Unmanaged stress has a debilitating impact on employee productivity. Sudipta Dev writes about this common syndrome.

The negative impact of employee stress on business is now an acknowledged factor. Studies in America have proved that the annual cost of employee stress in terms of loss to productivity is more than a staggering $300 billion. Unmanaged stress has a debilitating impact on the organisation, the consequences vary from loss of individual productivity to increased absenteeism to rise in employee attrition. Team morale and productivity is also adversely affected. But is it possible to create a stress-free workplace? Probably not, it is indeed an integral part of our personal and professional life, but the solution lies in creating an environment that reduces its impact.

The fact that employee stress is a subjective matter cannot be overlooked. What might appear as a stressful situation for one might be taken as a normal work routine by another. Monisha Advani, CEO, EmmayHR agrees that most organisations tend not to act at all or appropriately to prevent situations of unmanaged stress. “The unfortunate perception lies in assigning responsibility for stress. Is it the employee’s personal look out or is it the employer’s? Where does one draw the line? The definition of workplace stress can be easily misconstrued, as it varies from case to case.” Advani points out that drawing up policies to address workplace stress in a direct form can expose an organisation to red herring claims from employees. Hence, the tentativeness from employers to own up to the responsibility or demonstrate documented proactivity to control workplace stress.

Consequences of unmanaged stress

Stressful working conditions have a direct negative impact on the mental and physical well-being of the workforce. A disgruntled workforce obviously under-performs and under-delivers, leading to an impact on the bottomline. “In a more precautionary sense, unmanaged stress can be very infectious in large-sized organisations with workforces that are inhabited together. As a nation, we have spent the last two decades trying to eradicate cohesion of employees in a formal context (unions, associations) from the workplace. Unfortunately, such scenarios are completely fuelled by intangible conditions like unmanaged stress. In addition, a company can easily suffer external image damage from being perceived as a hotbed of a stressful work environment, limiting its talent acquisition strategies, among other things,” adds Advani.

Stress undermines an employee’s ability to think clearly, to work well with others and to perform his or her best. Seth Appel, Director, Talent Transformation Group, OfficeTiger, focusses on the obvious consequences: poor decision-making, absenteeism, burn-out, attrition, unnecessary and wasteful inter-personal conflict.
"The need of the hour is to help employees manage stress effectively and create a corporate ambience that puts everyone in a ‘can-do’ mood"
- Madan Padaki
Co-founder & Director
Business Development
MeriTrac Services
"Acknowledging that stress exists, is half the battle won. Attacking it, improves chances of the rest of the war to be won! "
- Monisha Advani
CEO
EmmayHR
"A healthy dose of stress gets us into action. The challenge is the debilitating doses of stress that are more destructive than constructive"
- Seth Appel
Director
Talent Transformation Group OfficeTiger

Measuring the business cost

Calculating the business cost of employee stress has led to many studies being conducted globally. Eileen Sweeney, Senior Vice-president, Global HR, Lionbridge Technologies, lists the key indicators:

  • Absenteeism
  • Health costs
  • Attrition
  • Lowered productivity and increased costs.

Appel advises that one way to measure the cost of stress is to make a measured judgement based on employee exit interviews and on the percentage of attrition due to stress. “When the cost to recruit, train and develop a new employee is accounted for, we can arrive at a general cost that the company is incurring due to stress. Unfortunately, it is difficult to measure the other less tangible by-products of stress. Managers who engage in needless bickering instead of working together, employees who return home and spend their free time worrying about work and return the following day tired instead of energised. Also the team members who are too anxious to speak openly at a meeting and therefore deprive the company of their good ideas. All of these are unwanted and wasteful by-products of stress that are hard to quantify.”

It can also be measured in terms of productivity gains or losses and the consequent revenues. “A correlation can be seen in the roles vis-a-vis stress, specially in the IT and BPO sectors where in typical measurements like line of code/day or average call handling time, number of calls taken, etc. have a direct bearing on the stress levels of employees,” says Madan Padaki, Co-founder and Director, Business Development, MeriTrac Services.