A massive workload is often cited as a common complaint of the modern employee, but new research suggests it’s not actually the reason people hate their jobs.
A Danish study of 4,500 public service employees gives credence to the saying ‘people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers’: the findings show that a heavy workload actually isn’t the cause of workplace depression, rather it’s the work environment and the support – or lack of support – from management, that influences and promotes feelings of negativity in the workplace.
The study analysed the concentration of the stress hormone cortisol in 4,500 Danish public employees, and a questionnaire determined how fairly employees felt they were treated by management.
From the questionnaires, researchers determined the “sense of justice” that the employees felt in their workplace – a sense of justice that included the feeling of being heard by management, and the belief that all staff were being treated equally in the workplace.
“We may have a tendency to associate depression and stress with work pressure and workload; however, our study shows that the workload actually has no effect on workplace depression,” psychologist Matias Brødsgaard Grynderup, one of the researchers behind the new study, told ScienceNordic.
“Other factors are involved, and it is these factors that we should focus on in the future,” he said.
Generally speaking, it seems employees don’t actually mind if managers keep piling on the workload, as long as they do it respectfully.
“When the employees’ sense of justice plays such a central role in minimizing the risk of depression, this is probably the area that the preventive work should focus on,” he said.
“I recommend a management style in which there is a clearly expressed wish to treat employees properly—combined with a transparent organizational structure.”