Workers ‘convince themselves they’re stressed’

Stress in the workplace is due to employees convincing themselves they cannot cope with their employment duties, one health expert has asserted.

As a result, David Wainwright, from the University of Bath, told the Royal Society of Medicine that he believed the term ‘work stress’ should be banned, the Metro reports.

And he added that Britons today had become softer than preceding generations, believing that rather than being resilient and toughening up, they were in need of a therapeutic remedy to stress.

"The way people think about their problems at work isn’t very helpful. The engineering metaphor that we will get to breaking point and snap isn’t a useful one," Mr Wainwright stated.

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He added that this had led to a heightened vulnerability of people believing they lacked the ability to cope.

However, the Health and Safety Executive recently claimed that last year in the UK a total of 13.5 million days were lost to work-related stress.

It stated that stress was a major cause of occupational ill health resulting in sickness absence, high staff turnover and poor performance for organisations.