A stressful job could be good for your health?? That has got to be a joke right?! This seems crazy and something I truly don’t want to believe, who even likes being stressed?! Not me! In the culture we live in, all we have heard is how detrimental stress can be, and when I feel overwhelmed at work and it’s been non-stop, I of course have the only rational thought out there: “This job is taking years off my life.” But according to this study, stress may actually be more beneficial in a long term sense than we think. Strange thought, right.
Erik Gonzalez-Mule was the lead author of this study and his team from Indiana University tracked thousands of workers who were in their 60’s to gauge the stress that is caused from their jobs over 6 years. The most interesting part of this study for me was that the researchers categorized stress in two different ways: those who had freedom and control in high-stress roles vs employees that have little freedom to make their own decisions in high-stress roles.
When stress is divided into categories like those I agree that there are clear negative consequences for employee health when it is paired with a small amount of freedom for decision making as opposed to when an employee has more freedom that can be favorable. When you have freedom to choose in stress it causes you to find a way and figure it out how you would like. Gonzalez-Mule suggested that reconstructing jobs to give more control to employees could have double benefits because not only would it be good for the employee but also could improve the business itself.
There are several other quotes and statistics that I agree with, but I also do have a few concerns with this study. Why did they look at employees that were in their 60’s? What type of jobs were the researchers looking at? With this type of article out in the media it can be construed and misunderstood very easily. Employee’s may not even read the study but assume that their sleepless nights, long days, and insane workload amount will benefit them, when in reality that is not what this study is saying.
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/19/a-stressful-job-could-actually-be-good-for-your-health-experts-s/
- http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/peps.12206/epdf?r3_referer=wol&tracking_action=preview_click&show_checkout=1&purchase_referrer=onlinelibrary.wiley.com