For the longest time, as women, we've struggled to get both feet in the door at work. We're still fighting an uphill battle in the workplace every day but, fingers crossed, the winds of change are in the air.
No matter how hard you're working to get where you want to be, or stay there, keeping your stress levels in check is imperative. A stressed employee has been proven to be less effective and being stressed at work can have a huge impact on the rest of your life. With this in mind, we spoke to five women with some of the world's statistically most stressful jobs to find out what they struggle with, and how they've learned to deal.
The Head Chef
According to a study fromKings College London , head chefs are among the most highly stressed young workers. We speak to Rose Ashby, Head Chef at Spring, the restaurant at London's Somerset House to see what cooking food under pressure is really like.
“I think the most stressful thing is during service, when tickets [with the orders on] are pouring through the machine. You can have a train of tickets from your hands reaching down to the floor and you have to keep level-headed in the midst of the madness.”
“I always try and keep control because I don’t think losing it is a good thing to learn from and people are always looking up to the head chef, looking at their mannerisms and their characteristics. It would be a bad example for them.”
“The most stressful thing I can think of to happen is people telling me too late that they haven’t got enough of something for the day like sea bass, beef or tomatoes, and I have to pull something out of thin air. The other thing is someone calling in sick. We run on exactly the right amount of chefs so if someone calls in sick, you’re destined for a very tough day.”
“That being said, while I obviously look to the future to try and prevent problems, I don’t worry too much about what could happen because there are seven chefs on a shift which means we’re seven times more likely to have a mistake so I just take it as it comes.”
"Whenever I feel like things are getting too much I just remind myself that nothing is going to go too badly wrong. If I ever feel overwhelmed, I delegate and use other people to help. I’ve got a really strong sous chef so I’m really lucky with that."
“I work a lot of nights and a lot of weekends so I think the most important thing for me is not to take work home and really enjoy the free time that I do have. When I’m at home I really switch off and I make sure I have enough time with my friends and family.”
“There is definitely such a thing as good stress. I always want my chefs to be in positive stress mode before service. If they’re wandering around happy as Larry, all chilled out, I’m not happy about it. It’s good to instil a little bit of positive stress in people – it makes people do their job better. The moment it gets into a negative realm though, which is when they stop hearing you or listening to what you’re saying, then that’s bad.”
The Event Coordinator
Careercast's 2017 list of most stressful jobs included “event coordinator” at number five. We speak to a woman who organises corporate events across the world for a big multi-national company to find out why.
“The most stressful thing about my job is never feeling like you are on top of anything. At any given time I’m working on between five and eight events and any time you dedicate to one event is time your taking away from another.”
“Managing speakers and acquisitions and their demands can be quite arduous but clients are the hardest to manage because of their expectations. The thing that will ruin my day is a client making crazy demands and I have to find some way to compromise.”
“My manager always tells me to plan my time but you can’t do it in this job. Even if I time out my day to the nth degree, someone will walk over to me and ask me something or I’ll get a phone call which will reroute my day. It was quite difficult when I started because I love to do everything to perfection and I’ve had to get used to that feeling of doing everything at 70%.”
“When it comes to coping, exercise has been my friend. I am fiercely protective of my exercise schedule. I build it into my schedule and then it doesn’t move. If someone asks me for a meeting when I have a class, I just say no. I also try and work from home one day a week because it allows me to become less reactive to everyone’s drama.”
“I do thrive on stress but I think I have a limit – everyone does. It’s just about managing it really. I had a difficult time in my personal life recently and stress was the reason why I dragged myself out of bed every day. I had to be accountable for a lot of things and it never stopped so, even on days when I couldn’t handle being out of my house, I didn’t have time to dwell on things.”
“Overall, I think stress is teaching me to sweat everything a little bit less. I don’t think I’ll be able to do this job forever because I think I’d die but at the moment it’s fun and it’s keeping me out of trouble.”
The A&E Doctor
According to anAustralian study , doctors are five times more likely to experience high levels of psychological stress than the rest of us. We asked a doctor on the frontline to explain why.
