Pixabay
As everyone who has held a job knows, work can sometimes be stressful. In fact, the biggest source of stress for adults in America is workplace stress.
So, with April being National Stress Awareness Month, the folks over at workplace data platform Comparably conducted a very in-depth study which covers some of the biggest issues regarding the stress American employees face in the workplace today.
Participants in the Comparably study were asked the follwing six questions which resulted in 20,944 responses.
• What’s your biggest stressor at work?
• Do you feel burnt out at work?
• How important is work-life balance, compared with other professional benefits (compensation, advancement, stability) at this stage of your career?
• What’s your biggest fear at work?
• What are your biggest work distractions?
• Does your office have space to take naps and/or a culture that supports napping during work hours?
Go ahead and answer the questions yourself and read on to see how you compare to the average American when it comes to workplace stress.
Pexels
Is your biggest stressor at work your commute? A bad manager?
According to the study, unclear goals actually cause more stress than anything else in the workplace – and it wasn’t even close.
• Unclear goals – 41%
• Commute – 16%
• Bad manager – 16%
• Difficult co-worker – 14%
• Too long hours – 13%
Broken down by sex, 43% of men and 37% of women said “unclear goals” were the number one workplace stressor. When broken down by department type, executives, administrators, and customer support wre still unanimous with “unclear goals” causing the most stress.
Other important findings include…
• More than half of both men and women feel burnt out.
• Almost two-thirds of Hispanic/Latinos and Asian/Pacific Islanders feel burnt out at work, beating the average for all employees.
• Workers with just a high school education under their belts feel the most burnout among education levels at 57%.
• Entry-level workers report burnout most often among experience levels.
• When departments are broken down by gender, in almost every case men report more burnout than women.
iStockphoto
• Fear of a stress breakdown at work affects one-quarter of all respondents.
• Becoming stagnant is employees’ biggest fear in the workplace (45%).
• Interruptions by other co-workers and the boss were the biggest distractions.
• The 18-to-25 age group chose social media/internet distractions as their biggest waster of time.
• Just over one-quarter of men and one-fifth of women say they are encouraged or allowed to take naps during their workday.
View the full results of this very lengthy and in-depth study on workplace stress at Comparably.com.