Customer Service Workers among Most Stressed in Britain – Nearly half of industry workers need time off work due to stress
If you’re feeling the strain at work, you’re not alone. Just ahead of National Stress Awareness Day, new research reveals how 57.3% of employees in the customer services sector feel overworked, with almost half (44.4%) admitting they have had to take time off due to stress.
The news comes from the UK’s largest job site, CV-Library, which conducted a survey among over 1,100 workers to explore stress levels in the workplace.
Worryingly, it unveiled that workers in the customer services industry are among the most stressed in Britain – 8.1% of workers in the sector don’t know how to deal with their stress and try to keep it to themselves, whilst those that do confront the issue often manage it by adopting unhealthy lifestyle choices. Turning to alcohol and junk food are both included in the four most common coping mechanisms in the sector:
Speaking with friends and family (67.2%)
Talking to co-workers (24.7%)
Comfort eating (11.3%)
Having a few drinks (9.7%)
Furthermore, when resorting to taking time off work, 14.5% of customer service employees are too scared to tell their boss that stress was the cause of absence.
When it comes to assessing the biggest causes of stress in customer services, feeling overworked came on top; an overwhelming 53.7% of employees believe they don’t have enough time in the day to complete basic tasks. Other common stress-inducers included:
Dealing with poor management (52%)
Taking on big projects (14.1%)
Unrealistic workloads (12.9%)
Failing to achieve a good work/life balance (8.1%)
Commenting on the findings, Lee Biggins, founder and managing director of CV-Library, says:
“It’s worrying that such a large proportion of customer service workers suffer from stress, which is being caused by strained situations in the workplace. What’s more concerning is the negative stigma attached to stress that prevents employees from being honest with their boss.
Staff often feel that admitting to feeling overworked or pressured will automatically create assumptions around their ability to do a job; for the benefit of both workers and businesses, this attitude needs to change.”
Additional Information
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