Stressed by Your Job: Does Personnel Policy Matter?

Work-related stress can lead to substantial health problems and thereby result in immense costs for establishments. Therefore, the question as to what extent establishments contribute to their employees’ stress levels is of great importance for firm performance. In this paper, the relationship between personnel policy and work-related stress is investigated by considering a series of human resource management practices that relate to a worker’s job reward, job demand, or job control situation. The authors use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and find statistically significant associations between several policies and work-related stress. Most importantly, bad promotion opportunities and low working time control are found to be associated with higher stress levels, while the opposite is true for an adequate salary.