Work Stress Surveys - Questionnaires For Employee

An unfortunate aspect of modern life is the amount of stress people seem to be increasingly under, with workplace stress accounting for a lot of this. People are concerned about the economy, financial pressures, workloads, deadlines and internal politics within their organizations, which can be overwhelming.

According to the American Institute of Stress, 83% of workers in the USA suffer from work-related stress, which can cause around one million workers to miss work each day, and costs US businesses around $300 billion annually.

In the United Kingdom, the UK Health and Safety Executive has found that stress, anxiety and depression that are work-related account for around 44% of all the UK’s work-related ill health, as well as 15.4 million work days lost annually.

Not only can stress lead to serious mental health problems for employees, it can also result in decreased productivity and profitability for the company.

>> Download workplace stress questionnaire (19 questions) <<

As a employer, providing your employees with a mentally healthy workplace can protect your staff from psychological harm as well as having overall benefits for your business. That is why it is vital to assess anxiety and conduct a work stress survey using questionnaires.

Table of contents

What is a workplace stress risk assessment?

The HSE management standards for work-related stress

Questions to ask your employees in a workplace stress assessment questionnaire 

How to run a work stress survey

What is a workplace stress risk assessment?

A workplace stress risk assessment is an approach that employers can take to identify and evaluate any factors or issues that are causing their employees work-related stress.  

In the United Kingdom, there is a legal duty for employers to carry out a risk assessment in order to help protect their employees from work-related stress.

This involves identifying the stressors in the workplace in a variety of ways such as visual assessments, interviewing staff, gathering feedback from exit interviews, insights from absences or performance reviews, focus groups or conducting workplace stress assessment questionnaires. 

The information gathered through tools like a workplace stress assessment questionnaire enable you to form a picture of what problems may exist in your workplace. 

After using the work stress survey questionnaires, you can:

• Determine which staff are affected.
• Evaluate the risks posed.
• Take appropriate actions to mitigate the risks posed to the employees and the business by these stressors.

The HSE management standards for work-related stress

The UK’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has a set of six management standards for organizations to understand the six known factors that increase the risk of stress in the workplace if not managed properly, as part of the HSE workplace stress risk assessment.

They are designed so that employers can better understand the steps they need to take to manage the risk to their employees’ wellbeing as a result of work-related stress.

By following the approach of the management standards, organizations are able to benchmark where their organization is at in terms of managing workplace stress risks and can then take appropriate steps and actions to improve this performance.

The management standards are:

• Demands  - including workload, work patterns and the overall work environment.
• Control  - how much influence or input a person has into the way they carry it their work
• Support  - resources, encouragement, frameworks etc. put in place by the organization including managers and coworkers.
• Relationships  - including the promotion of positive working relationships that avoid conflict, and unacceptable behavior is dealt with.
• Role - whether or not employees understand their individual role within the organization and if the organization ensures they don’t have conflicting roles.
• Change - how well any organizational changes are managed and communicated.

Questions to ask your employees in a workplace stress assessment questionnaire 

The HSE management standards can be used as the basis for your organization to determine its workplace stress scale by creating questions to ask employees so you can benchmark the workplace stressors present and then proactively work to remedy.  Surveying your employees with an employee stress questionnaire can help you to determine the ways stress may be a potential problem for your organization and who is likely to be affected and how.

Sample stress survey questions

We have compiled the following survey questions about stress that you can use to send to your own employees:

1. Do you feel like you are able to speak honestly about issues that affect you in the workplace?

• Strongly agree
• Somewhat agree
• Neither agree or disagree
• Somewhat disagree
• Strongly disagree

• Strongly satisfied
• Somewhat satisfied
• Neither satisfied or unsatisfied
• Somewhat unsatisfied
• Strongly unsatisfied

• Strongly agree
• Somewhat agree
• Neither agree or disagree
• Somewhat disagree
• Strongly disagree

Download the full workplace stress assessment questionnaire (31 questions)

How to run a work stress survey

The best way to conduct a stress survey at work is to send your employees an electronic survey that will allow you to analyze the results quickly.  Paper-based surveys can be easily lost or misplaced, and take too long to send to employees and wait for results to come back - plus the time spent adding up responses manually.

The DeskAlerts survey tool lets you quickly survey your employees to gauge the state of affairs in your organization - including around stress.  You can use it to send questionnaires on job stress of employees straight to their devices such as computer desktops, laptops, or to their mobile phones and tablets via an app.

DeskAlerts surveys can be sent in such a way that the employee is forced to complete the questionnaire, which ensures you get a high response rate. And the extensive reporting we provide lets you see your statistics quickly or drill down to see more information.

You can send the same survey to every employee in the organization, or send to specific audiences, such as a particular regional office or one work team.

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Sending your employees a workplace stress survey is a good way to understand what the levels of stress are in your organization so you can take appropriate steps to be more supportive. Book a free demo today to find out how DeskAlerts can help you to send work stress questionnaires in your organization.

FAQ:

What are the 5 tips to prevent work stress?

Five ways to prevent work-related stress include:

• Improving your organizational skills
• Take regular breaks
• Embrace healthy living
• Put boundaries in place between work and personal life
• Ask for support if you need it.

What are some questions to ask about stress?

Questions to ask in a stress in the workplace survey include:

• How often do you feel stressed?
• Does your work contribute to your stress?
• Do you feel supported at work?
• Do you feel you have enough time to do your work each day?

What are 6 ways to reduce stress?

Six ways to reduce stress includes:

• Take time to exercise
• Relax your muscles
• Do deep breathing exercises
• Make time for personal interests and hobbies
• Talk about your problems if you have them
• Eat healthy food

What are stress management questions?

Because most jobs have stressful elements to them, it can be important to know how well people handle routine stress when you are recruiting to fill a position. It’s important to ask people questions about how they handle stress in the workplace at job interviews to determine if they will be a suitable fit for the role.

How do you handle pressure at work?

These are some good ways to handle pressure at work:

• Prioritise your work tasks effectively
• Try not to have unhealthy responses to stress (eating, drinking too much etc)
• Don’t be afraid to ask for help
• Make sure you take time for your personal life outside of work.