Thanks for your great comment back. I completely agree with you. There seems to be a stress culture in some companies, whilst in other stress seems to be something that’s manageable. The occasional deadline type stresses are liveable. The ongoing stuff is deadly!

This whole thing has got me thinking about stress at work and I’m currently thinking that I may blog about it myself. Assuming it’s okay with you, I will of course link to you as the source of the inspiration!

Meantime I’m keeping WorkAwesome on my radar screen as it seems like a fantastic blog!

Best wishes

Christine

Thanks for your message and I’m glad you enjoyed the article! From my experience employee stress is a symptom and not a cause of low employee morale. If a worker is putting effort and extra hours into getting a project done well and quickly but isn’t ever allowed to take the lunch break to which he/she is entitled, then how can he/she feel any good about their job? It becomes all take-take from the employer and we all know one-sided relationships of any sort don’t work.

I’m sure everyone suffers from stress at work but there’s everyday stress (it’s over when we meet that deadline in 3 hours) and there’s stress that consumes us because we feel our employer is sucking our blood already.

I’ve seen that high-morale workplaces allow employees to feel supported and worthy, making them better able to deal with everyday stress and to avoid “gone postal” stress.

Ana

Before reading your post, I’d just read Justin Rush’s article “How not to boost employee morale”. Reading them both together made me think of how often individual stress is often a symptom rather than a cause. I wondered if you had any thoughts about that?

For example, on my way to the office and during lunch hours, I always take 5-10 minutes at a time to think over happy times with my family, chat briefly with a really amusing friend, or plan an upcoming holiday or social event. This doesn’t need to cut into actual productivity time.

It helps keep the balance of work correct in relation to other priorities in my life, and in turn motivates me to reach career goals for overall life enjoyment!