High Stress Low Productivity : Fixing An American Labor Dilemma

2003 Words9 Pages
High Stress, Low Productivity: Fixing an American Labor Dilemma A slew of studies have been conducted in recent years regarding the stress levels of American workers, and the results are not pretty: Americans are more stressed, more overworked, and less engaged at the workplace than they ever have been before. And while high levels of stress have been linked to all sorts of nasty medical issues, such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, they also poses tangibly detrimental effects to the productivity of American workers. In that time and time again high levels of stress in workers has been linked to lower levels of workplace production. Simply put, workers who are overstressed are less engaged, less productive, and less healthy than…show more content…
With this in mind, there are three principal components that are intrinsic to the emotional needs of workers: appreciation, trust, and worth. According to a 2013 study conducted by researchers at the Harvard Business Review and consultants at The Energy Project, high levels of appreciation, trust, and a sense of worth between employees and their supervisors strongly correlates with laborers being emotionally satisfied and thus more productive in their work, whereas low levels of the same three components lead to increased levels of employee stress and decreased levels of productivity (Schwartz and Porath 2). Certainly, an employee’s perception of their appreciation at their workplace can greatly affect their work performance, regardless of the industry they work in. Many Americans become stressed by putting in long hours at jobs that are repetitive or un stimulating, and so never being commended or encouraged for the quality or execution of their work by their supervisors can exacerbate their emotional dissatisfaction and un productivity (Angelo and Vladmir 355). Trust is another key aspect of the emotional needs of employees, and it can be characterized as when laborers feel that they can sincerely rely on their managers and supervisors for guidance,
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