Employee workload stress

Imagine two employees with the same expectation to get through more work than seems physically possible in one day. One employee is helped by their leader to prioritize what is most important. They’re assured the leader understands everything can’t be accomplished in one day. The expectation is to do the best they can during their working hours. The other employee is told that if they don’t get it all done there’s a risk of failing at the project. They may lose a client or even lose their job. If the hours worked and the capability of both employees is the same, who do you believe would be more productive in the long run? Who do you believe would be more likely to experience workload stress?

In his book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink (2011), shares evidence that organizational pressure over time will reduce productivity. It can also increase work stress, leading to a higher potential for illness, disability and absence. 

Often workload stress has less to do with the quantity of work to be done and more to do with other stressors. Below are tips and strategies for you as a leader to support productivity during times of high demand while you also reduce workload stress. 

Your role as a leader

Most leaders strive to have a fair division of work between employees. But many factors can interfere with this objective. For example, tasks may take longer or shorter than we imagined. There may be more contingencies or waiting time for others to do their part. There may be tasks that have been long-standing that you no longer take into account. There may be responsibilities that you are not aware of related to compliance or reporting. Left unchecked, work stress can lead to burnout or other serious health concerns. Burnout response for leaders helps you notice factors at work and help support those managing burnout.

The following questions are adapted with permission from Benoit Lefebvre (n. d.) from University of Ottawa. They can help you think about the systemic or broader issues that may be impacting work stress:

• Is the amount of work expected of each employee reasonable for their knowledge, experience and position?
• Do you regularly ask what an employee’s current demands are before you assign an extra task?
• Do you help prioritize, delegate or delay competing tasks when the extra assignment adds workload stress?
• Do employees come to you and discuss their work stress, job demands and preferred level of autonomy?
• Do employees have the ideal setting, equipment, tools and resources, and time needed to do their jobs successfully?
• Is the work environment free from unnecessary interruptions and disruptions?
  • This includes conflict, competing demands and endless meetings.
• Do employees have clarity and/or control over how their tasks and responsibilities are prioritized?

Managing workload stress

Even the most aware leader can have a high level of workload stress among their team. It may not be for any other reason than that each team member is personally motivated in a way that is neither balanced nor healthy. If you have attracted passionate, energetic employees who also have poor personal boundaries or self-care habits, it’s likely that workload stress is or will become an issue. 

Working hard is not in itself a stressor. Working hard is not bad for our mental health if we feel we:

• Have clarity about what we need to do
• Are working regular hours
• Take regular breaks
• Have the necessary equipment, tools, skills and time to meet our obligations
• Don’t have too many distractions or interruptions
• Are fairly recognized and compensated
• Work in a safe setting where we can speak up about concerns
• Are doing something that is valued by our team or organization.

Review the list above and if any of these are an issue for one or more of your employees, start there and collaborate on effective ways to intervene and lower work stress.

There are many resources you can use with your team to help raise awareness and create new, healthier approaches while doing good, if not better, work with less stress.  

• Evidence-based actions for workload management. These actions and responses can be done with a minimal investment of resources or cost to the organization.
• Performance management. These strategies focus on solutions that also support employee well-being and help reduce unnecessary work stress, even when mental health is an issue. 
• Hybrid teams. In a hybrid team, some employees work on-site and some work remotely. Read more to learn how to balance supporting the success, and managing the stress, of both sets of employees.
• Workload management workshop materials. Learn how to lead a team discussion to address and improve workload management at work. This resource includes a guide and slides to help you get started.
• Evidence-based actions for clear leadership and expectations. These actions and responses can be done with a minimal investment of resources or cost to the organization.
• Clear leadership and expectations workshop materials. Learn how to lead a team discussion to address and improve leadership and expectations at work. This resource includes a guide and slides to help you get started. 
• Psychologically safe team assessment. This assessment looks at team dynamics. This includes how employees interact and the extent to which each team member feels that the team is an inclusive environment. This doesn’t delve into individual workload, however, often when a team works well together, they support each other through the ebb and flow of work demands. This helps to lower work stress when the demands are higher. 

Activities that help reduce work stress

While it may seem that team building activities increase stress by taking people away from the task at hand, some activities actually allow people to feel calmer or energized. 

Healthy break activities has many ideas which take 15 minutes or less and there are many for you to choose from. 

Team building activities help improve team effectiveness, cohesion, communication, problem solving and well-being. This can also help reduce the work stress.

What if there actually is too much work? 

Work stress is likely related to fear or the perception of pressure than it is to the quantity of work.

