Lifestyle Risk
More than a decade ago, stress was identified as the number one lifestyle risk in the workplace. At the time, the conversation centered on heavy workloads, long hours, and staffing challenges. While those pressures haven’t disappeared, the nature of stress, and the way it shows up at work, has evolved significantly.
For HR professionals and leaders, the challenge today isn’t just recognizing that stress exists. It’s understanding how stress is experienced, where it is being sustained, and why well-intentioned efforts sometimes miss the mark.
Stress is no longer an occasional spike tied to deadlines or busy seasons. It is increasingly chronic, cumulative, and cognitive — shaped by constant change, mental load, and the way work is designed and led.
Stress as a Modern Lifestyle Risk
Stress remains a leading lifestyle risk, but it looks different than it did ten years ago.
Today’s employees are navigating:
- Ongoing change and uncertainty
- Mental load and decision fatigue
- Always-on connectivity and digital overload
- Blurred boundaries between work and home
- Financial pressure and cost-of-living concerns
- Emotional labour and the need to manage relationships, tone, and reactions
This type of stress doesn’t always present as visible overload. It often shows up as exhaustion, disengagement, irritability, difficulty concentrating, or a sense of never quite catching up.
It’s also important to distinguish between pressure, stress, mental fatigue, and burnout.
- Pressure can be short-term and motivating.
- Stress becomes problematic when it is persistent and unmanaged.
- Mental fatigue reflects depleted cognitive and emotional resources.
- Burnout is the result of prolonged exposure to unresolved stressors, particularly when people feel unsupported or powerless to change their situation.
Why Stress Continues to Drive Other Health Risks
Stress rarely exists in isolation. It acts as an amplifier.
When people are under sustained stress:
- Sleep quality declines
- Physical activity often drops
- Nutrition choices become more reactive
- Substance use may increase
- Recovery time disappears
From an organizational perspective, this translates into:
- Higher absenteeism
- Increased presenteeism
- Greater use of benefits and disability supports
- Lower engagement and productivity
Stress doesn’t just affect individual health. It shapes how people show up, how they interact with others, and how effectively work gets done.
The Employer–Employee Perception Gap: Then and Now
In 2013, research from sources such as the Towers Watson Staying@Work survey highlighted a clear disconnect between how employers and employees viewed workplace stressors. (see Historical Context below) Employers emphasized work-life balance and long hours. Employees pointed to inadequate staffing, unclear expectations, pay concerns, and organizational culture.
That gap still exists, but it has shifted.
What Has Changed
Today, the disconnect is less about naming stressors and more about how stress is understood and addressed.
- Employers and leaders often focus on:
- Policies, programs, and resources
- Risk management and compliance
- Availability of supports
- Employees experience stress through:
- Capacity strain and competing priorities
- Inconsistent leadership behaviours
- Lack of control or clarity
- Feeling unheard, undervalued, or unsupported
In other words, leaders may believe supports are in place, while employees may feel those supports don’t address what actually makes work stressful.
Why This Disconnect Matters
When perception gaps persist:
- Wellness initiatives feel disconnected from reality
- Program participation declines
- Trust erodes
- Frustration increases on both sides
HR professionals are often caught in the middle. They are tasked with improving well-being while navigating competing priorities, limited resources, and leaders who may underestimate the lived experience of stress on their teams.
Addressing stress effectively requires moving beyond surface-level solutions and taking a closer look at the conditions that sustain stress within the organization.
From Wellness Programs to Workplace Conditions
One of the biggest shifts in how we need to approach stress is recognizing that individual resilience cannot compensate for systemic organizational strain.
Stress is influenced by:
- Workload and staffing decisions
- Role clarity and competing expectations
- Decision-making authority
- Leadership capability and confidence
- Organizational culture and accountability
- Psychological safety
If these conditions are misaligned, no amount of mindfulness training or wellness perks will resolve the underlying issue.
This doesn’t mean individual strategies don’t matter. It means they must be paired with organizational responsibility.
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What Effective Stress Strategies Look Like Today
Organizational-Level Strategies
For HR and leaders, this includes:
- Honest conversations about workload and capacity
- Clear expectations and prioritization
- Consistent leadership behaviours, especially during change
- Modelling boundaries, recovery, and respectful communication
- Ensuring flexibility is applied fairly and consistently
Stress is often reduced not by adding more supports, but by removing unnecessary friction from how work gets done.
