The World is Flat and Stressed Out

Contrary to what many companies may think, a stressed out worker is a less productive worker. And it's costing American business billions. The cost of stress to American business is staggering, with estimates ranging from $80 billion to $150 billion annually. Stress causes illnesses, absenteeism, diminished productivity, accidents, mistakes, job dissatisfaction, burnout, high turnover, and soaring health insurance premiums. Link to October 22, 2006 article here.

Americans aren't the only ones. Workers around the world are feeling the crunch. But there does seem to be a vacation : stress correlation as pointed out in the Grant-Thornton paper. In Asia, they're calling it a stress "epidemic".

Although Europeans also saw a stress increase in 2005, they're nowhere near as stressed as the Asian countries.