to our mental and physical health.

In light of employers’ new legal obligations to manage psychosocial hazards at work, it’s particularly crucial for both HR and managers to be vigilant in recognising early signs of stress among employees to address them before they escalate, she says.

According to SafeWork NSW, some of the most common stress symptoms to look out for include: 

• Physical: headaches, tiredness, slow reactions, shortness of breath.
• Mental: difficulty with decision-making, forgetfulness.
• Emotional: irritability, excess worrying, feeling of worthlessness, anxiety, defensiveness, anger, mood swings.
• Behavioural: diminished performance, withdrawal, impulsive behaviour.

Regular, meaningful check-ins with employees are the best way to catch these symptoms early, says de Carteret.

“​They don’t have to be long conversations – just 15 to 30 minutes every week – and then you’ll build a fluency around [that person], which allows you to recognise when someone is struggling.”

To get a well-rounded view of how the employee is feeling and the best ways to support them, you can ask questions such as:

1. Open-ended questions to encourage employees to share their feelings and thoughts in detail.

• How are you feeling at the moment?
• Can you tell me more about what’s been on your mind lately?
• What aspects of your work are you finding stressful?

2. Specific questions to pinpoint particular areas of concern or sources of stress.

• What specific tasks or situations are causing you stress?
• Can you think of any particular moments or events that caused you stress? 
• What was it about that event you found stressful?

3. Supportive questions to show empathy and willingness to help.

• How can I better support you in managing your workload?
• What can we do to make your work environment more comfortable?
• What resources or support do you think would help you manage your stress?

“[These conversations] open up a pathway for the employee to talk about when things are not going right, when they need help, when they’re struggling or when they need time off,” says de Carteret.

When symptoms of stress are identified, interventions should happen promptly to avoid the issue snowballing. Based on employers’ responsibilities under the new psychosocial safety code of practice, WorkSafe Victoria has developed a five-step guide for managers to conduct these short-term interventions: 

1. Make contact. Arrange a confidential meeting time and location and consider what you want to discuss and achieve.

2. Explore the issues. Ask open-ended questions and listen attentively. It’s helpful to state the behaviours you have observed and your concern, and discuss potential factors driving the stress, which could be internal or external.

3. Develop options and offer support. Work together with the employee to explore potential workplace adjustments that could be made to support them, taking into account operational demands. If the employee’s direct manager is the stress source, ensure alternative support is available. Inform them of available resources both in and outside the workplace.

4. Agree on action. Decide on specific steps and agree on follow-up actions and review times.

5. Stay in touch. Follow up regularly, ensuring clear outcomes and agreed follow-up frequency.

Frameworks like this can offer structure to these conversations for managers who might not feel confident initiating them, says de Carteret.

“We need to give them tools to support them in the science of those conversations,” she says. “Because if we just leave it all up to art, some people do it well, and some people don’t – that’s just human nature.”

Medium-term strategy: Empower managers to address workplace stress

Given that managers have a disproportionate impact on employees’ experiences at work, medium-term strategies to address workplace stress should focus on supporting and empowering middle management.

Positive management practices are more than half the battle in mitigating workplace stress; according to Gallup’s findings, those who work in companies with bad management practices are nearly 60 per cent more likely to be stressed than people working in environments with good management practices. 

“We don’t want to villainise managers because they’ve got the toughest job at the moment. When they’re feeling overwhelmed and they’re not supported by their direct manager, then it’s hard for them to cascade [that support] down. They revert back into survival mode, which is the opposite of a growth mindset.

“So [HR should] focus on supporting that manager population first because when they’re engaged, connected and energised, then they will energise, connect and support their teams.”

Beyond providing managers with mental health support of their own, HR can also equip managers to address employees’ needs by providing training in areas like coaching, trauma-informed practice and mental health first aid.

Gain the knowledge and skills necessary to conduct workplace processes in a trauma-informed manner with AHRI’s Trauma Informed HR short course.

Given that managers tend to experience more stress than their direct reports, de Carteret stresses the importance of framing this training the right way so it doesn’t feel like an additional burden on their time or energy.

“They have to believe that it’s going to be an enabler for them,” she says. “They have to see the connection between [reducing stress] and delivering performance and profit. That way, it’s less about giving them more to do and more about giving them skills to be more effective.”

“[HR should] focus on supporting that manager population first because when they’re engaged, connected and energised, then they will energise, connect and support their teams.” – Claire de Carteret, Managing Director, APAC at Gallup.

Long-term strategy: Create a culture of recognition and development

Effectively mitigating stress in the long-term requires a sustainable approach that goes beyond immediate interventions and manager training. 

No matter how effectively managers can respond to stress in the moment, these measures are only a band-aid without long-term cultural change.

One of the most effective ways to mitigate stress in the long term is by creating a robust and meaningful reward and recognition program, says de Carteret.

“Everyone just wants to be acknowledged for their contribution. If you don’t feel like someone’s seeing what you’re doing or acknowledging and appreciating it, it can have such a big impact,” she says.

“[In our research], we see a big gap between how managers rate themselves in terms of recognising their teams and the way their direct reports rate them recognising the teams. It’s a bit of a blind spot for managers.”

It’s in employers’ interests to close this gap, she says, since a lack of reward and recognition is one of the 14 psychosocial hazards put forward by SafeWork Australia as part of the new code of practice. 

Another important long-term stress management strategy is ensuring employees feel challenged in a healthy way.

Read HRM’s article on how to push employees out of their comfort zone (without pushing them too far).

“Something else we’ve seen in our research is that when people can use their strengths, they are three times more likely to report having an excellent quality of life, and they’re six times more likely to be engaged,” says de Carteret. 

“So if people understand what their strengths are, and they can find a way to use them every day, then they’re energised through that.”

Leveraging recognition and opportunities for growth helps ensure that any pressure employees experience is temporary and productive rather than prolonged and draining. 

Driving these cultural shifts while ensuring that immediate support systems are in place is the key to alleviating workplace stress and, crucially, improving employees’ overall quality of life, says de Carteret.

“The workplace can be so fulfilling and developmental, and it should have a positive impact on people’s lives,” she says. “The only thing we do more than work is sleep, so we have to [make sure] it’s fulfilling.”

Improve your ability to recognise the signs and symptoms of mental health conditions and learn effective strategies to manage health and wellness in the workplace with AHRI’s Mental Health at Work short course.

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A new report by Gallup has revealed that a staggering four in five employees in Australia are feeling disengaged and disconnected from their work.

According to Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace report, two thirds of the workforce is passively disengaged, while 13 per cent is actively disengaged – i.e., taking actions that directly harm the organisation and its goals. Just one in five reported that they were engaged and thriving at work.

HRM recently joined Gallup’s CEO, Jon Clifton, and Rohit Kar, Regional Business Development Director for Australia, New Zealand and India, for an executive lunch to unpack the results further.

“There are millions of workers all over the world who are emotionally detached from work, and that largely isn’t improving,” says Clifton. 

“There is a rising detachment from many institutions. And I think one of the reasons that that’s taking place – this is true in America, and I think this is true in many OECD countries as well – is that there is a loss of trust in institutions, and that [can] create a great deal of apathy.”

This detachment is taking a heavy economic toll. The findings show that disengagement costs the global economy $US8.8 trillion each year, or nine per cent of global GDP. In Australia alone, the cost of disengagement is estimated at AU$211 billion annually. 

While this figure may be cause for concern, it also means that engagement strategies have enormous potential to drive growth and greater productivity.

