New research | Effort-reward imbalance linked to heart disease - how can HR help prevent this?

Whether it’s from a particularly busy week, or from learning a new skill, stress at work impacts everyone from time-to-time.

But a recent study, looking at the relationship between job strain and effort-reward imbalance (ERI) on developing coronary heart diseases (CHD) found that men have a significantly higher chance of having CHD due to work-related stress.

Effort-reward imbalance refers to a mismatch between high efforts spent at work and low rewards received, which often leads to increased stress and dissatisfaction within an employee. Employee stress and low levels of wellbeing are at an all-time high – the CIPD recently reported the highest level of sickness absence in ten years, resulting in employers being urged to make wellbeing a ‘shared responsibility’.

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The study developed a framework which revealed that a worker who has a less demanding job, but more autonomy, experiences the least stress. Whereas ERI merges when the effort made by the worker isn’t compensated or rewarded enough, which can impact an employee’s health. In this case, male workers are most impacted.