How a stressful job can be good for you

… so long as you feel you’re the one in charge

MOST of us know that stressful jobs can wreck our health.

But it seems if you have control over that work it can actually be better for you.

Researchers followed more than 10,000 workers in their sixties from 2004. The stress of their job was measured by asking employees – regardless of their income or managerial status – how hard they worked, how much they needed to concentrate and if they were asked to do too much.

Seven years later, those who worked in high-stress, low-control jobs were most likely to have died.

But surprisingly, being in a stressful job with control over your workflow and the freedom to set your own goals was found to be better for health.

Workers in more demanding jobs, where they had this control, were 34 per cent less likely to die than those in less stressful careers. Lead author Erik Gonzalez-Mulé said: ‘These findings suggest that stressful jobs have clear negative consequences for employee health when paired with low freedom in decision-making, while stressful jobs can actually be beneficial to employee health if also paired with freedom in decision-making.’

Cancer was found to be the leading cause of death among the study group, with stress known to be a risk factor. People also died from circulatory diseases, with the authors speculating that the stressed may overeat and smoke as a coping mechanism.

Those with the most demanding jobs – and no control over them – are 15 per cent more likely to die than those with less taxing careers.

The study by the University of Indiana’s Kelley School of Business, is believed to be the first to examine the relationship between job characteristics and mortality.

But the researchers said it does not necessarily suggest employers need to cut back on what is expected from their employees.

Rather, they demonstrate the value in restructuring some jobs to provide employees with more say about how work gets done. Professor Gonzalez Mule said: ‘You can avoid the negative health consequences if you allow them to set their own goals, set their own schedules, prioritise their decisionmaking and the like.’ He recommended that employees have a say in setting their own goals, ‘so when you’re telling someone what they’re going to do it’s more of a two-way conversation.’ The study, published in the journal Personnel Psychology, also found people in highstress, low-control jobs were more likely to be overweight.

Professor Gonzalez-Mule said: ‘When you don’t have the necessary resources to deal with a demanding job, you do this other stuff.

‘You might eat more, you might smoke, you might engage in some of these things to cope with it.”

The study also found people with a higher degree of control over their work tend to find stress to be useful.

Prof Gonzalez-Mule said: ‘Stressful jobs cause you to find ways to problem solve and work through ways to get the work done. Having higher control gives you the resources you need to do that.

‘A stressful job then, instead of being something debilitating, can be something that is energising.’

‘Set your own goals’