According to a 2020 study, 79% of workers reported experiencing workplace stress - so it’s no wonder that it continues to be a popular topic of discussion. Everyone experiences stress differently, from its causes, to its effects, and how we respond to them. While some thrive in a stressful environment, others crumble. By understanding how our underlying behaviours inform our response to stress, we can begin to combat its negative effects.
Causes & Effects
Let’s first consider where stress might come from in a workplace setting. There are a number of compounding factors that should be noted, such as poor relationships with other employees and heavy, demanding workloads. However, the largest contributor comes down to situations where an employee is stuck in the wrong job.
Few of us are blessed with a clear and obvious career path in early life, and people often find themselves in industries that they stick around in for the sake of maintaining employment. In these circumstances, they’re not just more sensitive to stressful situations, but will find that stressful triggers mount up over time until they can’t take it anymore.
Stress results in a number of adverse effects on a person’s mental wellbeing, whether it be illnesses like anxiety and depression or a loss of concentration and motivation. On top of this, it can also lead to physical ailments like headaches, sleep disturbances and high blood pressure.
Understanding Behavioural Responses
Just as the effects of stress will differ person-to-person, their individual responses will too. It’s important to understand, however, that these responses can reliably be predicted through an understanding of a persons’ unique behavioural trends. We use Paradox Technology to take the results from a psychometric questionnaire to explore how different, seemingly paradoxical, behavioural traits compliment each other.
It shows that if one trait is exhibited more strongly than another, it can result in an imbalance that turns what should be a strength into a weakness. For example, if someone is strong in Frankness and Diplomacy, both will be balancing strengths for communication. While a combination of the two results in being both forthright and truthful, if a person is strong in frankness, but not diplomacy they will simply come off as blunt.
Stress & Paradox Technology
The effect of stress on these behaviours is important, but simple. On a Paradox graph, these traits are measured under four quadrants. Under stressful situations, a person’s imbalanced traits will “flip” towards the opposite end of the spectrum.
Take “Driving,” for example, a trait which measures how a person manages rapport and empathy while managing the performance of others. If a person is highly empathetic, but not very enforcing, they will of course be reluctant to enforce rules - but under stress this will flip, resulting in them reacting harshly to people trying to take advantage of their leniency.
What You Can Do
To combat this, it’s important to take into consideration which unbalanced traits employees exhibit, and ensure they are placed into job roles where a flip in their behaviour won’t upset their workflow. This isn’t just essential to keeping employees happy and productive, but it in turn leads to a reduction in your churn rate. We are unconscious of the majority of our behaviours, but Harrison Assessment’s SmartQuestionnaire makes the process of exploring them simple.
We can also work on our behavioural traits to make them more balanced - so if a person is willing to put the work in, the Questionnaire will offer crucial insights into the best route for development.
If you need insight into your employee’s behaviours, so you can better understand how they will be affected by stress, then we can provide you the tools you need to do so.
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