A bad day at the office has little to do with the number of hours you put in working. Workplace stress, research has found, is not linked to clocking in more hours. Rather, the culprit for stress in the office is workplace environment.
"We know that Americans work longer hours," says Dan Ganster from the University of Arkansas. "But we were surprised to find that there was no association at all between long work hours and stress."
Less stressed workers, despite the amount of time they spent on the job, reported more job satisfaction. These workers had more autonomy in their daily routine and had supervisors who were supportive of their work. They also enjoyed less family-work conflict and had more fringe benefits from their job.
To nurture less stress among employees, managers should try to improve their work environment by providing such options as flexible hours notes Ganster. "The focus should really be on these kinds of factors not so much just the straight number of hours worked."
The researchers examined, a nationwide sample of 2,842 workers from a wide variety of jobs, from part time hourly workers to salaried employees working more than 100 hours a week. In general, lower paying service-oriented jobs were more stressful than white-collar ones.
The research was presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management in Seattle.
