To think in many roles the higher up the ladder the less stressful the job can be?

[user34632]

I know this won't be true in a lot of jobs. I also know the higher up you are the higher your responsibility. But in terms of day to day stress and workload unless the team/people your responsible for really messes up.
This seems to be the case for many of the companies I have work for and DH also agreed it's the same with him. DH is now in management for a call centre and he says his job is far easier than when he worked in the centre on the phones. It was literally pressure to hit targets constantly, taking back to back calls, managers down your neck. Now he is in management he obviously gets pressure from higher up to hit the targets but he just passes that on. His days just consists of performance reviews, rotas, admin etc.

I work in a admin role where the workload is ridiculous. We are constantly get more work and always behind. Management here are just in constant meetings of which we sometimes attend. They often just seem like chats were it's agreed what work needs to be done and how me and other admin colleagues will do it.

As I’ve got more senior my day to day workload has lessened (slightly) in terms of output but I’m way more stressed.

rather being told ‘you need to draft x report’ and cracking on, I’m now responsible for meeting clients and winning work, ensuring we scope the work properly and meet expectations, come in within budget, make sure my teams work loads are ok, and if anything goes wrong, it’s on me. I also have to do coaching, appraisals, think about what we’re actually going to be doing next quarter etc. To quote a message phrase on here, there’s a lot more ‘mental load’.

I have more autonomy over my day, but I’m definitely more stressed and think about work a lot more after hours.

I wish.

I agree. I'm always surprised by the number of people that assume that six figure salaries are associated with stressful and demanding roles when this is not always the case. We need to dispel this myth.

Depends a bit on the industry.
In say education - head teachers will usually lose their job after a bad ofsted even if it’s not something directly they did (or even why trying to change). It’s very stressful being any kind of teacher but I think it only gets worse (especially if you actually care about your staff and pupils).

In my job, yes it does get easier day to day. But also when my team mess up, I get the flack. So trying not to micromanage but also to still keep an eye on staff who aren’t coping is a low burn stress. I wake up in the night sometimes remembering I haven’t checked if X has remembered they are supposed to do Y (they usually haven’t! Which is probably more the issue…..)

I'm a Managing Director and there is a LOT of stress the higher up you go. In my industry, certainly. I'm starting to get into the swing of it more now, but the responsibility is huge, especially as decisions I make have an impact on people's jobs, their pay, growth of the company, cash flow, how happy investors are etc.

Moved to board level two years ago, have never been more stressed in my life.

This has not been my experience. With every step up I have found the job to more stressful and the weight of responsibility for others / decisions more stressful. Additionally, the comeback where a decision has resulted in unexpected / unwanted outcomes is much more serious the higher you go.

it depends I think on what area you work in. For reference I, work in healthcare.

My husband is high ranking in the police force, he says he's paid for what he knows not what he does and when the wheels come off he is the person responsible and with those incidents come a lot of stress. But clearly it's not all the time.

Where as my job, senior staff member with no management responsibilities is flat out stress all day every day with little respite. But if the shit really hits the fan I can escalate that to management.

Managing a call centre would have a different set of responsibilities to managing a mid-sized company.

Managing people comes with a lot of extra work and it can be quite draining mentally. I manage a small team and it's like having a whole other family. You take on their hopes, aspirations, gripes, problems.

Not my experience at all. The responsibility, accountability and associated stress go up with every step. The higher you go, the more difficult the decisions you have to make and the greater the personal job / career risk if you get it wrong.

I used to work for an amazing person who was absolutely brilliant at his job. A deal went wrong and he got exited (albeit with compensation) despite being the only senior person who dissented and said we shouldn’t do the deal as we couldn’t deliver. There was a majority decision to the deal and he was responsible for delivery and couldn’t deliver so took the bullet. Not fair and he didn’t work for 2 years afterwards mainly due to recovering from the stress of it all. It’s an extreme example, but a good one.

I agree. In my industry, it's much easier the higher up. I have a large team I delegate to. I just have to manage the situation. My job is far easier than what the people I manage have to do. I know that for sure as I did that job for many years. My plan is just to get higher and higher as it looks so easy to be on the board for example.

In my industry this is not true. I’m in tech - stress definitely increases as you go up. Most people who I have heard say it doesn’t have never done a more senior/management role. Many people take a step down later in their careers for this reason.

I find that day to day the stress is less, but the overall responsibility (including legal accountability) is stressful in a completely different way.

