Brits most stressed workers in world

Workplace stress has reached a four-year high with British workers being the most stressed compared to colleagues in some of the world’s biggest economies, a new report has found.

A four-year study of 60,000 workers in six countries showed that the UK's stress level has risen by 10% since 2008, making it the highest out of the countries surveyed.

According to the Kenexa High Performance Institute, the UK's stress level (35%) is higher than Brazil (34%), Germany (33%), the United States (32%) and double that of China and India (both 17%).

The Stress: What's the Impact for Organisations? study - outlines the prevalence of stress, its physical and psychological consequences, who is at risk and what leaders and HR practitioners can do to reduce stress levels.

It identified the main causes of employee stress as work-life conflict, poor leadership and management behaviour, lack of job security, lack of team cohesiveness, lack of cooperation and dissatisfaction with the level of pay.

Perhaps crucially, it noted the effects of the economic downturn were still being felt.

In organisations where staff had been made redundant, the average employee stress level was nearly 40%, compared to just 25% for organisations which hadn't made layoffs in the same period.

Workers in the healthcare sector have the highest level of stress but those in the public sector, financial services and retail have seen the largest increases in stress since 2008.

Employees in high-tech manufacturing report the least stress.

In terms of job role, frontline service and production workers have the most stress; upper and middle managers have the least.

Men and women experience roughly equal levels of stress, though employees aged 55-64 report the highest levels of stress.

Dr. Rena Rasch, research manager at the Kenexa High Performance Institute, explained there had been a marked increase in workplace stress in every country, industry and job type, to the extent that it is now higher than at any time in the last four years.

"High stress levels increase absenteeism and decrease productivity," she said.

"For individuals, stress causes sleep deprivation, headaches, high blood pressure and greater susceptibility to illness, which lowers well-being and increases the chance of burn out.

"HR practitioners and leaders need to understand the root causes of stress, and who is most at risk, so they can target the right stress-reducing initiatives at the right people," she added.

Dr Rasch suggested that focus groups and interviews could find out what support employees wanted while leaders also needed to be honest with and sympathetic to their employees.