This one thing makes you most stressed at work and it is not your bad boss!

We spend a major part of our day at the workplace and there hardly exists an employee who has not ever felt stressed during the office hours. In fact, a recent survey done by a culture and career monitoring website, Comparably, has concluded that 65 per cent of employees reported that work-stress has been an issue for them and 10 per cent confessed elevated stress levels have had ‘unwanted effects’ on their performance.

The researchers asked employees from different professional fields about what stresses them most at their workplace along with a few other questions related to work-life balance, work distractions, career stability etc.

Interestingly, it was not low salary, bad manager or office politics that was the biggest reason for an employee’s stress. 41 per cent of the participants mentioned undefined work goals as their biggest stressor at the workplace.

The second most common reason behind office stress was rough commute and a bad manager. It was closely followed by difficult co-workers and long working hours.

Well, feeling stressed at the office for a longer duration is bound to take a toll on an employee's work performance and health. Going by the statistics of the research, half of the participants, both male and female, admitted feeling burnt out at their workplace.

As per the research, 59 per cent of the participants who feel exhausted worked at entry-level positions. 56 per cent of the professionals who had one to three years and six to ten years of work experience reported feeling the same. Also, 54 per cent of the participants with three to six and more than ten years of experience also confessed feeling burnt out.

Participants working in the administrative, customer support department and executive roles reported feeling more stressed by their unclear work goals than the ones working in other fields.

More than half of the respondents voted for work-life balance as the first or second most important thing in their professional life and gave it preference over compensation and career stability. Interestingly, professionals belonging to the age group of 26-30, 36-40 and 41-45 years ranked work-life balance as the most important work-benefit.

The participants were also asked what was their biggest work-related fear? The answers were pretty relatable. 45 per cent confessed it was career stagnation, 23 per cent talked about breakdown because of stress and 19 per cent were apprehensive about being overlooked for promotion.

(All images used here are representational)