Based on input from over 1000 Australian employees, Gallup’s report offers a number of insights on how organisations turn this challenge into an opportunity. Before we unpack those opportunities, let’s first explore some of the driving factors behind this billion-dollar problem.

What’s driving employee disengagement?

A key takeaway from Gallup’s report is a sharp upward trend in employees’ stress levels. Forty-eight per cent of Australian employees said they had experienced high levels of stress the previous day, exceeding the global average of 44 per cent.

The findings showed that the single biggest predictor of stress was whether or not people had the tools they needed to do their jobs effectively. Just 40 per cent of employees strongly agreed that this was the case.

“So many of the issues right now are basic management things,” says Clifton. “People are trying to get their work done, but they don’t have the basic things they need.”

“I think management fears those conversations because they think [employees] are going to say they need something new, something that’s very expensive. And that’s not necessarily always the case.”Ju

He recalls working with a manufacturing organisation where employees were surveyed about what they needed to do their jobs more effectively. The standout request was not expensive tech or company cars; it was ‘gloves that fit’.

“This wasn’t a money problem, because they were already spending the money to buy gloves that don’t fit. So, from a psychosocial or physical safety perspective, the barrier here was listening. Nobody took an interest in whether or not the gloves fit. It [would have been] really easy, because all you’d do is walk down to the floor and go, ‘How are things going?’”

“We haven’t adjusted the very practices of management at the speed at which technology is moving.” – Jon Clifton, CEO, Gallup.

This disinclination to listen means employers are too quick to jump to conclusions about what will counter disengagement and alleviate stress. For instance, some organisations are rolling back remote work and issuing return-to-office mandates in the hopes that proximity will equal productivity. However, Gallup’s findings show that overall engagement has almost four times as much influence on employee stress as work location.

During the research, Gallup asked disengaged employees what they would change about their workplaces to improve engagement and company culture. 

Some responses included: 

• For everyone to get recognised for their contributions
• Clearer goals and stronger guidance
• Giving everyone a fair chance in getting promoted
• I would like it if the managers were more approachable, and we could talk openly.
• I’d like to learn more things, but the work I do is quite repetitive.
• They should grant more autonomy in the work to stimulate everyone’s creativity.
• I just wish they respected me more.

Although employees’ needs and wants will vary significantly depending on the organisation in question, Clifton says the majority of these issues can and should be addressed through listening and changing management behaviours.

Gallup’s research suggests the most significant driver of disengagement is the quality of management. The report identifies management as the ‘linchpin of engagement,’ attributing 70 per cent of team engagement to the manager’s influence.

This means that manager development should be at the centre of every organisation’s engagement strategy.

Employees who are passively disengaged are the low-hanging fruit for productivity gains, says Clifton, as this cohort has the most potential to be inspired and re-invigorated if changes are made to the way they are managed.

Read HRM’s article on the four different types of listening.

An engagement strategy fit for 2023 and beyond

As leaders consider how best to empower managers to drive engagement, it’s crucial to consider the context of today’s hybrid world of work.

“So much now is moved to asynchronous forms of communication,” says Clifton. “And nothing’s wrong [with collaboration platforms] – these communication [tools] are amazing, and have helped empower and advance society in tremendous ways. But we haven’t adjusted the very practices of management at the speed at which technology is moving.”

According to Kar, the difficulties associated with remote work and asynchronous communication are especially present for younger employees.

“The newer generation is still building that relationship with companies,” he says. “They’re [trying to] build a relationship with their jobs and their work. When they start off remotely and continue working remotely, it changes the possibilities of what they can do.”

To help younger workers build these relationships, he suggests reframing the way that employees view the time they spend working on-site.

“It’s not just about the quantity, it’s also about the quality,” says Kar. “It’s not [about] your company promising that if you come to the office three days a week, you’ll get pizzas and you’ll go scavenger hunting, or whatever. It’s a promise you make to each other. How do you respect what you’re spending time together on, and the value of that time together in terms of the relationships and the outcome it creates?”

It might also be necessary to reframe the way that managerial relationships are perceived. Employees’ desire for greater recognition, guidance and career development means a traditional ‘command-and-control’ managerial style is unlikely to nurture engagement.

Instead, Kar suggests managers see themselves as coaches, who value employees as individuals and help them understand and build their strengths.

“If you have a manager who is encouraging you, giving you ideas, shaping the way you’re building your career, then, suddenly – if you were sitting on the fence with respect to the organisation – you’ll start leaning in,” he says.

“When you have that chance to lean in, when you have the right environment to lean in, it creates magic. It helps you see what you are capable of, and what you can do for your organisation.”

Develop the necessary skills to tap into the full potential of team members with this short course on creating high-performance teams from AHRI.

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Despite its laid-back reputation, Australia is currently one of the most stressed-out countries in the world.

According to a recent report by global analytics firm Gallup, 48 per cent of Australians reported high levels of stress at work in 2022, making them the second most stressed workers globally (alongside New Zealand).

A concrete strategy to tackle workplace stress is no longer a nice-to-have. Following the introduction of a new Code of Practice for managing workplace psychosocial hazards earlier this year, employers now have a positive duty to address the risk of stress and other mental health issues at work.

Stress is not only one of the most significant risks to employee mental health, but also one of the most costly to employers.

According to Safe Work Australia, mental stress is the most common reason for serious workplace injury claims related to mental health, resulting in over 11,000 claims from 2020-21 alone.

When considering the best strategy to manage workplace stress, it’s important to remember that not all stress is created equal. Research shows that there are both healthy and unhealthy forms of stress.

‘Bad stress’, or distress, is what most of us picture when we think about feeling stressed. It tends to occur when we are in overwhelming or anxiety-inducing situations that feel out of our control. Bad stress tends to be a long-term issue, and can be severely detrimental to energy levels, engagement and overall wellbeing.

‘Good stress’, or eustress, is a positive form of short-term stress that we experience when we feel motivated and enthusiastic about something. This type of stress is not only useful but critical in helping us deal with challenging situations, says Dr Michelle McQuaid, Founder of the Wellbeing Lab and upcoming speaker at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August.

“Without good stress, we don’t learn and we don’t grow,” she says.

“Good stress is our body’s way of letting us know that something that matters to us is on the line, and it needs a bit more of our attention and energy and effort to get the outcome that we want. It makes us feel uncomfortable and anxious so we pay attention to what is happening.”

By understanding the causes and effects of good and bad stress, HR can effectively manage risks to wellbeing without compromising motivation and productivity.

Good versus bad stress

To determine whether the stress we are experiencing is healthy or unhealthy, it’s important to understand how our bodies naturally respond to stressors, says McQuaid.

“The cortisol hormone [associated with the ‘fight-or-flight’ response] gets aroused with stress,” she says. “When stress is unhealthy, it tends to be the accumulation of too much cortisol over too long a period of time, and too much cortisol impairs our memory and tends to cause us to want to isolate ourselves from others.

“But cortisol is not the only hormone that gets triggered when we have a stress response. There’s a whole cocktail of hormones, and some of them are very healthy.”

One of these positive hormones is adrenaline, she explains. When our adrenaline levels go up, our heart rate increases and we feel more alert and energised. This can help us approach work in a more productive and detail-oriented way.

“Good stress is our body’s way of letting us know that something that matters to us is on the line.” – Dr Michelle McQuaid, Founder, The Wellbeing Lab

Another hormone triggered as part of our stress response is dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), which McQuaid describes as ‘like Miracle Gro for our wellbeing’. Studies have shown that DHEA acts to moderate the stress response, and that a person’s DHEA-cortisol ratio correlates to their tolerance for stress. 