"The most stressful thing about my job is trying to do the best for your patients in an overstretched and underfunded health service. As frontline staff you take on a lot of the patients’ frustrations. I feel like I spend a lot of time apologising for things that are out of my control which can be exhausting.”
“Stressful situations I dread are starting the shift with a five hour patient waiting time and also when patients abscond from the department – I have run halfway down the street and even onto a bus once trying to convince someone to come back to get the treatment that they need!”
“It’s important to recognise that mistakes will happen; that’s why we have safety nets in place. You have to know your limits and ask for help when you need it."
“I get stressed by the impact my long and odd hours have on my family. It’s constantly being late for or having to turn down social events, or not being able to plan holidays because you don’t know your rota far enough in advance. My best purchase has been an eye mask for my boyfriend to sleep in so at least I don’t wake him up when I get home at 2AM!”
“I think recognising that you are stressed is the first step. I’m lucky in that at work there is always someone I can turn to. I even found myself welling up recently when a patient unexpectedly asked me how my day was going. Just talking it through with someone usually helps. It is sometimes tempting to skip breaks but it’s much better to have them so you can go back with more energy, rather than ploughing on and becoming more and more inefficient.”
“I don’t think stress can be positive but there are times when I’ve found the adrenaline rush helps me focus, for example when treating a rapidly deteriorating patient or during a cardiac arrest.”
“We need to make doctors aware that there is always someone to talk to if they are feeling stressed or not coping. In the longer term we need to protect and adequately fund our NHS to be able to deal with the increasing pressures on the system as those pressures inevitably filter down to all the dedicated and hard working staff.”
If you are a doctor struggling to cope with stress, seek out the Doctors Advisor and BMA Counselling services run by the British Medical Association.
Firefighter
The CareerCastlist of stressful jobs 2017 found "Firefighter" come second.Gunn Narten , a firefighter from Norway, tells us why.
"I think the most stressful element of my job is that no mission is ever the same. We always have to improvise and use our intuition to find the best solutions.”
“The worst situations for me are the ones which include injured children. That being said, I try not to think about what could go wrong. We constantly train to be the best prepared that we can be and as long as you do the best you can, you can’t really blame yourself if you do make a mistake. That’s human. Luckily we are a team so we help each other in making the best decisions.
“I do work odd hours. We do 24 hour shifts and actually I think that’s great. I think it means we make a better team because we live together like a family. In between calls we train, work out and eat. I feel very lucky to have good colleagues that support me so much.”
“The best skill I’ve learned to deal with stress is to mentally prepare myself on the way out to a situation. And, I trust the people I work with. It’s good to know you’re part of a team and that you’re going to solve the problem together.”
“I do think there’s such a thing as positive stress. It keeps you sharp and motivate you to train and keep getting better.”
The PR Executive
Careercast had "Public Relations Executive" come in atnumber eight on the list of the ten most stressful jobs. We spoke to a PR Account Director who oversees ten different brands.
"I think the stressful part of my job is keeping face the entire time. You have to keep professionalism at the highest point at all times, with high levels of enthusiasm no matter how stressful it is.”
“The hardest bit is that you have to be the fall guy. When the clients are unsatisfied with a piece or you have to deal with the press when the clients are being difficult, you just have to be that person in the middle who takes the flack and runs with it to solve the situation.”
“Another big thing is money. When you’re responsible for big budgets and things don’t go to plan or fall through at the last minute, and you’re responsible for it.”
“Someone told me once that when the end goal is out of your control, that’s what causes stress. So you need to take stock of the situation. It’s about being real about what your tasks are for the day, month and year, you need to focus on priorities for the now.”
“I do think stress can be conducive to getting stuff done effectively in the now. In the long run, probably not – you don’t know what your stress levels are doing to you until later in life but at the moment I’m in a good position where I’m happy with my stress levels.”
“When I get home at night I don’t want to talk to anyone unless I’ve got plans. You have to be on for 12 hours of the day, every day, so when I come back I literally just turn myself off."
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