I think it depends - if you are senior, you have a track record and you can have more control over your work. It's easier for a senior person to leave the office early to collect a sick child than a junior member of staff, because the senior person has the status.

Not always, but I think there are definitely cases where this is true.

I disagree because the higher you go the more likely it is that you're managing people and that in itself can be immensely challenging regardless of the 'job' itself iyswim? I really like my manager but I just couldn't deal with people on the scale he does daily.

Agree!

i daresay not unheard of, but rarely true in my experience.

Having worked in admin and call centre roles both entry level and management I completely agree.

I guess it depends on the business but I am on nearly three times the salary I was on in a call centre role and I work no where near as hard, I am not micromanaged, have achievable targets and I am treated like a grown up who is capable of doing her job instead of someone who needs to account for every second I spend on the toilet

Yep. Shit falls. As my manager told me when I was a junior and he was giving me something else horrible to do.

though as I told him, you have to watch out for the splashback.

I think the difference in a more senior role is you have more control and more autonomy. There’s lots of stress and responsibility- my decisions impact whether the organisation survives and 1,000 people keep their jobs or not (and yes it’s been that precarious at some points recently) but when I was in a junior role I also used to worry about the small stuff. I also now get the influence the outcome, so things being awful for the business but having an action plan feels better than having a manager shout at you because you missed a little detail.

I agree. I'm in a management position now and my day to day workload is (usually) less than it was, but the ultimate responsibility load is significantly higher.

I’m surprised it’s like that for your husband, generally managing people is very stressful.

the more senior you get the more different the stress is, you don’t leave ththe job at the door and go home afte your shift.

Hard to compare, because stress isn’t one clearly defined thing, and even if it was, people react differently to it.

I’m senior management taking fast decisions on matters with legal and financial impact - I love it! It’s a rush, and I get a certain amount of esteem from the fact that I’m good at it. I often have to work early / late / weekends / away from home, and it’s hard to just switch off from a problem once I do log off - I’m often still thinking about something.

My sister works on a checkout. It’s a small cliquey store. The other staff are often horrible to her - or whoever they’ve decided to have it in for this week. She gets really stressed by it - understandably.

She works hard - but no-one values it.
I work harder - but I get noticed for it.

She gets stressed by people skiving and not pulling their weight.
I see those people in my organisation and think, “I’m still getting paid - and I’ll get promoted over you” (usually!)

I think one reason people can feel less stressed in more senior roles, is because they’re more likely to rise to them or actively go for them if they don’t mind stressful situations or thrive on them. Confidence is an anti-dote to stress too.

Honestly think Bojo has had an incredibly hard job (Bexit, Covid, Ukraine, recession…) but does he feel the slightest stress? Nah.

i am very familiar with the ‘stress’ data and in the high positions (slt) there is less stress, at an aggregated level. They have more autonomy, are ‘in the know’ and obviously paid much better. They also tend to be quite resilient anyway, so more resistant to stress just by the very nature of their path to that job.

middle management is where the huge stress lies

That doesn't sound like great management skills from your OH. A good manager manages upwards and relieves pressure downwards.

I've just taken a pretty senior role and while there are still only the same number of hours in the day, I am finding it's harder work for several reasons.

1. Constant code switching and no "down hours". Every hour packed with meetings all of which I'm required at and need to make decisions in - and the decisions need to be good ones. Every meeting about something different with a different cast of characters all with needs! I never have anything at which I can coast, any more.

2. Visibility, tone and constant, constant attention to culture and change management. If I turn up and say something irritated or flippant this might make others feel disheartened or might stop them taking on a project I really need them to take on because I need to move the whole organisation in a certain direction. If they don't bother all my plans stall. Basically...

3. I have no objectives I can achieve alone. They all depend on persuading others, all the time, to do stuff. Every day I have to display that surface calm and cheeriness, yet boiling invisible irritation, of getting a toddler to put their shoes on when we are already late. Staying up late to write a report is nice and soothing in a way.

4. It's a bit lonely. You can't complain, you have to model good and respectful behaviour all the time. It's not a good look to eye roll about your own staff , either shape them up or shut up. You can't say you're tired and fed up.

5. Unlimited to do list. Even if targets are "Make 27 million pounds this year" you don't just stop work when you've done it. Everything can always improve. Service and product quality. Staff wellbeing. Training, efficiency. Systems and processes. Why not have the whole office redecorated? If you are very senior, capitalism makes you push for unremitting, constant improvement on every front.

But yes studies of workplace stress show that autonomy is correlated with feeling less stressed. Within the constraints above, I have total freedom.