Stress isn’t always bad. Certain employees thrive under it.
ADP Research Institute looked into different types of stress and how they impact the workplace.

The past three years have brought substantial changes to the world of work. The pandemic shutdown, the rise of remote work, and the Great Resignation have left enormous uncertainty in their wake.
 

Many of us still are trying to adapt. For some, stress is still a problem.

The ADP Research Institute (ADPRI) has shown that stress harms employee well-being and retention, and we wanted to know more about how it affects the workplace. Measuring stress, however, is difficult given the complex and unique ways that individuals respond to it. Stress affects all of us differently. Some people thrive on it, others wilt.

It might come as a surprise that stress can be good, bad, or neither. In our study, we examined stress from two perspectives: Eustress and distress.

• Eustress is a positive or beneficial type of stress, such as the adrenaline rush of a challenging deadline.
• Distress, of course, is the negative opposite, the kind of pressure that leads to less productivity, not more.

Achieving the right mixture of both types of stress helps workers flourish. We put our survey respondents into two main categories: Thriving and overloaded.

We defined thriving workers as people who love the work they do, who often lose track of time during their day, and who, at the end of the day, are refreshed and ready to begin again.

Overloaded workers, by contrast, are drained by stress. They feel as if they have nothing left to give and are spinning on a hamster wheel that never slows.

In our research published in Issue 4 of ADPRI’s Today at Work, a quarterly workforce research report and data-driven resource for business leaders, thriving workers are more likely to score higher on workplace engagement, resilience, and employee motivation and commitment than overloaded workers. Thriving workers also report higher productivity levels than workers who are rattled or overloaded by distress.

When it comes to retaining employees, our research revealed that there might be an optimal recipe. Each month, we ask 2,500 working adults in the United States a series of sentiment-focused questions, including their desire to work for a different company.

In any given month, about 48 percent of workers are engaged in job-searching behaviors, according to our research. But thriving workers – those with high eustress and low distress – are much less likely to be looking for new jobs, with 62 percent saying they have no intent to leave.

As one might expect, overloaded workers – those with high distress and low eustress – are more likely to be headed toward the exits. Seven in 10 say they’re seeking employment elsewhere.

Many factors can contribute to stress at work, and it can be difficult or impossible to pinpoint a single cause or even a group of causes. One thing we do know is that the greater a person’s distress or negative stress, the more likely they are to be contemplating leaving and having reduced reported productivity.

Organizations continue to struggle to return to pre-pandemic staffing levels, and retaining workers is more important than ever. Helping workers to thrive by having more positive stress and reducing negative stress could go a long way to achieving retention.

Author Bio

Dr. Mary Hayes is the Research Director for People and Performance at ADP Research Institute. Dr. Hayes' research focus has been on engagement, turnover, knowledge worker performance, and teams in the workplace.

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