Workplace Stress

A new study suggests that most of workplace stress doesn't come from a work load that is too large or too important but it actually comes from the boss himself/herself. This is most often due to strict rules imposed in the work place that give the employees less freedom in what they want to do.

"We may have a tendency to associate depression and stress with work pressure and workload; however, our study shows that the workload actually has no effect on workplace depression,” says one of the researchers behind the new study, psychologist Matias Brødsgaard Grynderup, PhD, of the Department of Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University. This suggests that the risk of workplace depression cannot be minimized by changing the workload. Other factors are involved, and it is these factors that we should focus on in the future. The researchers handed out questionnaires to 4,500 public employees at Danish schools, hospitals, nurseries, offices, etc. They also conducted personal interviews with most of the participants to determine who suffered from clinical depression. From the questionnaires, the researchers could determine the sense of justice that the employees felt in their workplaces. The feeling of justice in this context includes the feeling of being heard by one’s manager and the feeling of everyone being treated on equal terms in the workplace.

            These new findings can be used as a guide for future focus areas when stress and depression become a part of the workplace. “When the employees’ sense of justice plays such a central role in minimizing the risk of depression, this is probably the area that the preventive work should focus on,” “I recommend a management style in which there is a clearly expressed wish to treat employees properly – combined with a transparent organizational structure,” says Grynderup. The study suggests that looking at the employees’ own assessment of the work environment and possible changes to the work environment has a much better preventive effect on depression than reducing the workload. I personally believe that we can learn from this and implement these changes to truly help workplace for the better. We can improve worker efficiency and lead to a happier workplace and happier workers.