Danni in the Dark: Stressful Stats about Stress

As a Business Psychologist and Business Coach I find the topic of Resilience and Stress Management arising consistently with my work and clients.

With the Government releasing the following statistics, we can start to understand why: 526,000 workers suffering from work-related stress, depression or anxiety (new or long-standing) in 2016/17, and these are just the numbers we know about. 12.5 million working days were lost due to work-related stress, depression or anxiety in that same year. Workload causes 44% of work-related stress, anxiety and depression.

So the impacts of stress on business are obvious: high absenteeism, poor motivation, high staff turnover and poor performance. But what about the impact on our bodies and lifestyles? The effects on the human body are vast and impact on all components of our person including our bodies, our minds and our behaviour.

Physical manifestations of stress

• Sleep disturbances
• Headaches
• Gastrointestinal upset
• Raised blood pressure / cardiovascular disease

Intellectual impacts of stress

• Loss of concentration
• Lack of motivation
• Difficulty with thought process and poor decision making
• Loss of memory

Emotional impacts of stress

• Anxiety and irritability
• Depression
• Fluctuating emotions

Behavioural impacts of stress

• Substance misuse (including alcohol and drugs)
• Decreased libido
• Inappropriate display of behaviour
• Isolation

So you can see that consistent and continued stress is known to have some very serious and disturbing consequences. The point of this article is to raise awareness of the impact that work-related stress has on humans, not just the impact on business. It is fundamental we look after our employees in order to keep a healthy and engaged workforce who don't feel the detrimental effect of work-related stress.