“Oxytocin [the hormone associated with love, empathy and trust] can also be stimulated through our stress response,” says McQuaid. “That’s when we feel like we’re going to look after each other through a hard time and get to the other side of it as a team.”

Whether this hormonal reaction to stress feels positive or negative often comes down to whether or not we feel in control of our situation, she says.

“When we feel able to respond to [a situation] in a way that turns it into a challenge, a learning opportunity or an opportunity to ask for help from others and create connections, then that stress is more likely to lead to good outcomes for our growth and development.

“When that stress feels overwhelming for us and we feel it’s out of our control and we can’t have an impact on it, it isolates us and cuts us off from other people. That’s when stress is likely to become unhealthy.”

How can employers encourage a culture of good stress?

The fact that healthy stress can be a force for good at work does not mean that employers should go out of their way to pile up their employees with challenging work to drive better productivity and innovation, says McQuaid. Instead, the key to a culture of good stress is ensuring that the stress comes from a meaningful place.

“Meaningful stress means meaningful learning and growth,” she says.

“[We need to ask], ‘What are the things that are actually helping us learn and grow towards our shared goals? As a team, what are we trying to figure out together?’ That way, the stress and anxiety that might come with that actually feels like it has a higher purpose.”

Read HRM’s article ‘How to push employees (without pushing them too far)’.

In order to ensure that there is a meaningful purpose behind stress, she suggests a number of proactive strategies employers can use:

1. Set learning targets as well as performance targets.

“If we’re going to have that learning culture in an organisation, we need to set learning goals. Performance goals can often feel really stressful, because some of it’s in our control, and sometimes it’s not. Whereas learning goals tend to reflect the effort. 

“We’re not suggesting for a moment that we get rid of all performance goals. But when we have learning goals, those are the things that tend to feel within our control.”

2. Normalise stress and struggle.

“Stress and struggle are a part of learning and growth. [Talking about] what’s working well right now, what we are learning and what we can build on helps lower our stress and builds our confidence, because it normalises the fact that we all struggle as part of learning and growth. And we don’t need to be ashamed of it.” 

3. Reflect on past experiences and challenges.

“[Managers] should be helping teams think about where we’ve been stressed or struggled in the past, how we got through that and whether we could use the same strategy now. 

“It’s also important to ask, ‘Why was it worth it?’ Sometimes when you’re in the middle of a stressful moment, and you think, ‘This isn’t worth it,’ remembering that you’ve gotten through hard things before and what you gained from that can also help make that stress meaningful.”

Our stress response is determined by two factors, says McQuaid: our internal mindset and our external circumstances. Employers can take steps to help coach their employees in stress management to help them reframe their attitude, but the onus cannot be put solely on the employee to manage their stress levels.

“To a large extent, yes, our stress response is within our control,” she says.

“However, if we are in a work situation where we have a boss yelling at us or we’re being harassed or we’ve got unachievable job demands – any of those psychosocial risks that workplaces need to be mindful of – then just because I have a healthy stress response, that doesn’t mean that the stress of those circumstances should be discounted, and that organisations should wipe their hands of it.”

Don’t miss out on hearing from Dr Michelle McQuaid on managing psychosocial risks, promoting employee wellbeing and more at this year’s AHRI National Convention and Exhibition in August. Book your spot today.

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Stress and anxiety are often part and parcel of the work environment, but when they become too overwhelming to manage, sometimes leaders or HR need to step in to help.

This infographic, created using insights and advice from the Black Dog Institute, is designed to help HR professionals to spot the signs of stress and anxiety in employees and offer tips for how to manage both.

Signs, symptoms and solutions to keep in mind

The advice in this infographic is general in its nature. If you’re concerned about an employee’s wellbeing or require immediate help yourself, contact an expert medical professional, or call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

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Being overwhelmed is, unfortunately, a common feeling for a lot of people, especially in the era of COVID-19 and remote work.

Most of the time we deal with it or do our best to push it aside and carry on as usual. But being overwhelmed can impact our brains in ways you might not know about.

When we’re overwhelmed our brains are in the wrong gear to effectively make decisions, think clearly or come up with creative or novel solutions to problems.

HRM dives into what’s happening in our brains when we are overwhelmed and how we can get our minds back on track.

What’s happening when we’re overwhelmed?

Being overwhelmed is a fight, flight or freeze response to a situation. 

Animal brains run on reflexes and automated responses to danger – it’s how they survive in the wild. Humans are no different. 

When we’re overwhelmed our brain engages those reflexes and falls back on the evolutionary programming that humans have used since hunter-gatherer times.

This programming causes a few things to happen:

• Our brain stem (colloquially called our reptilian brain) pumps us with adrenaline to face or run from whatever has put us in danger.
• Our limbic system (the part of our brain that includes the hypothalamus, hippocampus and amygdala) floods our emotions to put us in a state of high alert.
• Our frontal lobe (our neocortex) sparks so we can respond quickly to situations, but it hampers our ability to analyse what’s happening. 

While this might seem helpful if we’re facing a deadly threat, it’s not so helpful when our email inbox is overflowing or we’re edging closer to a deadline.

Technology has rapidly evolved over the years but our brains haven’t, so it doesn’t know how to differentiate a stressful deadline from a lion attack. 

While this is a completely natural response to a perceived threat, it could be harming our ability to work effectively. Here are a few examples of how.

1. We stop utilising our unconscious mind

When we’re overwhelmed, we often try to force ourselves to tune out distractions and focus on the task at hand. 

But, according to Dr Alice Boyes, former clinical psychologist and researcher turned author, we could be doing ourselves a disservice by ignoring our unconscious mind. 

“In productivity or hustle culture, there is a lot of emphasis on being focused and undistracted,” says Boyes, who also wrote on this topic for Harvard Business Review.

“However, our default mode network (DMN), which is the part of the brain that’s active when we let our minds wander, is also good at coming up with solutions to problems, having ideas and seeing threads and patterns.”

Our DMN is the area you’re using when you tune out on your morning commute and find yourself at work without really remembering how you got there. This area is commonly related to memory and imagination. It’s also good at ideation, so it can be helpful for creative thinking.

Taking a walk or having a shower are also  good ways to engage your unconscious mind. However, the trick is to not let those great ideas slip away.

“I try to linger in bed for five minutes or so when I wake up,” says Boyes. “I often have good ideas in that period, therefore, I know to be prepared for that.”

“We have experiences of success and what helped us achieve that [in the past] and when we get overwhelmed, we double down on that.” Dr Alice Boyes, author, researcher and former clinical psychologist.  

2. You let your dominant personality take over

Because we often respond to overwhelm by flicking back into our automatic responses, this can trigger our brains into amplifying our more dominant characteristics.

“When people are overwhelmed they become less flexible to match their responses and behaviours to the characteristics of the situation,” says Boyes.

“We have experiences of success and what helped us achieve that [in the past] and when we get overwhelmed, we double down on that.”

For example, someone who is usually a nitpicker might respond to feeling overwhelmed by micromanaging others or become extra demanding. Or a headstrong, stubborn leader could accidentally snap at their coworkers.

To overcome this, Boyes suggests being more aware of your emotions and how you tend to react to the situation. 

“Identify which specific emotion you’re feeling. Then you look for patterns in how you behave, think, and especially how you interact with others when you’re feeling those emotions.”

3. You start thinking you’re weak

There are a variety of reasons we become overwhelmed at work. Maybe we’re unfamiliar with the task. Maybe we have a lot of people relying on us. Perhaps our mental health isn’t in the best state.

Unfortunately, we sometimes treat our own reaction as a weakness. We look at colleagues and think, ‘They have it together, why don’t I?’ It’s the classic case of imposter syndrome. 

