Nearly half of SME employees leave because of stress and frustrations in the work place

As many as 43% of SME employees have changed their jobs because of work-related frustrations and stresses that were not addressed by management.

The ‘Causes and implications of workplace stress in SMEs’ report compiled by Process Bliss also found that one-third of respondents admitted to calling in sick because of work-related stress.

According to the findings, the main sources of SME workplace stress were having to chase colleagues for updates (33%) and a lack of information or clarity when asked to do something (31%).

Other sources of workplace stress cited were a lack of control over a situation (28%), a lack of guidance/direction from the boss (26%) and a lack of response to emails (25%).

Allister Esam, CEO of Process Bliss, commented, “Many of these issues come from people not being given sufficient training or a functioning process to follow that enables them to do their job well.

“At the same time, managers are checking up on, and micro-managing staff because they have no way of seeing whether employees are following that process correctly. This harassment is stressful, contributing to a culture of mistrust and causing people working at SMEs to leave in significant numbers.

“The biggest problems, a lack of clarity from management when asking for something to be done or a lack of guidance from the boss, simply should not be factors in workplace stress. They are easily avoidable by providing the right training or having functioning processes to work with.”

He added, “Doing more to reduce stress in the workplace is hugely important and should be a key priority for SME bosses during 2019 – staff retention is vital.

“Employees do their best work when they are motivated, engaged, trusted and work in a reduced-stress environment and leave a job when they are unhappy and demotivated. Workplace stress can come from many different sources and while no boss can eliminate stress completely, there are lots of measures that can be put in place to ensure day-to-day frustrations are reduced.”

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