Employees feeling overworked
Survey results show Atlantic Canadians leave their job due to stress 21 per cent of the time
Atlantic Canadians facing mountains of work on the job are among the majority of Canadians who feel overworked, according to a survey done by the job-hunting website Monster.
In late June, Monster Canada surveyed 1,057 Canadians using LegerWeb, an online panel with about 475,000 members nationally.
The results are sobering for business owners and managers eager to retain their staff and keep productivity up.
Nationally, almost six in 10 Canadian workers, 58 per cent, reported feeling overworked and one in four said they had left a job due to stress.
The good news for Atlantic Canadian employers is people in this region are among the least likely to feel overworked. Only 52 per cent of Atlantic Canadians felt they were overworked compared to 64 per cent in Quebec, 61 per cent of Ontarians, and 57 per cent of people living in the Prairies.
The mecca for those feeling good about their workload is apparently British Columbia, with only 41 per cent of people feeling overworked. Albertans were the second-last most likely group to feel overworked.
The bad news is that feeling better about the workload doesn’t necessarily translate into sticking with a job.
Despite being much less likely to say they are overworked, Atlantic Canadians were still as likely to leave their jobs due to stress as people in La Belle Province. Both Atlantic Canadians and Quebecers reported they had left a job due to stress 21 per cent of the time.
And British Columbians, who were least likely to report being overworked, were the most likely to report having left a job due to stress.
“Stress comes in all shapes and sizes at work,” said Angela Payne, general manager for Monster Canada, in a statement. “To avoid the possibility of employees seeking greener pastures elsewhere, when possible, employers should consider taking steps to establish more sustainable workloads for employees and consider employee engagement programs that keep motivation high during busy times.”
But, clearly, the so-stressed-I-could-explode feeling is about a lot more than just having to deal with the piles of work. And Lauren Florko, a doctoral student who has been studying workplace stress for about a decade, agrees.
According to her, what contributes to angst on the job is a lot more complex.
She should know. Florko studied about 700 people for her thesis, “A Basic Psychological Needs Model of Workplace Stress: A Diary Study,” which she is going to defend at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax this autumn.
Although the findings from that thesis have yet to be published, Florko said in an interview the three basic things an employee needs to be able to deal with workplace stress are: competency and help gaining more skills; a feeling of being in control on the job; and social supports.
“We need to ensure we have employees who don’t feel out of control,” she said. “It can be that they are under appreciated in their roles.”
The workplace stress expert suggests that businesses provide more training to their employees to help them gain the skills they need, allow them flexibility in their work schedules, and provide them with an opportunity to offer up suggestions on how work is to be done to feel more in control. Meetings and the development of teams can also help to build a strong sense of community at work, she said.
Losing employees due to stress is a big cost for Canadian business.
“Stress costs Canadian companies $6 billion a year,” said Florko. “That can be direct and indirect costs. Direct costs can be absenteeism or presenteeism where people are there but not doing any work, just pushing pencils around.”
Even just within Atlantic Canada, not all employees react to their workload and stress on the job in the same way.
“Working men are more likely than women to indicate they’re overworked, 60 per cent of men versus 55 per cent of women,” said Arturo Gallo, a content manager at Monster Canada, in an interview. “However, working women are more likely to have left a job due to work stress at 28 per cent compared to 22 per cent for the men.”
There are generational differences in terms of how people handle stress at work. Millennials are both the most likely group to say they feel overworked on the job and also the most likely to have left a job due to stress.
“It’s not surprising to see that Millennials, who are often individuals early on in their career and just getting used to the work-life balance, encounter stress from the workload they carry,” said Gallo. “As employees advance with more experience under their belt, stress may become less daunting and easier to manage, all depending on the path your career takes.”
Each of these groups is also more likely to want different solutions or accommodations to deal with workplace stress.
“Different age groups will respond to different engagement and development programs at work,” said Gallo. “Millennials may want more opportunities for professional development and networking, while other age groups may want more flexibility in their work hours to manage out-of-work responsibilities better.”
According to the survey, Canadians earning less than $40,000 were the most likely to say they had left a job due to stress at 38 per cent. Those making just a little bit more, from $40,000 to $59,000, only left their jobs due to stress 27 per cent of the time.
“For those starting out in their careers, saying yes to opportunities can be second nature. But the work can add up fast, which may impact stress levels,” said Payne. “These findings suggest that employers should consider focusing more retention efforts on employees making under $40,000 since they may be prone to excessive job stress.”
Dr. Eddy Ng a professor of organizational behaviour and the F.C. Manning chair in economics and business at Dalhousie University in Halifax, agrees younger workers may experience more job stress but says workplace programs should be offered to everyone.
Even though some groups of workers may more often need particular initiatives to deal with workplace stress, Ng said in an interview the best practice for managers is to make all employee programs available to the entire staff.
Flex time and personal days to deal with family situations might be a huge boon to working mothers but can also be a help to fathers or any employee facing a family emergency, said Ng.
“Women experience role overload,” he said. “If they have a career, they often have the same demands at home … a second shift … This is just the gender roles, even in western societies.”
But it would be a mistake, and sexist, for a manager or business owner to offer flex time or personal days to deal with family situations only to working mothers based on the observation that they may need to take care of urgent family matters during the work day.
“You can offer work-life balance initiatives like working from home and the ability to set the hours of work … but you offer them to all employees because in some cases it could be the male employees who are the ones taking care of the children and there are same-sex couples out there with no set gender roles but where these workplace programs will help,” said Ng.
Employers also have to recognize their staff’s cultures and how that affects their stress. According to Ng, some cultures are more geared towards the individual while others are more focused on the extended family.
“Having that family sometimes actually helps reduce stress,” said Ng. “When you go home, you might not have to prepare meals because your mother or grandmother may have done it. But, as they get older, they may also need to be taken care of. The easiest way to deal with that is personal days.”
Although all these initiatives come with costs, these are offset by the improved productivity of a less-stressed workforce and the savings on human resources recruitment.
“There are costs associated with letting someone go,” said Ng. “There’s severance pay and then the ramping up with a new employee so there’s a loss of productivity.”
The business expert credits unionization with helping Atlantic Canadians feel better about their workplaces.
“A lot of us in Nova Scotia tend to be in unionized jobs … and tend to have greater job protection,” said Ng. “That tends to lower our job insecurity.”