This won’t help you, says Boyes. For some, the shame we associate with being overwhelmed leads us to procrastinate and then feel more overwhelmed when we haven’t got the task done. 

For others, thinking they’re weak leads them to add more to their plate.

“People sometimes fear that their weakness will eventually become obvious to others and they need to defend against that. Usually people become extra perfectionistic when they fear their weaknesses will eventually be revealed. 

“For example, [they feel] they’re only ‘safe’ if they get the top mark in their class. If they’re in, say, the top half, that’s not good enough.”

We can break these unhealthy cycles by acknowledging our feelings.

“State the specific emotions you’re feeling, without exaggerating them. Say outloud to yourself, ‘I feel overwhelmed and anxious’ followed by your plan for how you’ll act.” 

You can also practice compassionate self talk. Boyes has written previously about this topic and says not only can it help with the feeling of being overwhelmed, it can also make you more resilient in the long run.

“Self-compassion improves people’s participation in groups and is associated with a more adaptive attitude to failure,” says Boyes in her Harvard Business Review article.

“People who are self-compassionate recover better from psychological knocks, like relationship breakups and career setbacks.”

“People sometimes fear that their weakness will eventually become obvious to others and they need to defend against that.” Dr Alice Boyes, author, researcher and former clinical psychologist.

4. You make bad decisions

Another side effect of being overwhelmed is pushing aside important decisions. 

Part of this can be due to decision fatigue, which means we don’t have the emotional bandwidth to tackle whatever the issue is and instead choose to ignore it.

Similar to reverting to our dominant personality, this can also lead us to fall back on what Boyes calls “decision-making biases”. This could mean choosing the option with an immediate benefit without weighing the long-term options or impacts, or defaulting to the easiest option even if it’s not the best one.

To tackle this, create rules (or heuristics) to help you make better decisions, says Boyes.

“For example, I know I tend to ‘underbuy’, so whenever I am deciding how much to buy, I add 50 per cent. I think I should buy four yogurts, so I buy six,” she says.

“That’s a simple example, but you can create heuristics for all different types of thinking biases, like if you tend to overfocus on what could go wrong, if you tend to overthink before acting, or if you tend to be too picky.”

We’re unlikely to get to a point where our brains don’t ever become overwhelmed. But we can get better at recognising what we lose when we do become overwhelmed, and how we can address that. 

By being aware of how being overwhelmed changes our personality, impacts our thinking and harms our decision making, we can create ways to stop it from reducing our effectiveness at work.  And perhaps, in time, our brains will learn the difference between an overbearing manager and a bear attack.

Emotional intelligence can help us combat feeling overwhelmed, and it’s also an important skill for HR. Hone your EQ with AHRI’s short course.

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According to a report by ADP, an HR and payroll software company, 60 per cent of employees in the Asia Pacific region report feeling stressed at least once a week on average. Australians are even more stressed, with 64 per cent reporting feeling stressed at least once a week. This isn’t too surprising when you consider what we’ve all just lived through.

That same report revealed that Australians are the least likely to discuss their mental health, with more than one third saying they wouldn’t talk about it at work. 

With many employees still carrying the stress of 2020, paired with the huge amount of unpaid overtime they’re doing, it’s worth understanding exactly how to respond to a stress leave request. HRM asked organisational psychologist Dr Amanda Ferguson to share her best tips.

Step 1: Respond to their stress leave request

Stress leave is not a legally mandated type of leave. It is, however, a legitimate reason for an employee to use personal leave under the National Employment Standards. If an employee has run out of sick/personal leave they can use annual or long-service leave instead.

If an employee takes time off to manage their stress under one of the three types of leave mentioned above, they don’t have to tell you their reason for doing so. However, an employer may be within their right to ask for a medical certificate if the leave was taken as sick/personal leave, particularly if they request more than one day off.

When an employee is upfront and says they need to take leave because of stress, Ferguson says you should thank them for being honest and avoid making assumptions about the causes of the stress. Instead, be curious about their experience and open to how you could help.

“Appreciate that they have been upfront and ask, ‘What’s happened?’ Whatever they tell you, stay present and listen [to their response]. [Managing] stress is about recovering from your work day. And if you’re not recovering from your work day, every day, then you starting to become emotionally exhausted.

“If the stress is clearly related to work, then the workplace should probably be compensating the employee. This may not necessarily be a separate ‘paid stress leave’. Perhaps it looks more like time off in lieu.”

How should you approach telling others in the team about why someone has taken time off out of the blue?

Ferguson says you need to take your lead from the employee. If they’re comfortable for others to know, you can use this as a great opportunity to destigmatize workplace conversations around mental health. However, if they’d rather you offer a vague reason for their sudden departure, such as ‘family matters’, you need to respect that.

Also, it’s best not to contact the employee while they are on stress leave as this could aggravate the situation. Instead, you could establish a connection with a friend or family member of the employee who can contact you on the employee’s behalf. 

Step 2: Assess the situation

HR’s first reaction to a stress leave request should be concern, says Ferguson.

“Clearly there is a problem of some sort, so it really is on the employer to make sure the employee feels safe to share what that problem is,” she says.

“If you take an approach of concern and be very open and receptive to what they have to say, they will be more likely to speak up and also want to come back to work later.”

If the request is completely unexpected, Ferguson suggests you attempt to dig a little deeper into the root cause, as respectfully as possible.

“Often an employee will request leave because they are either exhausted, burned out or they might be disengaged and planning to leave. Obviously the reason is going to change the kind of support you need to provide them.”

Time away from the workplace may make the employee realise their stress isn’t work related, perhaps there are some parts of their personal life that are causing them grief. However, even if this is the case, it’s worth conducting your own investigation.

SafeWork NSW suggests completing a risk assessment to identify stress hazards in your workplace. According to a 2020 report by Allianz Insurance, the four biggest causes of stress are usually:

• Ineffective or unfair management
• Poor workplace culture
• Bullying and harassment
• Organisational structural issues

 The management level is a good place to begin your investigation, Ferguson says.

“I would certainly recommend speaking with the employee’s manager and seeing if they’re on the same page. If the employee has come to you and said, ‘I’m overwhelmed and I have too much on my plate,” and their manager says, ‘Oh no, they’re fine’ then clearly there is an issue.

“It then becomes a question of is the manager not hearing their employee’s concerns or does the employee not feel comfortable speaking up?”

It may be that the manager needs some additional training or psychological education to better understand the role they play in creating a psychologically safe work environment, she adds. This training, or ‘psychoeducation’ as she puts it, can help leaders develop tools to become more aware of how employees self-regulate and build resilience.

“Self-regulation is really important at the moment as we deal with so many more external pressures. It’s about knowing ‘This is what I need to do to make sure my psychological health is at its best.’”

How someone self regulates will be different from person to person. For example, some people self-regulate by exercising or making sure they get enough sleep, Ferguson says. HRM recently wrote about the seven different types of rest that we should all be engaging with, so you could also help an employee to build a plan around any areas that might be in deficit.

Step 3: Act to prevent further issues

As a first prevention step, Ferguson suggests normalising taking time off immediately to recoup from sporadic periods of overtime (which, of course, are inevitable from time to time). If someone stayed late on a work call, for example, make sure you acknowledge that the very next day by suggesting they come in later or head off early for the day. If they don’t take the time off there and then, they most likely never will.

