In our line of work we are frequently called upon to provide support because a project or business imperative (such as an Acquisition or Divestiture) compresses the work capacity of the team.
As a company that is committed to both best in class land practices and one that values work/life balance we are happy to receive these calls. Naturally, we are happy to obtain a client engagement, but more so we feel that managers and supervisors who seek external support to buffer the workload of their teams are demonstrating good practices. Projects and initiatives that are incremental to existing workloads can produce stress and, quite candidly, poor work product outcomes.
When additional, specialized and focused support can be brought to bear on a project the impacts on existing staff are always positive. The attached infographic from ComPsych provides measurements that put dimensions around stress, its causes and impacts.
It seems self evident that excessive workload causes stress, but when one looks beyond workload it is interesting to note from the information that 59% see accomplishing their basic responsibilities as most important. The strong implication here is that surprise or incremental work that is outside of the employees usual scope of duties represents a conflict for the employee. If left unchecked for long periods of time this produces stress that has a clear impact on productivity.
