Findings published by Grid on Tuesday (8 October) show that employers report being concerned about work-related stress and anxiety among the majority of generations of employees.
For Gen X (people aged 44 to 59), employers indicated that stress and anxiety related to home life was the biggest concern.
Finances and debt were the biggest cause of stress and anxiety in 2022 and 2023, Grid's earlier research shows.
This year though, employees under the age of 60 agreed that stress and anxiety related to work was their biggest health and wellbeing concern. Workers aged 60 and over cited serious ill-health as their top worry.
To mark World Mental Health Day today (10 October), which this year has the theme of workplace mental health, we asked how employers can prevent work-related stress and anxiety.
“We’d encourage employers to be open to addressing any organisational or managerial failings, and to create a safe space for employees to report the challenges they are facing," said Katherine Moxham, Grid's spokesperson, when talking to HR magazine.
Read more: Individual-level wellbeing strategies aren't working
Moxham added: "Businesses all want to run at a profit, but if doing so results in too much work-related stress, there will be staff burnout and attrition, which will impact the bottom line and further add to the burden of those remaining."
Employers should also try to understand what is causing employees' work-related stress, according to HR consultant Amanda Caldeira.
Speaking to HR magazine, she said: “It can be tempting to implement generic organisational changes to bring work-related stress down, such as measures to improve work-life balance. However stronger results can be achieved when organisations take time to understand the root causes of increased stressors.
“HR is responsible for creating an environment where people can thrive, meaning they should be the first to know when employees are suffering, and subsequently the first to be in a position to react,” explained Jeanette Wheeler, chief HR officer for HR software provider MHR.
She told HR magazine: “HR teams can achieve this by first equipping managers with the skills and tools to identify when and why their workforce are feeling anxious, whether this is due to a lack of autonomy, excessive workload and expected outputs, limited growth opportunities or issues and concerns around not having the right support in place.
“From here, it is about making sure there is a clear protocol in place which supports managers in directing their teams to the best course of action. For example, is it possible to give people more control over their workload? If they are feeling unclear about their roles and responsibilities, is there a development programme that can be put in place to support them?”
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Additionally, HR should involve leaders in reforming their organisation’s approach to stress, explained William Fleming, Unilever research fellow at the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford.
Speaking to HR magazine, he said: “There might be some systems that HR can influence, like performance review or learning and development. But unfortunately, structural change can be beyond the reach for most HR personnel.
“They need to be empowered to help reform the major stressors at work, or have serious buy-in from senior leaders to make big changes happen. There are reactive systems like EAPs, with variable quality, but it's important we're moving towards a preventative approach by identifying and solving the big problems.”
Grid surveyed 500 UK HR decision makers between 9 and 16 January 2024, and 1,210 UK adults in a similar period (from 9 to 12 January 2024). Findings were published on 8 October 2024.
