UK Stress Based on Recent

UK Stress

Based on recent reports, there is a continuing increase of the stress level among the UK populace.

In fact 75% of the total population reveals that they are suffering from stress and is affecting their day-to-day living. Other stress-related statistics include (PR Newswire, 2003):

88% of the stress sufferers are those with ages 25-34 years old while 81% are those under 45-55 years old.

Only 69% of the stress sufferers are the students / teenagers who belong to the 15-24 age bracket

As for the retirees or those who fall under 65 and above years of age, only 56% of them are having problems relate to stress.

It should be noted that people under the said ages are those who are already part of the labor force. They are those who are normally living independently - managing their own budgets and maintaining their own basic needs.

Clearly, more people are suffering from work-related stress. In a different study conducted, it was revealed that the most common reasons for such work-related stress are "unrealistic workloads, job insecurity, long working hours and colleagues' incompetence" (M2 Presswire, 2003).

More and more companies or employers in the UK are trying to minimize the consumption of the budget by hiring lesser number of employees while maximizing the skills and competencies of the people that are already hired. This just means that more employees are now hired to do multi-tasking jobs. At some point, an employee is trying to produce the output which is normally done by two or three people. Also, there are instances wherein an employee is required to finish a certain task at a shorter period of time when it should be for longer hours or even days. This will surely bring the employees to exhaustion. They will be forced to have shorter break times just to finish the task. Sometimes, they will also opt to bring some works at home thus working on the time that they are supposed to be resting.

Unreliable job securities are brought by the fact that more UK companies now prefer outsourcing and/or hiring temporary or casual employees. Outsourcing means other smaller companies will be tapped to do certain jobs for the company while hiring temporary or casual employees means that there will be a contract that will state just how many months an employee will be working in the company.

By doing these two strategies, the company will minimize the costs for providing benefits (such as medical benefits, insurance, retirement benefits, etc.) to the employees. These are beneficial for the employer or the company but a big challenge for the employees. Because of this, workers will not be assured about their medical expenses when needed. More so, because of such company strategies, employees will always be in the look out to looking or the next possible employers for they know that their time with the present company is limited. This of course brings stress and worry for the workers. Instead of enjoying the perks of the work they have, they will feel stressed out in thinking that they do not have the needed security inside the company they are presently working.