When the employee returns from stress leave, Ferguson suggests meeting up with them and offering them the opportunity to bring a support person to make them more comfortable. In this meeting, as a group you could set the employee up with something like a personal situation plan to help them manage their mental health moving forward. This could include information such as:

• Their stress triggers. For example, school holidays might be a hard time for them to focus on work. Or short turnaround periods might cause them to spiral. Knowing this information upfront can help you to plan ahead.
• The signs that indicate that they might be overwhelmed/on the verge of breaking down
• People to contact in case of emergency or when they’re on stress leave
• The appropriate steps to take if they need to request stress leave in the future (i.e. who do they tell? How much notice do they need to give? Who can they hand their work over to and what should that process look like?)
• How they’d like the information to be communicated to their teams

The personal situation plan might also identify personal stressors, if they feel comfortable disclosing them, says Ferguson.

“Let’s say they have a child living with a disability who needs extra care. Maybe that’s worth noting so when they say, ‘I’m struggling to finish this project and care for my child’ you have a procedure in place to deal with that.”

It’s also worth keeping in mind which stakeholders you share the information about an employee’s stress leave request with. For example, if that employee is up for a promotion into a new team, but the manager of that team knows they took stress leave a few months ago, this could skew their decision. They might think, ‘So and so won’t be able to cope with the pressure’ or ‘They’re not cut out for this type of work’ when in reality, we’re all stressed at times and just because we struggled at one point, that won’t mean we always will. So try and share this information only with those who need it most and remind leaders that employee stress levels will ebb and flow.

Remote work has hidden a lot of the usual signs of burnout and stress from employers, so leaders need to make sure they’re creating an environment where employees can speak up about what is causing them stress.

“You cannot fully protect an employee, they’re always going to have outside stressors that impact work, but you can make them feel comfortable about telling you when they need extra support.”

Learn more about helping your employees manage stress with AHIR’s Mental Health at Work short course.

The post How to respond to a stress leave request appeared first on HRM online.

We all know about the long-term impacts of overworking. It makes us fatter. It makes us more unhappy. It diminishes our mental resilience. It ends our marriages. It even kills us.

For many, these facts are just words on a page. We have to personally experience a combination of the above in order for it to have any real impact.

This happened to Jeremy Britton. In the early 2000s he was working as a financial planner for one of the big four banks. As you might imagine, his hours were insane. It wasn’t uncommon for him to clock a 76-hour week. He was at the height of his career and the money and praise he received justified such gruelling hours – or so he thought.

In 2005 his team shrunk from 10 to six people and rather than hiring replacements his boss told them they’d just have to work 10 per cent harder.

“We didn’t really notice it at first. It was like that analogy of throwing a frog into water. If it’s already boiling it will jump right out, but if you increase the temperature little by little, it doesn’t realise,” says Britton.

His diet disintegrated along with his physical health. And his marriage wasn’t far behind. He was working into the evenings and on the weekends, chasing that adrenaline hit so many of us get from ‘working hard’.

At just 33 years old, he suffered a heart attack – and he didn’t even know it had happened.

“I was feeling run-down and thought I was coming down with a flu or bad indigestion. When I had heart pains, I thought it was just heartburn. So, I popped Quick-Eze all day.”

After months of feeling ill, he finally went to the doctor and was told he’d suffered a heart attack.

“My surgeon warned me I’d face another heart attack within 12 months if I didn’t change my lifestyle. And the second one, he said, would probably be fatal.”

You might think this shocking news immediately jolted Britton out of his overworking habits. But addiction is not so easily overcome. His plan was to leave the doctor’s office and go straight back to work to tie up loose ends and hand over ‘important tasks’. Thankfully, his doctor wouldn’t allow it.

It would take some time before Britton would be able to untangle himself from his complicated relationship with work. His doctor often had to call someone at his office to make sure he wasn’t working over their agreed hours (he often was). The health scare was just the beginning of a long road to recovery.

“My heart attack was followed by a divorce. My relationship was so bad by that stage. I hadn’t been there for my partner. I was always patting myself on the back saying, ‘I’ve bought this big beautiful house and I’ve got my wife all these beautiful things: cars, diamonds, international holidays.’ But, you know, she was going on those holidays without me.

“When I eventually did have to stop work for a couple of weeks, I basically laid on the bed for the first three days. I didn’t know what to do because work was so much part of my life. It wasn’t just where I got my pay, it’s also where I got my social interaction and my pats on the back. Work had become everything to me.”

Worked to the bone

Overworking is nothing new, but COVID-19 has made it common. In order to survive financial turmoil, organisations are making deep cuts and asking employees to maintain or increase their regular output with fewer resources. And working from home makes it that much harder to switch off at the day’s end.

“When we talk about overworking, that means having such a high workload that you feel you’re constantly under pressure, and that work spills over into your non-work time, like the evenings or weekends,” says Stacey Parker, senior lecturer and centre director at the Centre for Business and Organisational Psychology, University of Queensland.

Parker specialises in occupational health psychology and work motivation, with a particular interest in managing workplace stress and improving employee performance.

“This sort of job stress has serious implications for peoples’ mental and physical health, as well as their motivation towards their work, and their commitment to their job overall. There have even been links between overworking and the development of cardiovascular disease.”

A 2010 study of over 10,000 civil servants in London found that employees who averaged three or more hours of overtime (when a seven-hour day is standard) are 60 per cent more at risk of heart-related problems. Different research from the University College London showed those working over 55 hours per week are 33 per cent more likely to have a stroke than those working 35-40 hours per week.

So Britton is not alone. If anything, he’s somewhat lucky.

Japanese journalist Miwa Sado died in 2013 from heart failure after clocking around 156 hours of overtime the month before her death – she was only 31 years old.

Mortiz Erhardt was interning in London at Bank of America Merrill Lynch when he was 21. He was averaging 20-hour workdays, according to Reuters, and died from a seizure while in the shower.

Mita Diran, a 24-year-old copy editor from Indonesia, reportedly threw back energy drinks in order to be able to work through the evenings. Just hours before she slipped into a coma, from which she would never awake, she tweeted: “30 hours of working and still going strooong”.

These days, overworking can feel part of the job description. People who’ve taken a pay cut or witnessed redundancies due to the pandemic are often compelled to work themselves to the bone to prove they’re worth keeping.

We were already living in a state of chronic urgency, but COVID-19 has accelerated that, says Dermot Crowley, founder of Adapt Productivity and author of the upcoming book Urgency: strategies to control urgency, reduce stress and increase productivity. 

“We have a culture of ‘everything needed to be done yesterday’. And when people are working in that state for too long, the stress levels go up and they burn out,” he says.

It’s not just the act of overworking that’s bad for us, the ripple effects – such as a lack of sleep – can have equally devastating effects. Researchers from the university of Groningen in the Netherlands studied the brains of rats and found that when the rats didn’t get enough sleep, their hippocampus – the part of the brain that regulates motivation, emotion, learning, and memory – shrunk. When hypothesising how the results would affect humans, the researchers said a lack of sleep could affect our learning abilities and mood.

Burnout has also been linked in many studies to an increase in workplace accidents. For example, a 2013 study of 915 Taiwanese public transport drivers found a direct link between the two. More alarming is that burnout is associated with more traffic accidents in people who don’t drive for a living. A study published in May in the journal Stress & Health looked at 509 schoolteachers and found that depersonalisation (emotional hardening and detachment from work) was linked with an up to a 119 per cent increase in risk of being involved in a car accident.

While individuals’ health should be of the most concern, asking employees to work very hard for long periods doesn’t even make sense from a business perspective.

