Measure your stress levels!

Posted 5 years ago

In a three year period (2015 - 2018), the average prevalence rate for work-related stress, depression or anxiety for males was 1,370 cases and 1,950 cases for females per 100,000 workers. (The HSE). These figures highlight just how important it is for employers to monitor their employee's stress levels. Stress can lower productivity as well as increase absenteeism at work, which ultimately could have a detrimental effect on organisations.

Stress affects everyone differently. There is no one thing that triggers stress for everyone because we all react differently to stress. For some, too much pressure can generate into stress whereas, for others, a single event can cause stress.

What can make you stressed?

Stress at work:

Dissatisfaction with your job
Having a heavy workload/too much responsibility
Being overworked or doing long hours
Working in a dangerous environment
Having to do public speaking in front of your colleagues
Having unclear expectations of your work or no say in your team
Feeling insecure about your chance to advance or being worried about being dismissed
Facing discrimination or harassment at work

Stress in your personal life:

Loss of a loved one
Divorce
Losing a job
Increased financial obligations that you may not be able to cope with
Getting married
Moving house
Illness or injury
Mental ill-health
Having the responsibility of being a carer - looking after a sick/elderly family member
A traumatic event e.g. theft, violence or a natural disaster.

Other stress factors:

Fear or uncertainty - things like terrorist attacks, global warming and toxic chemicals.
Attitudes and perceptions - how you view the world can determine if it causes you stress
Unrealistic expectations - if you expect everything to be right all of the time, you will feel stressed when things don’t go as expected
Change - some people find stress in their daily life stressful

How stress can affect your health

When we are put in the ‘fight, flight or freeze’ situation our bodies experience an increase in speed of heartbeat, faster breathing, tensed muscles and sometimes you’ll start to sweat. Sometimes short term stress can cause:

Headaches
Irritability
Fatigue
Trouble sleeping
Upset stomach
Trouble concentrating

The rush of stress hormones that you get from constantly feeling stressed can put a lot of strain on your body. So long-term stress can cause more serious problems like:

Depression
Hardening of the arteries
Heart attacks or heart disease
Heartburn, ulcers or IBS
Abnormal heartbeat
Weight loss/gain
Asthma or arthritis flare up
Fertility problems
Skin problems

Stress Relief Techniques

Everyone will have a different way to relieve stress. Here are just a few suggestions:

Meditation
Yoga
Breathing techniques
Playing music
Laughing
Exercise
Find yourself a good support network
Make some time for yourself
Avoid unhealthy habits, like smoking or alcohol
Challenge yourself
Be positive
Except you can’t change everything
Write things down - sometimes visualising a busy to do list can help you decide what is essential and what isn't
Learn to say no when you are too busy

Measure your stress with our Stress Assessment Tool

We provide a Stress Assessment Tool to help you to identify physical, mental and emotional signs of stress and to offer ideas to relieve stress. This tool will allow you to take a step back and evaluate whether the symptoms that you are experiencing are in fact stress. It will look at both physical symptoms and mental health symptoms. This assessment is confidential and will not be shared with anyone, including us.

Our Stress Awareness Course allows you to understand more about stress, identify stress, reduce it and then prevent it. This training is essential to make sure that employees to stay in control and don’t let stress problems continue to grow before they get too serious. Our course is suitable for all levels of staff including management and employers.