Work-related stress

Your school must make an effort to identify, prevent and manage work-related stress. This is required by the collective agreement.

Among other things, this means that you and your colleagues’ satisfaction and well-being must be measured every third year. This is often done as part of the psychological workplace assessment. 

Prevention of work-related stress

Your workload is too heavy if, over a longer period of time, you have to keep up such a high pace of work that you feel forced to compromise on the quality of your teaching or you do not have time to speak with students when they reach out to you.

Perhaps you can manage a high workload and a high pressure for a period, but if an unresolved conflict with a colleague arises, a parent critiques your work, or something else unexpected or unpleasant happens, it can be hard to deal with the matter sensibly and remain balanced if your personal resources are already running low.

You might find it difficult to do anything about the workload, but it is important to take action when you feel excessive pressure so that it does not develop into stress and sick leave.

It is not always that other people can see or sense that you are stressed.

It is important that you take responsibility for your own stress prevention: 

• Consider whether you can change anything that is causing stress.
• Talk with others about what is stressing you.
• Talk with your school administrator if you feel that you are becoming stressed, have too many or overly challenging tasks, or you have difficulty prioritising your tasks.