Why Am I So Stressed At Work If My Workload Is Low?

Work stress is remarkably common in the UK.

Mental Health UK’s Burnout Report found that, in the past year, nearly 91% of us experienced high or extreme levels of pressure, while one in five took time off due to stress.

And a Mind study showed that work is the number one stressor in people’s lives – more than health woes or money issues.

But what’s actually behind those figures? In other words, what exactly about the workplace do so many people find overwhelming?

According to a recent meta-analysis, which looked at over 60 years of research (including 515 studies and almost 788,000 employees), the “most damaging stressor overall” wasn’t actually workload.

When analysing this huge dataset, the study authors split workplace stressors into three groups:

1) Role ambiguity: This happens when employees aren’t given clear direction on what is expected of them in their role, and/or aren’t sure how their work will be evaluated.

2) Role conflict: This refers to workplaces that place incompatible demands, expectations, and/or priorities on employees.

3) Role overload: That basically means being given too much to do, and too few resources with which to complete the tasks. In other words, it’s when employee workload is unreasonably high.

These factors were chosen because they’re a direct result of how work is managed. And they aren’t specific to any one job or industry, so they gave researchers an overview of stressors in all kinds of workplaces.

The study authors compared the prevalence of each of these factors among participants with rates of work satisfaction, burnout, engagement, physical symptoms, how fair employees perceived their workplace to be, commitment, days off, performance, and psychological distress.

Though all three of these factors seemed to make employees more stressed in different ways, overall, role ambiguity tended to tax workers the most.

An ambiguous role was linked to less:

• work engagement,
• commitment,
• performance,
• likelihood of being a ‘team player’,
• job satisfaction.

Speaking to Harvard Business Review, the researchers said this may be because “when employees do not know what they are supposed to do, how their work will be judged, or where their responsibilities begin and end, even routine work can become stressful to navigate”.

Meanwhile, role conflict was associated with more:

• burnout,
• psychological distress,
• unhelpful work behaviour,
• desire to leave.

And role overload correlated with negative emotions and physical symptoms.

If you’re struggling with stress in a way that you cannot manage by yourself, the NHS recommends reaching out to a GP or trying talking therapy.