"Many managers experience unacceptable levels of work-related stress, feel unable to cope with their work, struggle to achieve targets and experience its adverse effects in their enjoyment of life".

Is modern life possible without stress? Even if we don't feel it, it seems impossible to avoid reading about it on a daily basis.

At one end of the spectrum, we hear of overloaded workers who successfully sue their employers. At the other end of the spectrum, celebrities earning more in a day than most of us earn in a year are admitted to clinics suffering from stress. The media explore the issue from every possible angle, prescribing remedies ranging from feng shui to keeping pets, via cognitive behavioural therapy and changing diet.  

Stress certainly seems to be an inescapable element of modern life. And it is running at high levels amongst UK managers, according to a recently published Institute of Management research report. "Taking the Strain: a survey of managers and workplace stress"  identifies continuing high levels of stress amongst UK managers throughout the 1990s, and attempts to pinpoint the main stress "pressure points".

Taking the Strain also makes a number of recommendations about how to deal with work-related stress. And in this article we relate the findings to flexible working - and suggest some remedies of our own.

Stress in the workplace is a serious and costly business. The UK Health & Safety Executive has calculated that 90 million working days were lost in 1998 through stress-related illness, at a cost to the nation of £5.2 billion. 

Many studies, including this one, have pinpointed a poor work/life balance as a major source of stress. Over 70% of managers consider work-related stress to have adverse effects on their enjoyment  home life and their health, as well as their work effectiveness.

The long hours culture has an impact on this balance. 905 of managers report working longer hours than their contracted week, with 37% reporting working more than 48 hours per week, with many taking work home and working at weekends.

According to the report, the  Top Ten stress-inducing factors in the workplace for managers are:

These factors are a combination of communication, management, technology and social/cultural failures in the workplace. And a key question, is how can the workplace be managed differently to eliminate these identified problems?

Taking the Strain advises "initiatives such as 360 degree appraisal, stress audits, employee satisfaction surveys, EAPs and internal communication audits", and that "individual employees should learn to say no to excessive work demands".

Surveys often indicate faults in senior managers, or that other managers are unwilling to change, and so forth. It could be enlightening to include in a survey like this the option to put stress down to one's own incompetence or limitations. Many managers - and other workers - make their job more stressful by doing it badly. They not only feel unable to cope - they are unable to cope. Where workplace expectations exceed a manager's abilities, it is usually evident to their colleagues, and this adds to the stress of the situation.

In an oblique way, the report does suggest that managers are part of the problem - or as it says, "by dint of their authority and position managers, especially senior managers, are best placed to address the issue of organisational stress". 

This is fine if it leads to building a "climate of trust, open communications and genuine care". But it also runs the risk of generating yet more meetings, emails and bureaucratic procedures which can themselves add to workplace stress.

But more importantly, it misses some of the key changes which could be made to working practices to reduce stress.

It is important to look at the factors identified and see whether stress could be reduced by organising work differently. For example

Managing change is identified as a major source of stress. Change is always likely to be stressful. But it will be all the more so if people are trying to do new things in old ways, and with less resources. 

Change programmes often fail to achieve their benefits because they have too narrow a focus. A typical problem is introducing some kind of restructuring without addressing the way people work, where they do it, and the tools they use.

The message is that there is much that can be done by managers to reduce stress, and to make the workplace a happier and more effective environment for working.

The report Taking the Strain: A survey of managers and workplace stress is an IM research report by Ruth Wheatley, supported by PPP Healthcare. Research for the project was carries out in September 1999. The report is based on the responses of 819 managers responding to a postal survey of 3000 IM members (response rate 27%).

The report is available, price £20 to IM members, £40 to non-members, from the Institute of Management, 2 Savoy Court, Strand, London, WC2R 0EZ. .

Tel: +44 (0)207 497 0580
Fax: +44 (0)207 497 0463
email: public.affairs@imgt-org.uk