Panic Attack at the Work Place

How common is workplace anxiety, and why is it increasingly prevalent?
The phenomenon of workplace anxiety is quite common. Recent statistics show that as many as 40 per cent of employees are reporting high levels of stress and anxiety at work. There is also evidence that anxiety is on the rise in the general population. One reason for this is increasing global economic uncertainty, which is making the workplace even more competitive, and making people concerned about keeping their jobs. At the same time, our consumer-driven society places emphasis on acquiring material goods such as cars, homes and clothing, thus increasing pressure to climb the corporate ladder in order to acquire such commodities.

Another factor is the decrease in separation between work and family life. It is now common for families to have both partners working, which puts stress on all involved. Moreover, most individuals are faced with the challenge of balancing roles that extend beyond work and family: there are employees who are students, community members who are spouses, and parents who are volunteers, to name but a few. The challenge of balancing multiple roles is felt by many individuals across many sectors of the population. Although holding multiple roles can be enriching, it can also make the achievement of overall life balance a difficult aspiration.

Finally, the workforce itself is changing. In particular, there is less stability in today’s corporate world and workers are likely to change their jobs several times over their career. In the past, employees were much more likely to remain with an organization for the entire tenure of their career. When asked where they worked, they would typically tell you the name of their company – “I work at Bell Canada”. These days, people are more likely to respond to this question by indicating their profession – “I am an engineer”: they are more committed to their profession than they are to their place of employment.

What are some common types of workplace anxiety?
There are several types of anxiety that individuals may experience in their daily lives, including public-speaking anxiety, sports anxiety and physiological anxiety. One type that is particularly relevant to the workplace is performance anxiety, which reflects feelings of apprehension about the execution of one’s work responsibilities. This occurs when individuals view themselves as ineffective in handling tasks and focus on the undesirable consequences of inadequate performance.

Some people are predisposed by their genes or family background to suffer from anxiety. Nature and nurture both play a role, and learned experiences can also have an influence on the levels of stress we experience. Some individuals may have grown up in environments where pressure was placed on achieving perfect standards. This is often where performance anxiety comes from, since childhood expectations can lead to an exaggerated fear of failure.

The other type of anxiety relevant to the workplace is social anxiety, which focuses on the interpersonal aspects of work. It is relevant because the vast majority of jobs involve social exchanges with supervisors, subordinates, co-workers, customers, and/or suppliers. This type of anxiety is related to an individuals’ ability to effectively interact with others, and is particularly debilitating in jobs involving a lot of interpersonal interactions.

Is there such a thing as healthy tension in the workplace? If so, when does it start to become a problem?
When it comes to job performance, there is an important difference between arousal and anxiety. Arousal is the experience of being in a heightened state of consciousness: you’re motivated, alert and ready to go. A low level of arousal can actually be facilitative to getting work done, but when the level gets too high, it can actually decrease performance.

You might think this relationship between performance and arousal would also apply to anxiety -- that a little anxiety might increase one’s motivation. This is not the case. Research by myself and my Rotman colleague Stéphane Côté, as well as other scholars, suggests that even low levels of anxiety can be debilitative. Even a small amount of anxiety takes the focus away from the task at hand and inevitably results in reduced levels of performance.

How might anxiety impact an organization’s ability to thrive in the market?
Workplace anxiety can have disastrous consequences. It can cause employees to use prescription drugs, forgo leisure time, suffer physical ailments, and generally interfere with their overall well-being. From the organization’s perspective, anxiety has negative implications for job performance, workplace attitudes and perhaps most seriously, for workplace retention. The more anxiety workers feel, the less satisfied they are likely to be with their job, and the more likely they are to leave an organization. The economic burden of workplace anxiety in North America is estimated to be billions of dollars a year.

To be clear, everyone suffers from some anxiety, and we’re all going to fall somewhere on the anxiety continuum. The extremely-high spectrum of anxiety includes clinical anxiety disorders, generalized anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorders, panics and phobias. Most research on anxiety has focused on these types of seriously debilitative disorders.

From my research, however, I’ve learned that even the non-clinical types of anxiety have serious implications for job performance. Research shows that workplace anxiety has an effect on performance above and beyond indicators like cognitive ability, personality, work experience and age. It’s quite a powerful factor.