Your approach as a leader can contribute to the perception of pressure to perform. Your tone of voice, body language, the words that you use or where you focus your praise can all make a difference. In Performance management and Recognition strategies for leaders, you can read more about an approach that lowers pressure while increasing motivation and productivity. The psychologically safe leader assessment goes even further in thinking about the strategies that promote psychological safety while also improving employee performance and team cohesion. 

As a leader, it is your responsibility to manage the stress and pressure in a way that enhances the energy and focus of every employee. This means that when there is more work than is possible to get done in a day, consider the following:

• Write out each task or deliverable and assign a realistic number of full-time equivalent hours to each.
  
  • Total up the hours and divide it by the number of full-time equivalent employees you have available and capable of doing the work. 
    
    • You may want to engage each employee in creating their own list, which you can review and put together into a team list. 
    • Taking the time to do this may create stress when everyone is already feeling workload pressure. Explain that your intention is to support stress relief.
• Identify any shortfalls in capacity and bring the list to your leader to choose which of the tasks or deliverables are a priority and which ones can be delayed, given to another department, or dropped altogether. 
  
  • This is a mathematical calculation which shows what is realistically possible. It is not a sign of weakness or poor management.
  • Be open to questions about the amount of time assigned to each task and the capacity of each employee. 
    
    • Rather than being defensive, if challenged, be ready to back up your calculations.
    • Ask what your leader’s priorities are and which tasks they feel could be delayed, delegated outside of your team or dropped.
    • If relevant, ask if and when extra staff will be hired, or when ongoing demands will be reduced.
• Once you have a realistic goal from your leader, bring your team together to discuss how you will achieve these goals. Talk about how your employees can reset their own work schedules to improve the quality and lower the stress related to their own work success. 
• Check back in with your team to reassess how these changes are impacting their workload stress and take necessary corrective action.

Individual employee concerns

Work stress may be part of a bigger issue with an employee. Before you jump to solutions, you may want to have a conversation to understand where the employee is at. Developing employee plans for leaders provides step-by-step guidelines to help you work with an employee to develop their own strategies for success. Some other resources that could be helpful include: 

• A tool to support employee success. A process that engages employee and employer to develop solutions that support productivity and well-being. Supporting Employee Success is for any employee, including those needing accommodation.
• Communicating with emotional employees. These strategies can help you have supportive conversations with employees and avoid causing negative reactions.
• Employee mental health issues. When employees have mental illnesses, helpful accommodation can help them stay productive at work. Learn to leverage resources, manage co-worker reactions and support a successful return to work after leave. 
• Helping employees to manage change. Any organizational change may have an unsettling impact on employees. You can help through planning, communicating, and engaging with employees in exploring how changes can be handled in a psychologically safe way.
• Performance management. These strategies focus on solutions that also support employee well-being and help reduce unnecessary work stress, even when mental health is an issue.
• Supportive task improvement. These resources can help you support an employee to improve their performance and productivity related to a specific task by working through potential barriers and building a plan for success.

To share with the employee

You can share the resources below with your employees before talking to help them prepare for a productive conversation about what could be done to help lower their work stress:

• Workload reflection and discussion tool | PDF. This fillable form supports the employee to explore what may be adding to their stress around work. They'll consider possible solutions and strategies that might help. This form can also be completed by the employee in preparation for or during a conversation with their leader.
• Preparing for a difficult conversation. Taking a few moments to reflect on your assumptions and intentions before beginning a hard conversation can set you up to be more effective. Sharing your intentions with the employee before a conversation may help reduce their stress.
• Resources for employees. These resources to support well-being for employees and their families include topics ranging from dealing with work issues to accessing help and resources.
• Managing stress, Prevent burnout and Work-life balance tips. Be careful that you don’t imply that there’s something wrong with the individual who is sharing their stress with you. If the individual says there are other things in their life that are adding to their stress, then this resource can be shared with a statement such as, “It sounds like you have a lot of demands on you. I want to help you deal with the work stress, but this resource may also help you protect your well-being.” 

Another option is to share all of these resources with your employees before they are necessary to help them feel comfortable discussing work stress before it has a negative impact on their well-being.

Employee issues that could increase work stress

If you only have a single employee struggling with work stress, it’s likely that there are factors other than the amount of work that are adding to the stress. These factors could include burnout, personal, relationship or financial stress, bullying or harassment, disability, not enough breaks, inadequate sleep, not feeling included, low motivation or lack of appreciation. 

If you suspect that there are other factors at play, there are many helpful resources available for you under Employee concerns.

Additional resources

• A tool to support employee success. A process that engages employee and employer to develop solutions that support productivity and well-being. Supporting Employee Success is for any employee, including those needing accommodation.
• Employee stress prevention process. Understand how chronic mental stress is defined and how to recognize hazards. This tool provides actions at the organizational level for reducing risk to protect both employers and employees.