IT IS supposed to be a major drain on the Irish economy, accounting for almost 4m lost working days and up to €200m in lost revenue each year. But a new study has found that the word “stress” barely registers with Irish workers, who are the most relaxed in the European Union. The Greeks, by contrast, are the most frazzled.

More than 20,000 workers across the EU were asked whether their jobs made them feel stressed, in one of the biggest studies yet undertaken into the pressures of work. It found that employees in Italy and France — who were the second and third least chilled-out nations — were almost twice as likely to complain that work made them stressed as those in Ireland and Britain.

The findings have puzzled some employment experts. Ireland, after all, has one of the longest working-hours cultures in Europe, with thousands of people claiming that the anxiety of work makes them ill.

The author of the study, Professor Kevin Daniels, of Loughborough University, believes that people in the British Isles may simply be less inclined to complain that work makes them stressed.

Writing in the study, published in the British academic journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Daniels said: “The orientation of our society is associated with risk tolerance, which might go some way to explaining why members of the public are less likely to perceive that work causes stress symptoms.”

Some employment experts said that workers might not feel stressed by work because, although they are putting in long hours, they might not be working very hard and could simply be passing the time chatting with colleagues and surfing on the internet.

Ben Willmott, a senior adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in London, said: “An issue here might be work intensity, which causes stress. This might indicate that the actual work intensity is lower.”

The rising profile of workplace stress has split employers, who complain that it is evidence of a “sick-note culture”, and unions and some medical experts, who believe it is a significant cause of illness and unhappiness.

A recent survey by the Irish Small Firms Association found that workers in smaller businesses were more likely to be happy than employees in big companies because their work was more varied.

Pat Delaney, director of the SFA, said: “Small companies generally have more flexible jobs, multi-skilling, less pigeon-holing and jobs that are less boring. The happiest people are those who interact with others all of the time.”

Delaney said that what was making people unhappy with their lives was not their jobs but the time it took to get to work and the levels of tiredness they felt when they got home at night.

He added: “Some people put their children into childcare at 7am and do not see them, if at all, until late at night after travelling great distances to get home.

“So, while I would agree that many Irish people are happy with their work, the issues affecting their lives out of work are serious.”

Some experts in Britain believe that laws to limit workplace stress would be unwelcome, in part because it is difficult to measure.

Richard Dodd, a spokesman for the Confederation of British Industry, said: “What is a unit of stress? There is no unit of stress, so we can’t say a certain amount of stress is acceptable but one more unit of it is not.”

Dodd added: “This presupposes that stress is a bad thing. A certain amount of stress can be attractive, and people react to it in different ways.

“Some people enjoy the pressure of a deadline, but others struggle desperately to cope with it. Some people enjoy the adrenaline; it’s part of the excitement of the job. So the idea of stress as an inherently bad thing is just unfair.”

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