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Occupational Stress
(last updated January, 2005)
Home>Services>Therapy>Stress>Occupational

What This Page Contains:

Causes of Occupational Stress

Occupational stress can be the result of

  • interpersonal conflict in the workplace
  • overwork
  • conflicting demands in the workplace
  • conflicting demands between personal and business life
  • doing work for which one is not adequately trained or prepared
  • boredom
  • a combination of stressors including personal and workplace problems

When the stress load is greater than one’s ability to cope, such maladaptive behaviours as avoiding work through absenteeism often result.  Sometimes people turn to alcohol or drugs to find relief.  Behavioural changes, such as anxiety, moodiness, crankiness or depression can be the outcome of too much stress.  Physical illness, including high blood pressure and heart disease, can also be the result of stress overload.

Responses to Occupational Stress

Almost all corporations recognize that an overload of stress on employees is unhealthy both for their employees and for the business, and have put in place some mechanisms to address the problem.  Not all solutions are equally effective.

Employee Assistance Programs for Individual Help

Many corporations have internal Employee Assistance Programs, which usually are in the form of peer counselling or having a nurse on staff to counsel individuals who are in difficulty.  The best of these EAP programs have counsellors who are trained to recognize problems they cannot handle effectively and who will make referrals to appropriate health care professionals.

Many corporations contract out Employee Assistance Programs.  Services are contracted on a pre-set basis, for example four or six sessions per year per employee.  Counselling services in these arrangements are generally not provided by psychologists.  In cases in which the problem does not resolve in the prescribed number of sessions, employees are generally required to make use of their extended health care benefits and seek assistance from psychologists practising in the community.  The biggest drawback in this arrangement is the necessity for a person to begin at the beginning with a new counsellor after 4 or 6 sessions.

Some corporations refer all employees who seek assistance to psychologists practising in the community.  The costs of these arrangements are typically divided between the corporation and employee extended health plans but are sometimes covered solely by employee extended health care plans.  Psychologists are the health-care professionals uniquely trained to assess, diagnose and treat emotional, behaviour, cognitive and relationship problems.

Corporate Strategies for a Healthy Workplace

When a business recognizes that occupation stress is endemic in its workplace, a workplace assessment can determine the sources of the problems and provide guidelines for initiating solutions on an organization level.  Policies may need to be evaluated with a view to their impact on the health of employees in the workplace.  Restructuring and retraining might be considered to reduce stress in environment.

GPS corporate consulting psychologists can help with solutions to Occupational Stress in three major ways:

  1. We provide assistance to individuals experiencing high levels of stress or other personal problems, through individual referrals for assessment and counselling and therapy;
  2. We provide training for management and staff on how to recognize and deal with the sources of stress-overload;
  3. We provide consulting services to senior management concerning programmatic ways to address stress in the workplace.  Appropriate interventions at the institutional level can reduce overall stress levels, thereby reducing the negative consequences for individuals, as well reducing absenteeism, loss of productivity, and short- and long-term disability claims for the corporation.               

For more information on Occupational Stress, please email us or call us at (902) 492-2546.