When Work Is the Stressor, Is Wellness Missing the Mark?

September 2025

It’s called work and not play. Or rest. Or fun.

And it’s stressful.

At LIMRA, we explore the notion of wellness as the opposite of stress.

Work-related stress can be multidimensional; exploring and addressing the underlying causes can be equally multidimensional, with implications for organizational culture and policies, benefits, events and programs, and wellness initiatives.

The connections between work, the workplace, and wellness are clear and numerous; our research indicates that employees feel strongly that their employers should help them address the causes of their personal financial, emotional and physical stress.

Work and career rank as the second-leading source of overall stress for workers, with 64 percent reporting moderate to high stress in this area — just behind money and finances, which top the list at 67 percent. Many workers (41 percent) say their overall stress has increased in the past year, saying it’s “somewhat” or “much” higher, and, of those, half attribute that rise to work and career pressures.

Looking ahead, workers are a little more optimistic, with 23 percent saying they expect their stress to increase in the coming year, but 33 percent expect a decrease, leaving 44 percent who are unsure or expect no change.

The “personal” causes of stress are well researched — much of that research coming from LIMRA — and many benefits and workplace wellness programs are designed to address these impediments to worker wellness. These can include emergency savings; access to financial advice, budgeting and planning; tuition reimbursements and assistance; retirement savings; and physical and mental health benefits, among others.

But when it comes to work itself as the stressor, what do workers say are the root causes of their stress? And are wellness efforts and programs missing the boat in helping employees address their stress if they do not encompass the workplace itself and the causes of stress there?

Work itself — specifically the demands of the job and workload — is the most frequently selected work-related stressor (Figure 1). Nearly half of workers identified this as a leading source of high work-related stress. Interestingly, workload demands are more stressful for higher-income workers, with stress levels peaking among those earning $100,000 or more — about half of whom cite it as a key contributor to their work-related stress.

“Gold-collar” workers, a category that includes “C” suite executives and highly specialized professional occupations such as physicians and attorneys, also report significantly higher workload stress (58 percent) than some other professions. For comparison, 39 percent of “blue-collar” workers cite workload as a stressor. Workload stress peaks for Gen X workers, selected by 50 percent, and drops for Baby Boomers (down to 37 percent) (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Causes of Work-Related Stress for ...

Compensation — which can be considered a factor in the stress associated with household finances, the leading overall stressor — is a distant second, selected by 32 percent of workers. Here, and not surprisingly, stress is more commonly reported by lower-income workers and “red-collar” workers. (The “red-collar” descriptor refers to workers in customer-facing service roles such as hospitality or retail sales.) In contrast, gold-collar workers — those earning $150,000 or more — and Baby Boomers are less likely to report stress related to compensation.

A next “tier” of work stressors indicates that about a quarter of workers are highly concerned about job security, company leadership and advancement, or growth opportunities.

In a final “tier” of work stressors, relationships with colleagues and or managers, organizational culture, and location-related issues are identified as sources of stress by less than a fifth of workers.

Work and personal/home situations are often interconnected. Effective stress reduction and wellness solutions recognize this dynamic and help employees manage their overall lives while also supporting the well-being of their whole family.

Specific wellness efforts — financial, emotional and/or health-related — may not directly address many or most of these workplace stressors, but can help workers manage and succeed on a broader and more holistic level. Budgeting, debt management, savings and other financial management tools, services and advice, for example, can be instrumental in helping workers manage their available resources.

At the same time, it’s important to understand that addressing the causes of work-related stress should be part of an organization’s culture and employee wellness strategy. Do we need to expand our wellness philosophies, consulting and programs to help manage work-related stress, or at least some aspects of it? While some of these stressors may not be directly addressable with benefits, education, services or other wellness efforts, perhaps they can be mitigated somewhat by organizational awareness and even policy.

Especially in smaller companies that may lack the personnel and other resources to research, understand and address their employees’ work-related stresses, these challenges can go unrecognized and unresolved. Service providers can be instrumental in helping employer clients incorporate a culture of holistic wellness into a benefits strategy and even into broader organizational culture.

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