In the quest for workplace wellbeing, many assume that the ultimate goal is to eliminate stress, pressure, and challenges altogether. This belief, however, is not just impractical – it’s misguided. Research consistently shows that the right amount of challenge is essential for personal and professional growth, resilience, and overall wellbeing.
The Science Behind Healthy Stress
A certain level of of the right kind of stress – known as eustress – can be beneficial. Eustress helps individuals stay motivated, enhances problem-solving, and fuels personal development. The Yerkes-Dodson law, a well-established psychological principle, suggests that performance increases with moderate levels of stress but declines when stress becomes too high or too low. Studies reinforce this:
A 2020 study published in Nature Human Behaviour found that
individuals who experienced moderate levels of stress performed better on cognitive tasks than those experiencing very low or excessively high stress.
Research from Harvard Business School found that
when employees reframed workplace stress as a challenge rather than a threat, they exhibited better problem-solving abilities and lower cortisol levels.
The key takeaway? Feeling stretched and challenged is not only normal but necessary for growth. However, there’s a critical distinction between productive pressure and toxic stress.
When Stress Becomes Destructive
Not all stress is created equal. When too much energy is wasted overcoming unnecessary psychosocial hazards (stressors) – such as navigating office politics, dealing – with toxic leadership, or fighting against bureaucratic inefficiencies – employees become exhausted, disenchanted and may even burnout. Instead of using their energy on meaningful, value-add work, they spend it coping.
Unhealthy workplace stress manifests in numerous ways:
- Increased absenteeism: A Gallup study found that employees experiencing high levels of stress miss twice as many workdays as their less-stressed counterparts.
- Retention challenges: A 2023 report by the American Psychological Association found that 79% of employees who left jobs cited high stress and unfair treatment as key reasons.
- Lower engagement: According to Gallup, disengaged employees cost their employers 18% of their annual salary in lost productivity.
- Higher healthcare costs: Research from the Global Wellness Institute suggests that workplace stress contributes to a $300 billion annual loss due to healthcare expenses and lost productivity in the U.S. alone.
For organisations, the message is clear: When corporate culture creates excessive, unnecessary stressors, it diverts talent, time, and goodwill away from meaningful work and towards survival mechanisms.
Setting Boundaries: A Key to Employee Wellbeing
For individuals, wellbeing is often more in their control than they perceive. One of the most effective ways to prevent unnecessary stress is by setting clear boundaries. This might mean:
- Saying no to work outside of core responsibilities when it’s not urgent.
- Protecting personal time by resisting the urge to check emails after hours.
- Speaking up about inefficiencies rather than passively enduring them.
- Seeking environments that foster growth rather than drain energy.
For leaders, fostering a culture where employees feel safe setting boundaries benefits not only individuals but the organisation. Employees who aren’t perpetually drained by non-value-adding stressors will be more engaged, innovative, and productive.
The Employer’s Role: Creating a Culture of Focus
Employers who allow psychosocial hazards to thrive in their organisations are not just harming their employees—they’re harming their business. When employees must expend excessive energy on survival rather than contribution, everyone loses. Leaders must:
- Minimise unnecessary bureaucracy and friction in workplace processes.
- Cultivate fairness and transparency to prevent workplace politics from dominating.
- Recognise that extreme pressure leads to lost productivity and higher turnover.
- Shift the focus from working long hours to working smart.
We aren’t aiming to wrap our employees in cotton wool, but we are aiming to ensure that our investment in people is optimised to give us the greatest ROI which means understanding stress and consciously managing the sources and nature of stressors in our businesses.