FAQ - Reducing Work Stress: Change the Load, Not Just How You Cope

Lowering Work Stress is mostly about changing the load, with your own coping habits as the second lever. AQ reads Work Stress as a condition around you, not a fault in you, so the useful question is what is on your plate and why, before how well you handle it.

What is Work Stress

Work Stress is the sense of general overwork and overwhelm within your organization. It is one of five measures of your work environment in AQ, and these describe the conditions around you, not who you are.

Work Stress runs in reverse to most AQ results. High is the adverse end and Low is the favourable end, so the traffic-light colours on your report are reversed to match. The three bands read like this:

The bands describe where you sit and what that tends to look like.

What Work Stress is not

Three misreads come up most often.

It is not a measure of how well you cope. Work Stress records how much load a person feels they carry. Two people with the same workload can land in different bands, and two people with the same resilience can land in different bands because their loads differ. Resilience is measured separately in AQ. A High result is not a verdict on the person. It is information about the conditions they work in.

It is not a burnout score or a clinical assessment. The High band description mentions a risk of burnout, but AQme is not a diagnostic tool and does not assess health. If overwhelm is affecting your sleep, your health or your ability to function, talk to a doctor or another health professional, or use your employer's support service.

It is not a target of zero. The Medium band describes a healthy level of workplace stress, with moments of overload that pass. AQme reads the sense of overwork. It does not tell apart pressure that energises you from pressure that wears you down. The aim is room to work and room for new things, not an empty diary.

What the assessment data does and does not tell us

Three things hold up in AQai's data. None of them shows cause and effect. Correlation does not mean causation.

• It travels with how people feel at work. Among the other AQ measures, Work Stress sits closest to Emotional Health: people who report more overwhelm also tend to report lower emotional health. It also tends to run higher where people feel less supported by their company. The data cannot say which drives which, and it probably runs both ways.
• It is not mainly a story about the company or the job level. People inside the same organization sit at very different points on it, so a company average hides most of what is going on. Job level, age, time in work and country each tell you a little. None of them tells you much.
• Its link to your adaptability skills is small. Resilience, Grit and Mental Flexibility show little connection to how overloaded someone feels. Overload is better read as a lack of room than a lack of ability. The Low band's own description is "I have space for new things".

The practical point is that a stronger coper is not necessarily a less overloaded person. Coping habits help you carry the load. They do not change it. That is why the advice below starts with the load.

Start with the load: six changes to how work is set up

These work for an individual in their own role, and they work better when a manager is part of the conversation.

1. Write down everything on your plate. Projects, recurring tasks, requests you said yes to. A handwritten list works for many people because it gets the load out of your head and off the screen. Overload is often partly a feeling that the list has no edges.
2. Rank it, then ask what comes off. Take the list to your manager and ask which items matter most and which can wait or stop. When something new arrives, say what you already hold and ask what it replaces.
3. Agree what done looks like and which deadlines are real. A lot of overwhelm comes from tasks with no finish line and deadlines nobody chose.
4. Leave planned slack. Block time in the week for the unplanned and for new things. A week booked solid has no room for a surprise, let alone for anything new. This is what the Low band describes: space for new things.
5. Tell a peak from a permanent load. A busy fortnight before a launch that then eases is the Medium description. A load that never comes down is the High description, and that is a conversation about the role, not about stamina.
6. Retire work. Once a month, ask what you or the team are doing that nobody would miss. Old reports, standing meetings and extra approvals are the usual candidates.

What you can do for yourself

These help you carry the load. They do not change it, so use them alongside the section above, not instead of it.

• Find your triggers. For two weeks, note when overload hits and what was behind it: volume, unclear priorities, interruptions, one meeting, one person. The pattern shows which fix to try first.
• Take real breaks. Change activity, get outdoors, exercise or listen to music. Breaks are a simple way to offset the effects of stress.
• Protect your sleep. Regular sleep patterns help you stay healthy and reduce the exhaustion that comes with stress.
• Set a boundary between work and the rest of your life. Pick an end time and a rule for devices outside working hours. Cutting the time you spend on devices is one of the simpler ways to hold that line.
• Say it earlier. Tell your manager when the load is climbing, before deadlines slip. Support from a supervisor and from colleagues is standard advice in the guidance listed under More to explore.

For team leaders: a load check

Asking "How are you?" tends to get "Fine". Asking "What would you drop?" gets an answer. This exercise puts workload on the table without anyone having to admit they are struggling.

1. Put all the team's work in one place, with the name of who holds each item.
2. Ask each person to mark what they would drop first, and what they cannot finish this month.
3. Decide as a team what stops, what moves, and what gets a second person. Check capacity before adding anything new.
4. Protect one block a week for new things, and say so out loud, so using it is not a risk.
5. Repeat it monthly for the first quarter, then whenever the team's work changes shape.

If your report shows a High, Medium or Low result

• If it is High, read it as a description of your conditions, not a verdict on you. Pick one or two changes from the first list, take them to your manager, and see whether the load moves. If it is affecting your health, speak to a health professional.
• If it is Medium, you are managing for now. Watch whether the moments of overload are passing or starting to stay.
• If it is Low, you currently have room. Protect it: when new work arrives, ask what leaves.
• Whatever the result, it describes how much room you feel you have at work. It does not say how capable or adaptable you are.

More to explore

Job Demands, Job Decision Latitude, and Mental Strain: Implications for Job Redesign, Robert Karasek (Administrative Science Quarterly, 1979). The classic demand-control paper. Strain is highest where demands are heavy and the person has little say over how the work is done.

The Job Demands-Resources Model: State of the Art, Arnold Bakker and Evangelia Demerouti (Journal of Managerial Psychology, 2007). A review of how job demands and job resources shape strain and engagement. Useful for the point that you can lower strain by adding resources as well as by removing demands.

How to make stress your friend, Kelly McGonigal (TED, 2013). A short talk on how what you believe about stress changes its effect on you. Read it as a view on mindset, not as a substitute for lowering the load.

Coping with stress at work, American Psychological Association. Practical steps including tracking your stressors, setting boundaries and talking to your supervisor.

Related AQai articles: FAQ - Improving Mental Flexibility: From Tunnel Vision to Two Lanes and FAQ - Navigating different Motivation Style Preferences.