“We have a culture of ‘everything needed to be done yesterday’. And when people are working in that state for too long, the stress levels go up and they burn out.” –Dermot Crowley, founder, Adapt Productivity

Research from the UK’s Department of Business Innovation and Skills shows our individual wellbeing is lower when the demands of our jobs and personal lives are high. It points to empirical literature that suggests higher wellbeing levels can lead to improved cognitive abilities, such as increased creativity and problem-solving skills. There’s also a strong correlation between employees’ wellbeing and their workplace attitudes, such as their willingness to be cooperative and collaborative.

Perhaps most importantly, the research found that high levels of wellbeing can help people recover from illness faster, gain more energy and improve their cardiovascular health. So it’s not just that overworking is bad for you, actively improving your wellbeing tips the scales in the other direction.

While this is certainly interesting, the researchers are quick to point out that wellbeing and performance and aren’t inextricably linked.

“For example, raised levels of creativity and improved social interaction is only likely to generate better employee performance in jobs with a substantial degree of autonomy and those that involve teamwork or customer interaction,” the report reads.

To overcome this hurdle, Crowley suggests employers think differently about work and productivity. He separates the latter into two different types. The first is personal productivity. Most productivity advice you hear addresses this type – such as tips about getting more out of your day, being organised, getting on top of your tasks, and so on. But the second type is a little more complex. He calls it “productivity culture” and this can easily become toxic if it’s not strategically managed. Britton’s former workplace would be a good example of this.

Another example might be a work culture that has silent expectations around working past the official clock-off time. While they never explicitly tell staff to do this, there are subtle cues from management that encourage this behaviour, such as publicly rewarding those who are always seen to be staying back late or mentioning that ‘so and so’ is such a hard worker because they came in on the weekend.

Essentially, a toxic productivity culture is one where the bar is set at an unhealthy level and employers aren’t meeting their people in the middle.

Clear expectations

It’s not just that overwork hurts organisations in the long run, it doesn’t even help them in the short term. Overworked employees are more likely to lash out, make mistakes, lose focus and make bad decisions. On top of that, most managers are incapable of knowing if someone is actually overworking.

Research from Erin Reid, assistant professor of organisational behaviour at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, found that managers could rarely discern between those who actually worked 80-hour weeks and those who simply pretended to.

Reid’s study looked at employees working in a high-profile consulting firm. The employees (mostly male) who logged 80-hour weeks even though they were actually working around 50-60 hours were still completing their tasks, just like those actually working 80 hours. The pretenders were receiving recognition and promotions as a result.

A separate group of employees in that same office were transparent about wanting reduced hours in order to have a better work/life balance. They were given what they asked for, but they weren’t showered with the same rewards as those working 80 hours and those pretending to.

Reid’s data showed employees were capable of completing their work in 50-60 hours. Organisations that put the image of an “ideal worker” on a pedestal like this are shooting themselves in the foot. Instead, employers should encourage staff to work more strategically, rather than just more.

People require different levels of ‘cognitive closure’ – the desire for definitive answers and guidelines to avoid ambiguity. Some are happy to operate within more ambiguous environments while others have a strong preference for absolute clarity.

However, when faced with pressure, tight deadlines or mountains of work, everyone tends to slide up the scale. The more stressed we are, the more cognitive closure we desire. During a time of crisis, giving both clear expectations about what’s required and how long should be given to it is a simple way to alleviate employee stress.

Another part of working strategically is having a wellbeing framework in place that protects your people. This is an issue during the pandemic, because in times of financial crisis wellbeing initiatives can be the first thing to go.

In a research paper titled Corporate Philosophy: Making Stress and Wellbeing a Priority, researchers Emily Livorsi and Olivia Wallis say this frequently happens when organisations don’t have KPIs attached to their stress and wellbeing outcomes. When it comes time to make cuts, these seemingly non-revenue generating programs are axed.

To overcome this, they suggest conducting a needs assessment prior to implementing any wellbeing program to identify the gaps in your organisations. This way you can tailor your approach to your peoples’ specific stressors and challenges.

Wallis and Livorsi say a comprehensive needs assessment will include analysis through “some combination of survey administration, interviews, and focus groups”. With this data in hand, you figure out what level of intervention is required.

They break it down into three categories: primary, secondary and tertiary.

“Primary interventions are often preventative and proactive, where the purpose is to reduce stress risk and maximize opportunities for employees to have high levels of wellbeing,” the paper reads.

“The role of secondary interventions is to improve employees’ chances of coping with stressful situations that are present. Finally, tertiary interventions are reactive in nature and are used to treat symptoms (e.g., chronic stress) already present in the work environment.”

Leadership impact

Crowley says it is crucial managers are checking in on staff rather than checking up on them. When they micromanage, it’s clear there’s a lack of trust, he says, and that can have the opposite of its intended effect.

And this shouldn’t just be happening on an individual level – trust needs to be a value that’s held across the organisation. For example, prior to COVID-19 many employers strongly believed remote work would diminish productivity levels, however after being forced to trial it, they quickly discovered that output was soaring in many cases. Without trust from both sides, this wouldn’t have been possible.

Of course, there will always be managers who completely miss the mark. After getting his heart surgery, Britton was advised he could only return to work on a part-time load. His manager was having none of it.

“My boss said, ‘You can’t do that. We can’t hold the position for you.’ He was giving me grief saying he was going to fire me.”

When Britton relayed this news, his doctor got on the phone.

“The doctor rang the boss and said, ‘If this guy dies in your workplace, are you going to take care of his family? Because I don’t care who you are or what rank you are in the company. You are not going to be responsible for this man’s life. I am. So, you take your orders from me.'”

But we can’t all rely on having a medical professional to go to bat for us. The fact of the matter is that employers simply need to respect peoples’ non-work hours, says Parker. And HR professionals play a huge role in cementing that expectation.

To make this happen, Parker encourages HR to think differently about the tools they might usually reach for to remedy overworking, especially during the pandemic.

“I’ve noticed some psych and HR professionals seem to think employee engagement and motivation is always the answer. We think we just have to make our workers happy and motivated and the rest will fall into place. But you can’t just focus on the work experience. They’re a whole person; they’ve got a whole life outside of work. I think the most important thing you can do to support them is give them uninterrupted time and space outside of work hours.”

Parker refers to research which shows that while engagement often eases the pressure valve on employees in the short-term, six to 12 months later burnout will catch up with them.

“People can burn out when they’re passionate about their work. Passion takes a lot of energy,” she says.

She adds that giving staff more autonomy over their work is a great way to help ease burnout.

“For people who have a really high workload or high job demands, if they feel like they have control over how they go about organising and managing their work – such as when and how they do it, the pace of it and so on – that’s hugely protective for not only the health outcomes, but also motivation and performance.”

The doctor rang the boss and said, ‘If this guy dies in your workplace, are you going to take care of his family? Because I don’t care who you are or what rank you are in the company. You are not going to be responsible for this man’s life. I am.” – Jeremy Britton

The Department of Business Innovation and Skills research paper backs this up, with results indicating that when employees participate in decision-making and have autonomy over their roles, their personal wellbeing increases. The paper said other protective factors include variety in work, clarity around expectations, feedback on performance, a sense of job security and clear career prospects.

Parker says that during the pandemic, where possible, employers should also be thinking about how to lower the bar on their expectations.

“I know we’re in the middle of a crisis. It can be appealing to throw what we know about all those good things out the window because in crisis mode, but we’ve been in crisis mode since February. People can only take so much.”

And in case you think leave might be the answer, Parker says beating burnout isn’t as simple as telling staff to take a well-deserved holiday. She cites research which suggests the benefits of a holiday only last two-four weeks. After this, we return to our pre-holiday burnout state.

