If Secondhand Smoke Can Kill, So Can Workplace Stress: Study

Workplace stress is just as bad as secondhand smoke but factors that lead to stress are not addressed by employers, a new study claims.

According to UPI, the study by Harvard Business School and Stanford University researchers is a meta-analysis of 228 other studies that assessed the impact of 10 workplace stressors on physical and mental health, morbidity and mortality of employees. Using findings of previous studies which concluded that smoking affects mood, researchers compared effects of workplace stressors and that of secondhand smoke only to find they are similar.

Among the stressors included were work-family conflict, job insecurity, high job demands, no health insurance, long work hours and low organizational control.

The researches also commented that many organization are not identify the cause of stress but have initiated health and lifestyle programs to simply address employee behavior.

"Wellness programs are great at doing what they're designed to do. But they're targeting [employee behavior], not targeting the cause of stress. There are two sides of the equation and right now we focus on one side. We're trying to call attention to the other side [of the equation], which is the effect of managerial practices," Joel Goh, an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, told Boston Globe.