Women Hit Hard by Stress over Managerial Support

A Kenexa Research Institute (KRI) news release said 56% of women indicate their stress level is “reasonable,” while 26% feel their work stress has reached unacceptable levels.

The largest difference between men and women was seen in front-line supervisory roles (10% more women rate their work stress as unreasonable), service and production jobs (8%), and middle and upper management (6%), according to the announcement.

Generally, Kenexa said, unreasonable levels of work stress have a significant negative impact on an employee’s job satisfaction and workplace enjoyment.

Regardless of gender, employees are more than twice as likely to think about leaving their job if they have a high level of work stress.

For professional and technical workers, the issues of work/life balance, doing exciting work that they are good at, having a respectful manager, being paid fairly, working on a resourced and functioning team, and having a career path all contribute to the level of work stress, the announcement said.

The report is based on the analysis of data drawn from a representative sample of 10,000 U.S. workers.