Stress at work has reached epidemic proportions and showed little decline in 2023 according to a new survey by the American Psychological Association (APA).
APA’s Work in America Survey: Workplaces as Engines of Psychological Health & Wellbeing, revealed that 77% of the US workers reported experiencing stress at work and 57% experienced negative health effects as a result including burnout.
As of December 2023, 3,577 workers had completed the online healthy work survey (HWS). Although a selective sample of workers, the HWS results are consistent with national trends of high levels of stress and burnout. More than 85% of HWS respondents reported stressful work (often/very often), and 88% reported often/very often “feeling used up at the end of the day”, an indicator of exhaustion and an important component of burnout.
A higher percent of HWS respondents (compared to the US national population data) reported personally experiencing (38%) or witnessing workplace bullying (43%), while 16% reported experiencing age or gender discrimination and 9% experienced discrimination due to their race/ethnicity.
Healthy Work Campaign said that a large percentage of workers completing the HWS were considered at high risk for these common sources of work-related stress.
Organisations conducting the survey in 2023, however, definitely showed concern about employee mental health and well-being, burnout, understaffing and high workloads and wanted to make improvements.
HWS uses scientifically valid measures of work stressors known to cause mental health disorders and chronic disease including hypertension and heart disease.
Eighteen different occupations are represented in the survey, with the largest percentage of workers being from occupations related to management, business and financial operations, sales, healthcare support, office and administrative support. Workers were also from educational occupations, food preparation and service, production, transportation and healthcare practitioners. M