“You can’t keep going and going and going and then rely on a holiday a couple of weeks per year as your way of disconnecting or recharging. You need replenishing daily or weekly habits that help you disconnect outside of work.” (See break out box for some of Parker’s personal habits).

Taking matters into your own hands

Empowering staff to take on a manageable workload while still delivering on organisational outcomes can be a hard balance to strike. To keep the lights on, employers often feel compelled to demand more from their staff.

The harsh reality of this is reflected in the ending of Britton’s story. He wasn’t able to truly slow his life down until five years after his heart attack, when he called it quits with his high-powered banking gig. He went out on his own to get the work/life balance he desired.

He now owns a financial planning firm and determines his own hours (24 hours per week). He stays on top of his workload by outsourcing some of the smaller tasks and enjoys getting to spend more quality time with his children.

“Working 60 per cent less hours, I thought my income was going to drop 60 per cent. So, I sold off my house and bought a little beach shack. I downsized my life significantly. I just wanted to focus on my health. But my income only ended up dropping by 10 per cent. If you’ve got eight hours to complete a task, it will take eight hours. If you’ve got four hours for the same task, it will probably take four hours,” says Britton.

This seems like powerful proof of the above research that suggests overwork and bottom-line success are not linked. Sixty per cent fewer hours every week is a tremendous amount of time. Ten per cent less income is insignificant in comparison – that’s a trade most people would be willing to make. Britton also has advice for HR professionals and employers.

“Most people drive a car. So, they understand if you drive it at 120kms all day, every day, eventually something’s going to wear out. In the workplace, it’s not enough to say, ‘Look, we have an employee assistance program.’ Because people are usually past the point of burnout before they think to contact a psychologist. Instead, that sort of stuff should be integrated into your culture.”

This article originally appeared in the September 2020 edition of HRM magazine.

AHRI surveyed 150 HR leaders on the impact the pandemic was having on their workloads in the latest HR Wellbeing report. Download your copy.

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In early 2019 a business story went viral around the globe in social and traditional media. This wasn’t a typical story about an unexpected bankruptcy or a business executive behaving badly, and nor was it a tale of insider trading or bawdy boardroom antics. Rather, the uproar was about a job interview in the UK that went spectacularly wrong.

The job applicant was young communications professional Olivia Bland, the business was a bespoke travel software firm. The “brutal two hour interview”, as Bland reported via Twitter, “tore both me and my writing to shreds”, “called me an underachiever”, “felt like being sat in a room with my abusive ex” and left her in tears. 

Then, as if the car-crash interview wasn’t too much, Bland was offered the job. She very publicly declined.

The coverage brought into question the use of ‘stress interviews’, also known as ‘quick-fire interviews’, which, for better or worse, had been gaining in popularity in certain industries. But this case, and several others, had appeared to prove at an anecdotal level that stress interviews can be very poor practice, particularly in the hands of an insensitive or incompetent practitioner.

Anecdotal evidence is one thing, but a full academic research study is another. When researchers at the National Taipei University of Technology published their research on the effectiveness of stress interviews, in AHRI’s Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, their findings reflected common sense.

“Stress interviews can help interviewers effectively measure and evaluate job applicants’ emotion regulation in highly stressful settings,” the team reported. “Results show that there was a positive relationship between interviewers’ use of stress interviews and the interviewers’ accuracy in assessing applicants’ emotion regulation abilities, but that there was a negative relationship between interviewers’ use of stress interviews and applicants’ perceptions of interviewer friendliness and organisational attraction.”

In other words, a stress interview does help in assessing a job applicant’s behaviour under very specific circumstances, but the use of such an interview style reflects badly on the interviewer and on the organisation itself.

Bullies and punks

Then there is the blunt analysis offered by Liz Ryan, founder and CEO of Human Workplace, who wrote in an article for Forbes: “Like most lame HR fads, [stress interviewing] has stuck around way too long. Stress interviewing entails putting a job candidate under stress by asking a lot of questions quickly, challenging the job-seeker to defend their positions and generally behaving as though the job-seeker has to prove their worth at every second of the interview… Stress interviewing is a brainless and ineffective technique used by bullies and punks.”

After such feedback, it would be correct to assume that stress interviewing is no longer used by any reputable organisation, right? Actually, that would be wrong. Before accepting her current role as principal recruiter at Deputy, Emer McCann applied for a role at a well-known organisation and had to endure a stress interview.

“My friend and I both interviewed,” McCann says. “I made it through to the final stage and pulled out because I realised it wasn’t for me. The interview process made me realise that I had to pretend to be somebody different.

“My friend secured the role and ended up leaving nine months later because she realised she was just trying to be somebody she wasn’t during the stress interview. The company spent all that time training her, and she left.”

“Stress interviewing is a brainless and ineffective technique used by bullies and punks.” – Liz Ryan

Taken to extremes

Katriina Tahka, CEO of A-HA (A Human Agency), says stress interviewing “seems a bit warped” and, when taken to extremes, could lead to workplace bullying and harassment claims. “While you definitely don’t want to just ask questions that are predictable, that doesn’t mean you need to push it to a point of stress.”

Questions that test cognitive agility needn’t be confrontational or thrown at the applicant in a way intended to cause stress. They can instead be conversational, says Tahka.

“You might ask questions around things like accountability, such as, ‘Tell me about a time you willingly owned up to a mistake you made, and how did owning up to it benefit you?’ You’re testing their ability to think on their feet. Can they be asked a question they don’t have a prepared response to, and answer it in a sensible and logical way?”

Perhaps there is logic behind the stress interview, says Tahka, in the selection for roles that offer moments of high stress, such as nursing or emergency services. But it still must be appreciated that the purpose of a job interview and its power imbalance – the degree of nervousness and stress that comes pre-packaged – already provides such a test. Getting to know the real person more likely involves helping them to relax.

Variables of success

McCann agrees there may be a time and place for some form of stress interviews. But success or failure will depend on many variables, such as interviewer competence, the applicants’ personality and the characteristics of the role.

 It’s important to remember that research has proven that even if the stress interview is a success, the very fact that it was conducted in such a way will mean the applicant is less likely to want to work for the organisation.

“It comes back to the question of how much you really get to know a person in such a scenario, as opposed to simply learning that they’re good at interviewing,” says McCann.

“The upside of a stress interview for the business is that they see a small example of how a candidate handles pressure and stress. But the downside is that when you offer the candidate a role, some will decline because of the interview. And for those who are not offered a role, you’re creating a negative experience. That creates bad publicity and bad branding for your company.” 

This originally appeared in the August 2019 edition of HRM magazine.

Selecting the best person for the job is a critical skill. Understand how to create an effective selection process with AHRI’s short course ‘Recruitment and workplace relations’.

The post Stress interviews actually work – then they blow up in your face appeared first on HRM online.

Tragic stories involving fly-in fly-out (FIFO) workers, including recent suicides, have raised questions about what can be done and what responsibilities employers have towards such workers.

Health and safety risk

In January, the ABC reported a spate of suicides in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Anecdotally, we know employers are seeing increasing numbers of stress claims, including more extreme claims involving attempted suicide and sexual assault, some of which have the potential to be regarded as work-related.

Workplace stress can give rise to work-related injuries and may lead to protracted and costly legal action such as:

• WorkCover applications seeking statutory entitlements.
• Common law actions seeking damages (for example, staff claiming that their injury was caused by their employer’s negligence); and
• Adverse action claims.

The fatigue caused by working what can sometimes be punishing FIFO rosters is a known health and safety risk.

