Workplace stress is no longer just a personal challenge – it’s a strategic business concern. With rising absence rates, record levels of long-term sickness, and changing expectations around psychological safety, organisations are facing unprecedented pressure to rethink how work is designed, led, and supported.
In this article, we asked Matt Balfour – our subject matter expert and founder of Let’s Go Wellbeing – to share his insights on the evolving landscape of workplace stress. Matt explores how L&D teams can play a pivotal role in building organisational resilience, designing work for wellbeing, and equipping leaders and employees with the skills to manage stress as a signal, not a silent cost.
Organised by ISMA (The International Stress Management Association), International Stress Awareness Week takes place every year in the first week of November and provides an opportunity to raise public understanding of stress and promote mental health education.
As important as this topic is, you might find yourself wondering: why now? Do we really need a dedicated week to talk about something so many of us live with every day?
Alarmingly, I can think of 16.4 million reasons. That’s the number of working days lost in the UK last year due to stress, depression and anxiety, according to the Health and Safety Executive.
Additionally, mental health issues are the leading cause of long-term sickness absence lasting four weeks or longer. In 2025, those absence levels reached a 15 year high, averaging 9.4 days per employee (compared with 7.8 days in 2023 and 5.8 days in 2022).
The reality is that we can never be truly 'stress free'. Change, uncertainty and pressure are embedded realities in work and society – the unexpected is always around the corner.
It's for these reasons I'd be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to share my thoughts on why this conversation matters and why our relationship with stress in the workplace feels different in 2025.
The pace of digital transformation, shifting job demands, evolving attitudes to wellbeing and a rising cultural expectation for psychological safety have changed both how stress shows up and how organisations must respond.
In this blog, we'll explore how job autonomy, workplace culture and strategic wellbeing investment (or lack of it) influence resilience and what organisations can do to ensure stress remains a manageable signal, not a silent cost.
What's clear is that stress can no longer afford to be seen as a personal challenge. In fact it's increasingly recognised as an organisational design issue. In other words, how we structure work matters as much as how we support people.
For example, today’s information economy rewards speed and constant availability - but the pressure to be productive comes at a cost. Which is why high workloads, particularly regarding tight deadlines, digital fatigue and too much responsibility are highlighted as dominant drivers of workplace stress.
Interestingly, the CIPD found that only 29% of organisations train line managers to support mental health. Those that do so report more positive findings in terms of managers’ confidence to spot the early warning signs of mental ill health and have sensitive conversations – suggesting that workload stress isn't just about volume or accumulation, but how we lead and guide each other through it.
While workload is often the most visible source of stress, it is far from the only one. Control over how work is done – or a lack of it - plays a pivotal role in how stress is experienced. It's been shown that increased job autonomy has several stress reducing benefits for performance.
For employees, having influence over how they work, the tasks they choose to do and the time they start or finish are all linked to positive outcomes. That is to say that better control over different elements of work is associated with better mental wellbeing and improved self reported performance.
For organisations, autonomy translates into a workforce of individuals that's more likely to do more than formally required, help others, suggest innovative improvements and achieve job objectives – the behaviours that fuel resilience and continuous improvement, not burnout.
While adjustments to workload and autonomy can change or reshape how work feels day-to-day. In 2025, role clarity, stability and thoughtful job structuring have become wellbeing metrics in their own right.
For example the HSE identifies role uncertainty and organisational change as key causes of workplace stress - When people aren’t clear on what’s expected of them, or when roles and priorities shift without support, stress rises.
Job design isn't just about what a person 'does'. It includes how well resourced they are to carry out their work, how their responsibilities match up with skills or qualifications, alongside the scope for development opportunities.
Case in point, employees who feel they are overqualified and underutilised are more likely to say they intend to quit in the next 12 months and less likely to believe that their work has a positive impact on their mental health.
When organisations invest in clear roles, realistic responsibilities, and intentional change management, employees experience greater certainty, confidence and capacity - the conditions for sustainable performance.
Workplace stress doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's shaped by culture, leadership behaviour, and whether employees feel psychologically safe to speak up when things aren’t right.
As Chris Cummings, CEO of Wellbeing at Work World, shared in our recent conversation, culture can be the difference between someone coping and burning out:
"Work was making us sick. Work was making us take our own lives... The job design, the workload, the lack of trust, the bullying behaviour, the culture within that organisation tipped him over the edge."
Sector realities play a role too. According to the CIPD, stress-related absence is most common in the public sector (84%) and large private organisations (71%).
But regardless of industry, trust and psychological safety are critical.
As Simon Blake OBE, CEO of Stonewall, reminded us: "Unless businesses pay attention to the fact that they're working with human beings, not robots, people are not going to be able to do their best."
Stigma still shapes whether people feel safe to ask for help, especially those with under-represented identities:
"Workplace stress isn't always about work... If you are worried about people finding out who you are, your brain is on high alert. That becomes a problem very quickly."
To be clear this is as much a wellbeing issue as it is one of performance and strategic investment. CIPD research shows organisations with visible wellbeing leadership see significantly higher engagement and job satisfaction.
As Chris puts it: "If you’re just going to look at wellbeing over a short period, you're probably going to be disappointed. If you take a long-term view, retention, performance and share price increase."
Of course, personal resilience and healthy habits matter, but they are only sustainable when supported by capable managers, clear expectations and psychologically safe cultures. This is where learning and development becomes a strategic lever.
If stress is shaped by how work is designed, led and experienced, then learning has a pivotal role as a driver of capability, culture and change.
Much more than simply teaching people to 'cope better'. L&D (if positioned properly) can equip managers, teams and organisations to lead differently, here's how...
Data matters – but humans aren’t dashboards. As Chris Cummings reminded me, the future of wellbeing isn’t choosing between business metrics and humanity, it’s recognising they enable each other.
“If by pursuing the numbers, you lose sight of the personal story, there’s a hole in your bucket.” – Chris Cummings
Stress is magnified or mitigated in the moments where managers set priorities, communicate expectations and respond to pressure.
L&D has the opportunity to reshape leadership development around:
Stress isn't simply 'felt' – it is distributed, shared and filtered through teachable leadership behaviours.
Effective learning embeds stress-awareness into the flow of work, enabling people to practice healthy team habits, not just know about them.
That could be:
As hybrid work matures learning tech becomes as much a wellbeing lever as it is a delivery mechanism.
Progressive L&D teams are:
Sustainable performance isn’t a wellness initiative – it’s a skill set.
By embedding stress literacy, human-centred leadership and thoughtful learning design into the day-to-day rhythm of work, L&D helps organisations build not just resilience, but capacity, belonging and psychological safety.
Drawing from his personal experience and extensive work as a mental health speaker, MHFA instructor, and Samaritans listening volunteer, Matt provides practical guidance for building supportive environments.