The myth between good and bad stress has been a common debate between studies, but a recent study done by international employee health and performance experts at Global Corporate Challenge (GCC) set stress and productivity widely apart.
The study included data drawn from employees in 185 countries and compared stressed and non-stressed employees on their productivity and found that 63 percent reported above average productivity and 87 percent of non-stressed workers reported that they felt their productivity was above average. This study was done to help set the notion that stress doesn’t amount to success.
Included in the study, 36 percent of employees reported the feeling of above average stress, while 39 percent of employees reported moderate levels of stress in the workplace. Women reported to be more stressed than men by their home life as well as work.
GCC’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. David Batman explained that the stress in the workplace has become the modern lifestyle that is often full of misconception and goes unrecognized and not talked about.
“There’s still a lot of educating to be done when it comes to tackling psychological problems like stress, anxiety and depression,” said Dr. Batman in an ABC article. “This paper not only gives insight into these problems, it also provides a simple and effective solution and demonstrates the effectiveness of the GCC in helping both employees and businesses become more resilient.’’
The University of Alabama Birmingham has also done a stress study, contradicting the GCC paper, showing that stress in college students strengthens the neurons in the brain, increasing productivity.
The GCC paper also goes into how employers can find and handle stress in the workplace and it gives some insight on how to take the right approach when it comes to physical and mental health in a productive workforce.
“Workplace stress is an issue that is increasingly becoming a ‘whole-body problem,’ it’s having a chronic and escalating impact on performance across every employee population,” said Glenn Rinsley, Founder and President of the GCC, in an ABC article. “Equipping employees to cope and respond to pressure in a positive way is one of the most important things an organization can do.
Do you find yourself working well under stress?
Sometimes, like depends, I’ll actually get the work done.
Me personally, I find myself working better under stress because my ideas surface quicker. If I’m given a longer stretch of time it’ll become like my ideas just float away from me, like I can’t think of anything. But when you’re given a limited amount of time that’s when everything jumps to you, it’s quick, it’s simple, it’s easy, you could just think of the idea and do what you have to do. When you have a paper due in a month, no one is going to start on it because they haven’t thought of the idea, but say if the paper is due a week from now, you can be pretty sure that an idea about your paper, no matter the length, is going to pop up.
It depends what kind of stress it is. So let’s say if like a family issue or something, yea if you’re around family, it can be hard. But if it’s like school stress, yeah I can work it out.