A recent matter we were involved in showed how employers can (sometimes inadvertently) worsen an employee’s stress levels. A FIFO worker on a demanding roster had attempted suicide. On returning to work after one week’s rest, he was handed what he regarded as an even tougher roster than he previously had. The employer then gave him a choice: work the roster or leave.

Key issues to consider

Such approaches make it difficult for employers to prove they’ve taken reasonable steps to accommodate stressed workers.

Here are some of the key issues employers must consider.

Communication: Where employers are aware that a FIFO worker is struggling with mental illness exacerbated by their roster, they should consult and communicate with the employee, rehabilitation providers and medical experts, and the union (if involved). Where applicable, employers may also need to notify their insurer.

Understanding the illness or injury: Employers have a duty of care to ensure an employee’s health and safety, and that of their colleagues. It’s not unreasonable to ask for more information about the medical condition an employee is suffering from. Understanding the true nature of the illness or injury is not just about covering yourself, it’s about providing a best way forward for all parties.

Respecting privacy and confidentiality: FIFO workers in particular worry about the stigma that may result from stress claims. They fear it will follow them if they change roles, but stay in the industry. If an employer is aware an employee is suffering from a stress-related issue, then respecting the employee’s privacy and confidentiality is important. Employers must consider their record-keeping around stress claims to ensure confidentiality. This must be balanced against the responsibility to try to reduce the stigma of stress conditions and to educate the workforce about mental illness.

Exploring reasonable adjustments: Are there any adjustments that can be made to accommodate the employee? Rostering has emerged as a key issue in stress claims made by FIFO workers. Employers who try to accommodate stressed employees by placing them on a less intensive roster would be making a “reasonable adjustment”.

If an adjustment is “reasonable” (which may involve a cost benefit analysis), it should be made. But if the adjustment imposes an unjustifiable hardship on the employer, it need not be made. For example, an interstate FIFO worker requesting to work only Monday to Friday and to return home every weekend.

This article originally appeared in HRM magazine’s April 2019 edition.

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Stress affects everyone differently. How we react to stress varies as well. Indeed, just focussing on the fact that stress is bad for you will be bad for you. And it’s because of this that positive psychology practitioner Alison Earl says what we need to focus on is not stress itself but our reaction to stress.

“I think that the message that stress is bad is missing a critical layer, which is our beliefs around stress and how they shape our experience can affect us more,” Earl says.

Long term effects

In a recent study from the Association for Psychological Science, researchers found that stress has lingering effects and can dramatically affect people’s health over time.

Each day of an eight day period the researchers asked participants if they felt a number of 13 things, such as nervous, worthless, that everything was an effort, irritable – essentially the gamut of how people react to stress. They were asked to rate each feeling on a five point scale ranging from zero (none of the time) to four (all of the time). This measured their negative affect (bad or unhealthy mood, essentially).

During the same eight day period, the researchers also asked for yes or no answers to whether or not the following things occurred:

• Almost having an argument but avoiding it
• A stressful event at work or school
• A stressful event at home
• Experiencing race, gender, or age discrimination
• Having something bad happen to a close friend or relative
• Having anything else bad or stressful happen in the last 24 hours

The researchers added up how many stressors there were and then made a daily average. They also eliminated days where stressors occurred because a key thing they were trying to test was the hypothesis that “people who experienced higher levels of negative affect in response to a stressor the day after it occurs reported increases in physical health problems, including more chronic conditions and functional limitations later in life”.

In other words, people who are unable to shake off stress from the day before would have more chronic health problems than those who could. To make this more robust, they took into account previous chronic conditions (which they define as things such as heart disease, cancer, joint aches and more).

The researchers grouped middle aged participants and surveyed them ten years apart. They were specifically looking at the connection between lingering stress and chronic conditions. The idea here is that those who are continuously stressed would develop chronic conditions.

The results showed the hypothesis was right and “increased levels of lingering negative affect significantly predicted each physical health outcome 10 years later”.

ROAR!

As a person who tends to stress out on the daily, whether that be over traffic, deadlines or meetings, I found this research only added to my stress levels. However Earl says the key to overcoming stress is by removing it as a barrier, and instead utilising it in a positive way.

“Leveraged stress is a powerful driver of performance, connection and growth, both professionally and personally,” she says.

That leverage can come from mindset techniques such as the intervention ROAR, which Earl developed.

• Recognise
• Owning the opportunity
• Activate the energy
• Recharge and reward

“ROAR is a performance related tool in terms of activating that energy that comes with stress towards something that is helpful and gets us the right sort of outcome,” she says.

‘Recognise’ involves knowing and acknowledging when you’re feeling stressed, and choosing to see it as an opportunity.

‘Owning the opportunity’ means deciding to use that stress positively while ‘activating the energy’ means using the adrenaline that comes with stress as a driver for energy, and the oxytocin that comes with stress as a driver for compassion.

The ‘recharge and reward’ is crucial. Even if you try to make stress a positive thing, it’s still physically and mentally taxing. Giving yourself time to rest after a stressful period, and rewarding yourself for a job well done, means that your stress won’t become chronic and that you’ll be more easily able to see and use it positively in the future.

Not only would a method like this seem to avoid the lingering negative affect mentioned in the study above, Earl says there are numerous benefits to harnessing techniques like ROAR.

“People who think of stress as an enhancement are better off in almost every sense, they’re healthier, they’re happier and they perform at optimal levels.”

This has been further researched and spoken about by health psychologist Kelly McGonigal.

HRM has written about McGonigal’s argument that stress is good for you. The research, which she references in her TED Talk, is called ‘Rethinking stress: the role of mindsets in determining the stress response’.

When someone goes through something distressing, cortisol, adrenaline and oxytocin are released. Cortisol and adrenaline lead to the physical effects we’re all familiar with: your heart rate quickens, you break out in sweat and your blood vessels constrict. Oxytocin on the other hand is the chemical that is released during intimate moments like hugs or when a woman gives birth. It can create a feeling of compassion.

McGonigal says that just by rethinking your approach to stress, by focussing on the healing and compassionate aspect of stress, then you can have better health outcomes.

“Your heart has receptors for this hormone, and oxytocin helps heart cells regenerate and heal from any stress-induced damage. This stress hormone strengthens your heart,” Mcgonigal says.

“And the cool thing is that all of these physical benefits of oxytocin are enhanced by social contact and social support.

“So when you reach out to others under stress, either to seek support or to help someone else, you release more of this hormone, your stress response becomes healthier, and you actually recover faster from stress.”

Stress creates camaraderie

“Stress drives people in two directions. In more toxic environments it leads to blaming, mistrust and isolation. However if we can use it as a source of common experience and common humanity it can 100 per cent drive compassion, camaraderie and courage,” Earl says.

This last point is what organisations should want for their workplaces because “it also reduces our own sense of hopelessness, gives a greater sense of self efficacy, it can even eliminate the impact of traumatic events on health and longevity when we take the positive behaviour approach to stress,” Earl says.

Let’s not be too positive about stress

However realising whether or not a stressor requires or even warrants you trying to turn it into something positive is an important aspect of changing your approach to stress.

“I wouldn’t recommend everyone implores a technique like ROAR if it’s just a minor stressor which isn’t that important to them, so in that case, the ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’ is a good way to go.”

However you react to it, one thing is true. Stressors are a fact of work.

“I think the reality is that a meaningful life is a more stressed out life. I don’t think it’s possible to engage in meaningful work, take pride in what you’re doing without stressors,” Earl says.

“However we want to be challenged, not threatened.”  

If you are facing chronic stress then use this Lifeline guide, ‘Overcoming Stress,’ or contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

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