“On-the-job stress leading to sleepless nights and thoughts of quitting work
MINNEAPOLIS, Jan. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — At a time when the public’s attention is focused on the need for greater corporate integrity, the majority of compliance and ethics professionals report that they often wake during the middle of the night with job-related worries and they have considered quitting their jobs due to the stress. This disturbing data was revealed in a recent survey conducted in October and November of 2011 by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and the Health Care Compliance Association.
Overall, 58% of survey respondents reported that they often wake up during the middle of the night worrying about job-related stress and 60% report having considered leaving their job in the last 12 months due to job-related stress.
Compliance and ethics professionals also report that keeping up with new and changing laws and regulations, preventing compliance and ethics violations, and remediating compliance and ethics violations are the greatest contributors to on-the-job stress.
“Six out of ten people waking up in the middle of the night from job related stress is unacceptable for any profession. The Compliance profession’s purpose is to prevent and detect the problems that have occurred in organizations such as Enron, Tyco, and Penn State University. There are reasons those who came before the Compliance profession stopped short of fixing these problems. Fixing these problems is very difficult and stressful. SCCE and HCCA will work to help their 10,000 members deal with this stress. We have dedicated a day and a half strategic planning session in January 2011 to this issue and this issue alone. However, we can only do so much. Compliance professionals, who are asked to do this difficult job, need support from leadership, reasonable authority, and independence. If society wants to us deal with these issues—so difficult that others have chosen to look the other way—then society should make an effort to support this profession,” said SCCE and HCCA Chief Executive Officer Roy Snell.
Most compliance and ethics professionals report that adversarial relationships with their colleagues, adds to job-related stress. Fifty-eight percent of respondents felt they are in an adversarial situation or isolated from colleagues in other departments. Compliance and ethics professionals positively rated their relationship with the legal department; 54% gave it a “5″ rating while another 26% gave it a “4″ rating. However, the relationship with the sales, marketing, and manufacturing departments was clearly the poorest with 14% rating it a “5″ and only 24% rating it a “4″.”
‘Six out of ten people waking up in the middle of the night from job related stress is unacceptable for any profession’ so true! But then, unfortunately, not all can have the luxury of plainly looking for another job and move on. Others prefer to get stuck at the job they hate because they had to take their children to good school, provide for family, etc.
Perhaps the real issue here is what are corporates doing? Compliance is a support function and it exists to make sure we are doing the right things the right way. If half the people here experience adversarial situations, it means that there are conflicting objectives. In this case, compliance is no longer a support function and becomes a corporate hurdle.
We need to be clear on what we want for compliance to function properly