Individual-Level Skill Building
At the same time, employees benefit from:
- Practical coping and self-regulation strategies
- Energy and attention management
- Boundary-setting in a digitally connected environment
- Normalizing the use of support systems
The goal is not to “toughen people up,” but to equip them with tools that help them navigate stress more effectively.
Updating Health Promotion and Wellness Approaches
Traditional wellness offerings — health risk assessments, screenings, and education — still have a place. However, they are no longer sufficient on their own.
More effective approaches now include:
- Manager mental health and conversation training
- Virtual and hybrid access to supports
- Financial well-being resources
- Trauma-informed leadership practices
- Focus on rest, recovery, and cognitive load
The question is no longer, “What programs do we offer?”
It’s “Are our supports aligned with how stress is actually experienced here?”
Applying the S-O-S Principle™ in Today’s Workplace
The S-O-S Principle™ remains a practical and relevant framework for navigating stress, particularly when it is applied with shared accountability in mind.
Situation:
What is actually driving the stress? Is it workload, role clarity, change, conflict, or lack of control?
Ourself:
How do individuals protect their energy, focus, and health during stressful periods?
Support:
Who shares responsibility for addressing the stress — leaders, colleagues, systems, and supports?
When organizations and individuals work through these questions together, stress becomes something that can be managed, not something people are expected to silently absorb.
Key Takeaways for HR Professionals and Leaders
- Stress remains the number one lifestyle risk, but its drivers have evolved
- The employer–employee perception gap still exists, even if the language has changed
- Stress is sustained by conditions, not just personal coping capacity
- Leadership behaviours matter as much as formal policies
- Addressing stress well supports both well-being and performance
Moving Forward: Asking Better Questions
Reducing workplace stress starts with curiosity.
Are we asking employees what actually drains their energy?
Are we willing to examine how work is structured and led?
Are we addressing causes, or just symptoms?
When HR professionals and leaders are willing to ask better questions and listen closely to the answers, stress becomes something that can be understood, addressed, and reduced, not simply endured.
Historical Context from the original article on Stress As The #1 Lifestyle Risk
2013/2014 Staying@Work Surveyfrom Towers Watson indicated that stress was the number one lifestyle risk and that employers and employees couldn’t be any farther apart when reporting the top sources of stress in their workplace.
Stress as the #1 lifestyle risk.
- Top three health risks cited by respondents — stress (83%), lack of physical activity (49%), and obesity (41%).
- Stressed workers incurred healthcare costs 50% higher than the norm
- 60% of lost workdays each year could be attributed to stress
- Stress drove and sustained other lifestyle behaviours such as inactivity and poor nutritional choices: Workers with the most severe levels of job stress had a 68% higher risk of developing heart disease, and men who experienced “moderate” or “extreme” job stress were twice as likely to smoke as other workers
Differing Views On The Top Causes Of Work Related Stress
#1. Employer: Lack of work-life balance (excessive workloads and/or long hours)
#1. Employee: Inadequate staffing (lack of support, uneven workload or performance in group). ** This was almost universal as the #1 source of stress according to the employees surveyed.
#2. Employer: Inadequate staffing (lack of support, uneven workload or performance in group) –
#2. Employee:
- Globally: Low pay or low increases in pay
- Canada: Unclear or conflicting job expectations
#3. Employer: Technologies that expand availability during nonworking hours
#3. Employee:
- Globally: Unclear or conflicting job expectations
- Canada: Organizational culture including lack of team work
#4. Employer: Unclear or conflicting job expectations
#4. Employee:
- Globally: Organizational culture, including lack of teamwork, tendency to avoid
- accountability and assign blame to others
- Canada: Lack of work-life balance (excessive workloads and/or long hours)
#5. Employer: Fears about job loss, too much change
#5. Employee
- Globally: Lack of work-life balance (excessive workloads and/or long hours)
- Canada: Low pay or low increases in pay
Contact Beverly about hosting a mental health workshop for your teams on how to build resilience. Discover tips to deal with stress and encourage positive stress management techniques!
If you have some strategies to share – comment on this posting!
Additional Postings:
Workplace Wellness: Management Practices That Can Lead To A Toxic Workplace
Workplace Wellness: Moving From Health Promotion To A Healthy Organization
Increase Productivity And Reduce Stress With The S-O-S Principle
The Psychosocial Risk Factors and Employee Mental Health