New Year, New Stressors: Preventing Stress and Burnout in 2012

As we're all getting ready to head back into the office (hopefully) refreshed from our vacations, it may be a bit overwhelming to think about catching up on our 'email jail' and the workloads awaiting our attention.  Now before we all start hyperventilating--there's hope! Although workloads don't look like they're going down anytime soon, new research is shedding new light on other factors within our control that can help decrease workplace stress and lead to more centered, engaged employees.

A 2005 National Institute of Justice study found that heavy caseloads, workplace conflicts, and low pay led to stress and high turnover among parole and probation officers, but researchers out of UC Berkeley were more interested in the individuals who just happened to be thriving in the same environment. What makes some people completely stressed and burnout while others are still engaged and enjoy their jobs? Well, what the UC Berkeley researchers found was that empathy played a huge part in engagement and de-stressing.

Results from this research haven't been released yet, but the authors (Dr.'s Ekman & Halpern) recommend working on cultivating empathy (understanding the experience of others - great videos on how to develop empathy here) in yourself and in your employees in order to help decrease stress and increase engagement.

In addition,  a recent study out of Tel Aviv University studied the effects of job control, workload, and supervisor and co-worker support on morbidity and a variety of health outcomes by following employees' health and job measures over a 20 year period (Shirom, 2011). While little to no effects were found for job control, workload, and supervisor support, having  strong peer social support-which could represented how well a participant is socially integrated into his/her workplace--was positively related to lower morbidity and disease risks.  And another study found co-worker support to be linked to lower blood pressure and a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease (Karlin, 2003).

How can you work to empathize with co-workers or clients and build your social support systems in 2012?

References:

Karlin, W., Brondolo, E., & Schwartz, J. (2003).  Workplace social support and ambulatory cardiovascular activity in New York City traffic agents. Psychosomatic Medicine 65, 167-176.

Shirom, A., Toker, S., & Alkaly, Y. (2011). Work-based predictors of mortality: A 20-year follow-up of healthy employees. Health Psychology 30 (3) 268-275.

Be. Well. Now.