How much stress is too much?
Photo by Anna Shvets from PexelsHow much stress is appropriate at work? How much stress is too much?
Stress is personal and relative
Stress is personal and it is important to establish your own baseline of stress. This baseline is different per individual, per team, per task. It is more important to see the relative change than the absolute change as different people have different abilities to manage stress. E.g. in Quimby every individual and team has an average morale trend. It is less important how your morale or your team’s morale is relative to others (yes, that’s a data point too) but it is more important to see the fluctuations and relative improvement per individual and team. It is important to be relative than absolute when deciding on if the stress is more or less.
Stress for optimal performance
According to Yerkes-Dodson law, developed by psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson in 1908, there is a relationship between individual’s stress levels and performance. Too much stress or too little stress can result in poor performance. One can reach peak level of performance with an intermediate level of stress.
Ref: https://www.healthline.com/health/yerkes-dodson-law#stress-performance-bell-curveMeasuring stress after the pandemic
The key is to remember that this optimal stress varies by person, by task complexity and by the situation. Especially after the pandemic, people’s ability to manage work stress has reduced to all the other factors of stress that they had to manage (i.e. arousal was high on all fronts). Measuring just work stress isn’t enough for employers. The same stress levels at work might be perceived as much higher due to the overall stress levels in a person’s life. So how do you measure stress?
One way to measure stress is through biomarkers - brain waves, heart rate variability, etc. But a simple and scientific way of measuring perceived stress is self reporting using PSS scale. PSS scale is a 10-item self-report measure that captures an individual’s perception of how overwhelmed they are by their current life circumstances.
Want to measure your or your team’s stress levels using PSS? You can use our free PSS assessment here.
Empower employees with emotional resilience tools and create psychologically safe teams using Quimby.