By Michelle Zheng

In the current economic landscape, a growing number of professionals find themselves stuck in a state of workplace anxiety, caused by factors ranging from midlife crises to layoff waves and a general “rat-race” culture. This state of affairs often drains them emotionally. But is this anxiety always a bad thing, or can it harnessed to create positive outcomes too?

Let’s start with a quiz about workplace anxiety, as set out in the box below:

Workplace anxiety has become a global problem.

A 2012 study by the American Psychological Association highlighted an alarming trend: 40% of employees felt on edge while at work. Even more startling, 72% of them felt that they were weighed down by anxiety in their daily work and life.

A 2017 survey by the United Nations, which interviewed 15,417 employees globally, found that 17.9% reported having a generalized anxiety disorder.

A report by the Conference Board of Canada in 2016 pointed out that workplace anxiety costs a colossal $17.3 billion per year in economic losses to Canada.

In China, an online survey of 40,000 people released by CCTV Finance showed that about half of post-90s and post-80s workers reported feeling highly anxious at work.

The figures speak volumes: workplace anxiety has become a sweeping global issue that needs to be taken seriously. The challenge then lies in how we can navigate this workplace anxiety to foster healthier career growth.

Anxiety: A Double-Edged Sword

Our genes, where we come from, our personalities, and what we’ve been through at work all play a part in how anxious we feel on the job. Neuroscientists have found that certain genes, for example the CRHR1 gene, are linked to anxiety. This gene oversees the control of cortisol, our stress hormone. Anomalies in this gene can potentially lead to anxiety disorders.

This suggests that some people are naturally more inclined to anxiety. However, having this “anxiety gene” doesn’t necessarily mean you will develop severe anxiety disorders or struggle to live normally. Factors like gender, age, and how long you have been in a job can also influence workplace anxiety levels. Generally, women tend to experience more workplace anxiety than men.

How employees view themselves, including in terms of their self-esteem, belief in their own abilities, emotional stability, and sense of control, can influence their levels of workplace anxiety. Additionally, a job's nature, working conditions, and overall environment can also add to work-related stress. Anxiety can be further fueled by organisational changes, job insecurity, and office politics, all of which bring about an element of uncertainty.

Just like other negative emotions, anxiety is a result of millions of years of human evolution. It serves as a protective mechanism, helping us stay alert and respond to potential dangers or threats. A certain level of anxiety is vital for our survival and growth.

Without anxiety acting as our “safety valve” or “signal flare,” our ancestors would have ended up as easy meals for hyenas and saber-toothed tigers, and human civilization as we know it would never have gotten off the ground.

So, looking at this from an evolutionary psychology point of view, feeling anxious at work is not just something to be expected, but makes a lot of sense. However, when anxiety gets too intense or isn’t handled well, it can cause a whole range of problems.

The impact of workplace anxiety on employees manifests itself in the following areas.

Firstly, workplace anxiety can take a toll on our physical and mental wellbeing. Anxiety often brings with it a slew of physical symptoms, ranging from sweaty palms and a racing heart to muscle tension and, in more extreme cases, difficulty breathing, dizziness, stomach cramps, shivers, and trouble falling asleep.

Short-lived anxiety can result in emotional fatigue, a decrease in motivation, and an overall sense of sluggishness. But when anxiety sticks around and builds up, it can potentially turn into an anxiety disorder, significantly compromising our overall health.

Secondly, workplace anxiety can impact job performance.

While the negative aspects of anxiety often steal the spotlight, it’s important to remember that when it comes to performance, anxiety can be a double-edged sword.

Looking at the upside, anxiety can lead to a heightened state of arousal - a surge in physiological activation - that alerts us to the gap between where we are and where we want to be. This can motivate us to make changes and avoid potential pitfalls. A healthy amount of anxiety can even push us to spend more time and energy on our work, encouraging us to think things through more carefully to avoid problems down the line.

Zhang Ruimin, CEO of Haier Group, once described his management philosophy as “walking on thin ice,” highlighting the productive side of anxiety.

On the other hand, anxiety can also hamper job performance. It can mess with an employee’s cognitive and thinking abilities, compromise their working memory, and limit their information processing skills. When people are anxious, they tend to become fearful, incapable of focusing on current tasks, and sometimes even struggling to understand what their job requires. Moreover, anxiety can chip away at one's self-confidence, making them question their ability to get their work done. Long-term anxiety in the workplace can lead to emotional burnout and job fatigue, draining employees' enthusiasm and inner drive to work hard which, in the end, undermines job performance.

Overall, the impact of anxiety on job performance comes down to how intense that anxiety is. The Yerkes-Dodson Law, a psychological theory, suggests that there is a bell-curve relationship between anxiety and work performance: employees who are not anxious at all might become too relaxed and drop their guard, while those who are excessively anxious can find themselves in an emotional and cognitive maze that makes it hard to concentrate on their work. However, a moderate level of anxiety can spark motivation without draining emotional and cognitive resources too much, allowing people to hit their performance sweet spot.

Moreover, anxiety can influence how a person handles risk and makes decisions. Studies reveal that anxiety is positively correlated with risk-avoidance behavior. On the one hand, anxiety sets an alarm bell for potential threats, encouraging people to sidestep these dangers, which in turn makes them more inclined to avoid risks. On the flip side, people who are more anxious are not just better at spotting threats around them, but also tend to interpret vague information negatively and have a knack for recalling threatening details. As a result, they tend to view uncertain future events through a negative and more pessimistic lens, causing them to be more cautious and risk-averse when making decisions.