What are some coping strategies that employees can use to lessen their anxiety?
There are three main types of coping that individuals can engage in. The first is ‘problem-oriented’ coping. As the name implies, it involves focusing on the problem at hand and resolving it: it’s a task-based approach. As an example, imagine that you have been promoted to a new position where you do not have all the analytical skills needed to perform your new duties. A problem-oriented approach would involve focusing all of your energies on this new challenge, perhaps by reading relevant books or talking to others who can help you tackle the new job requirements. Essentially, you immerse yourself in the problem until your feelings of mastery return and your stress diminishes.

The second approach is ‘emotion-focused’ coping. It’s a more affect-based approach, which means that you focus on your feelings about the challenge rather than the challenge itself. If you were to imagine that you are in the same situation that I described above, where you are faced with new job responsibilities that you feel unable to handle. Instead of dealing with the challenge of your new responsibilities, an emotion-focused coping strategy would involve spending a lot of time expressing your worries and concerns to your coworkers or family members. Because women tend to be a little more expressive than men, they are more likely to adopt this coping strategy.

The third approach is ‘avoidance-oriented’ coping, which involves engaging in activities that allow you to withdraw from the event. You’re concerned, you’re anxious, so what do you do? You walk away, either mentally or physically. You may think about what you’re going to have for dinner that evening, take a nap, surf the Internet or go out with your friends. Avoidance-oriented coping involves engaging in any behaviours that take your mind off the problem at hand. This type of coping is usually maladaptive, as it certainly does not make the problem go away. In fact, in many cases the problem escalates. Interestingly, males are more likely to engage in this type of coping strategy than females.

Ultimately, when faced with workplace challenges, employees should try to engage in problem-focused coping techniques to the greatest extent possible.

What are some ways that managers and employers can counteract anxiety in their employees?
There are many things that can be done to counteract workplace anxiety. From a manager’s perspective, they can include tailoring certain aspects of the job to reduce anxiety. For example, if as a manager you are aware that one of your employees suffers from social anxiety, you might request him or her to present a written report instead of a PowerPoint presentation that would require public speaking.

Leadership styles can also help to reduce workplace anxiety. In particular, ‘transformational leadership’ can be an effective way of helping employees tackle their anxieties. Unlike ‘transactional leadership’, which involves maintaining the status quo, transformational leadership may necessitate a comprehensive change in how the organization operates. Transformational leaders stimulate and challenge employees, motivating them to achieve extraordinary levels of achievement. This is accomplished by cultivating intense one-on-one relationships with employees, and providing a supportive climate where they are treated as individuals. Transformational leaders are effective in helping employees work through the anxieties they may be having, and coaching them through different coping strategies.

Giving employees choice and providing them with flexibility on the job is another way to reduce anxiety. Workers have an increased feeling of control over their environment and experience less stress, if they are given options like working flexible hours, working from home, or making a presentation via a technical paper rather than public speaking. It is also useful for managers to set goals – such as securing an important client – but allow the employee the freedom to decide how to achieve the goal. Another approach is to create an environment that is calm and soothing. Many workplaces are sterile or loud, and something as simple as improving the lighting or changing the colour of the walls can make a big difference.

Ultimately, you want to treat employees as individuals, rather than as part of an anonymous workforce. The bottom line is that your productivity depends on the individuals that make up your organization, and each one has unique needs and aspirations, and most importantly, unique abilities. Making the work environment healthy for everybody will help not only the well-being of the workers, but also the well-being of the organization as a whole.

Part of achieving such workplace health is being aware of individual differences among employees. Just because people have high levels of anxiety doesn’t necessarily mean they are going to be ineffective: they in fact may be your top employees, and engaging in strategies to reduce their anxiety will only make them more effective.

Julie McCarthy is an assistant professor of Organizational Behaviour at the Rotman School of Management. Her research includes studies on personnel selection, leadership, performance measurement, personality, and test-taking attitudes. The recipient of a number of academic awards, she has played a key role in large-scale consulting projects in both the public and private sectors, and for such clients as the Ontario Police College, the Canadian Armed Forces and the RCMP.

[This article has been reprinted, with permission, from Rotman Management, the magazine of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management]