Finally, research by organizational psychologists Maryam Kouchaki and Sreedhari Desai shows that a sense of crisis fueled by anxiety can push people to act selfishly and unethically. This sense of crisis sparks defensive psychological reactions and self-protection, shifting people’s focus onto personal interests and away from moral standards and societal norms. Also, this crisis state of mind can make people concentrate more on external goals like money, looks, and fame, rather than internal ones like personal growth. Therefore, driven by a sense of crisis, individuals are more likely to jump on opportunities to behave immorally. This could mean benefiting oneself at others’ expense, cheating, and going against the principles of fairness.

Four Steps to Overcoming Workplace Anxiety

Now that we are aware of the pros and cons of workplace anxiety, how should we handle and manage it properly? Drawing from research on workplace anxiety, we propose four steps for all professionals experiencing it: face it, embody it, clear it, and label it.

Face it: Confront your anxiety and foster mindfulness

As bestselling author Cheryl Strayed once put it, “We all have those negative voices inside us, and we just have to find a way to live with them, rather than pushing them away.”

The same holds true for anxiety management: if anxiety is a natural and inevitable emotional experience, we should learn to live with it instead of demonizing it and trying to avoid it.

Acknowledging anxiety, observing its impact on our thoughts and deeds, and learning to be at peace with and understand it, represents an enlightened view of anxiety. This ethos mirrors the essence of mindfulness. Mindfulness is the conscious act of focusing on the moment, without passing judgment or criticism. Psychological studies indicate that such mindfulness is helpful to enhancing our emotional well-being and reducing emotional fatigue.

Embody it: Harness the power of physical sensations

Research shows that it is not just our mental experiences that impact our physical sensations; in fact, the experiences we have with our bodies can also activate our psychological responses.

Take, for example, a notable experiment in which psychologists had two groups of participants observe a series of cartoon images; one group was told to clutch a pen between their lips during viewing, while the other was asked to grip a pen using their teeth. The results showed that the latter group was more likely to find the cartoons amusing.

The reason is that when participants held a pen in their teeth, their facial expressions mimicked a smile, setting off a positive psychological response. Conversely, when the pen was held in puckered lips, their expression was more similar to one reflecting anger or depression, thereby reducing the appeal of the images.

So, the next time you feel anxious, put a smile on your face. Maintaining good mental health is key to handling work-related stress, and it sets you up to tackle professional challenges with a more positive, can-do attitude.

Clear it: Wipe out workplace stress and clear mental fog

Here’s how you can approach this:

Become a pro at managing your time and tasks. The relentless grind of a hefty workload and a ticking clock can be a hotbed for workplace anxiety. So, it is essential for employees to manage their time and tasks. A good stress buster is to methodically outline your tasks and make a game plan before you dive into work, ensuring each task gets its fair share of your time.

Keep perfectionism in check. Those who lean towards perfectionism are often more vulnerable to the grips of anxiety. If striving for perfection is stressing you out, it’s time to make peace with the imperfections in yourself and others. Keep in mind that no one and no job can ever be perfect. If your nitpicking brings little value, it’s time to let go.

Opening up about your feelings to those you trust is a big stress reliever. At work, we are often so wrapped up in maintaining a professional front that we shy away from talking about our anxiety and stress. There is this underlying fear that our colleagues or bosses might view us as less competent or see us as making excuses. But airing these feelings can be a huge stress buster and pave the way for a more relaxed atmosphere in the office.

Label it: Play with different “tags” for your anxiety.

When people wrestle with anxiety or a host of other negative emotions, their common instinct is to bottle these feelings up or put on a brave face. Unfortunately, this approach of emotional suppression doesn’t help these stifled feelings fade away, but often amplifies them instead.

In an engaging experiment, psychologist Daniel M. Wegner asked participants to avoid thinking about a white bear. In an ironic twist, the experiment found that subjects were increasingly preoccupied with the image of the white bear, leading to a surge in anxiety.

This experiment highlights a paradox: the harder we try to free ourselves from a certain thought, the more it seems to take hold of our minds. Wegner coined a term for this: an “ironic rebound.” Anxiety, much like that white bear, can be unyielding. When consumed by anxiety, the simple act of telling oneself “Don’t worry, stay calm” often falls short, and can at times even backfire.

Research has found that rather than repressing anxiety, it's better to reappraise it as a form of excitement. When people feel anxious, achieving a state of calm proves more challenging than sustaining excitement. This is because calmness represents a low-arousal positive emotion while both excitement and anxiety are high arousal states. Transitioning from a state of high arousal to low arousal requires more cognitive and emotional resources, whereas shifting between different states of high arousal is more straightforward. Anxiety suggests we are invested in a particular outcome. By recasting anxiety as excitement, we not only truly embrace excitement, but also maintain the drive to cope with the current situation, thereby mitigating the detrimental effects of anxiety.

Simply put, workplace anxiety is an everyday emotion. It is important to handle it with a level head, instead of painting it as a villain.

So, the next time you feel workplace anxiety creeping in, hold off from saying “I’m so anxious, I’m done.” Instead, try greeting it lightly with, “Hello, anxiety. Thanks for dropping by.”

Michelle Zheng is the Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at CEIBS. For more on her teaching and research interests, please visit her faculty profile here.