Workplace stress in Ireland: new study finds job design matters for wellbeing

News analysis · 22 September 2026. The academic study discussed below reports associations between working conditions and wellbeing; it does not prove that any single workplace factor causes stress for every worker.

A major new all-island study has found that how work is designed, organised and managed is closely linked to employee health and wellbeing.

The research, carried out by Queen’s University Belfast, University College Dublin and the Nevin Economic Research Institute, surveyed a representative sample of 4,300 workers across the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Its central conclusion is difficult to reduce to a yoga class or wellness app:

workplace stress is strongly associated with the structure of the job itself.

In the Republic of Ireland, 13.2% of workers reported high work-related stress and 12.5% reported poor health.

Healthcare workers reported particularly high stress, with 19.9% of healthcare workers in the Republic falling into the high-stress category.

The researchers found some of the strongest and most consistent associations with:

• high workloads;
• intense work;
• tight deadlines;
• difficulty disconnecting after work;
• poor management support;
• weak employee voice;
• low trust;
• and perceptions of unfairness.

That leads to a more useful question than simply asking whether workers are resilient enough:

Are some workplaces trying to treat stress without changing the work that creates it?

What did the new study find?

The report, In Working Order: Health and Wellbeing among Workers in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, was published on 16 September 2026.

It is one of the largest recent assessments of job quality and worker wellbeing on the island of Ireland.

According to Queen’s University Belfast, the research found:

• 13.2% of workers in the Republic reported high work-related stress;
• 12.5% reported poor health;
• healthcare workers in the Republic had a particularly high stress rate of 19.9%;
• women and full-time workers reported higher stress;
• high job demands had the strongest and most consistent associations with work-related stress;
• supportive management, recognition, fairness, trust and employee voice were associated with better psychological wellbeing;
• and difficulty disconnecting from work was moderately associated with higher stress.

The survey fieldwork was conducted by Ipsos B&A between May and August 2025.

That last point matters.

This is not a live measurement of every workplace in September 2026. It is a large recent survey that provides a picture of working conditions and wellbeing across sectors and groups.

The strongest signal: job demands

The most important finding may be the link between stress and job demands.

The researchers highlighted work intensity and tight deadlines as particularly strong factors.

Ireland’s Health and Safety Authority already identifies excessive workloads, conflicting demands, lack of role clarity, poor communication, low control and inadequate management support as potential causes of work-related stress.

That makes the new research consistent with the HSA’s existing occupational-health framework.

Work-related stress is not defined simply as being busy.

A demanding job can be stimulating and satisfying when the pressure is manageable, resources are adequate and the worker has enough control and support.

The problem arises when demands consistently exceed the person’s capacity or the resources available to do the job.

The ability to recover outside work matters too. Our evidence-based guide to why time off does not always feel like a break looks at the difference between simply being off the clock and actually getting restorative downtime.

Stress is not just an individual coping problem

Workplace wellbeing programmes often focus on individuals.

Employees may be offered:

• mindfulness sessions;
• resilience training;
• gym discounts;
• wellness apps;
• healthy-eating talks;
• or meditation resources.

Those supports can be useful.

But they do not reduce a workload of 60 hours to 40.

They do not remove contradictory deadlines.

They do not automatically improve an unsupportive manager.

And they do not give an employee more control over a role if the job has been designed without enough autonomy.

The authors of the new study make this distinction directly.

Their recommendations focus on improving job quality and working conditions, including workload, management practices, workplace relationships, employee voice and the ability to switch off.

The point is not that individual wellbeing support is worthless.

It is that wellbeing support cannot compensate indefinitely for poor job design.

The “always-on” problem

One of the study’s findings was that difficulty disconnecting from work is common and associated with higher stress.

That is particularly relevant in jobs where email, Slack, Teams or work phones follow employees home.

A separate survey commissioned by Vhi and reported this month found that:

• 49% of surveyed employees checked work emails after hours;
• 35% checked them at weekends;
• 22% checked while on holiday;
• and one in five reported consistently high stress.

More than half said workplace targets take priority over wellbeing.

That Vhi research is employer-sponsored research rather than the same academic study, so the two datasets should not be treated as interchangeable.

But they point toward a similar issue:

the working day does not always end when the employee leaves the workplace or closes the laptop.

Ireland already has a Right to Disconnect code

Ireland’s Workplace Relations Commission has a Code of Practice on the Right to Disconnect.

The code describes a workplace culture in which employees should be able to disengage from work and work-related electronic communications outside normal working hours.

It also recognises that the issue is not one-sided.

Employers are expected to support appropriate working-time practices, while employees are also encouraged to be mindful of colleagues’ right to disconnect.

For example, routinely sending non-urgent emails late at night can create pressure even when nobody explicitly says a response is required.

The existence of the code does not mean every worker in Ireland experiences a clean boundary between work and home.

The new wellbeing research suggests that the ability to disconnect remains an important part of the stress picture.

Healthcare stands out

The finding that 19.9% of healthcare workers in the Republic reported high work-related stress deserves particular attention.

Healthcare roles can combine several recognised stressors:

• high workload;
• time pressure;
• emotional demands;
• shift work;
• staffing pressure;
• exposure to serious illness and death;
• and, in some roles, aggression or violence.

The HSA specifically identifies these types of factors in its guidance for health and social-care workers.

That does not mean every healthcare worker is under unhealthy stress.

But it does suggest that sector-level working conditions matter.

If one sector repeatedly shows higher stress, the explanation is unlikely to be that its workers simply have less resilience.

Why management quality matters

The new study also found that supportive management practices were associated with better psychological wellbeing.

That includes things such as:

• respect;
• recognition;
• support;
• clear communication;
• fairness;
• and employee voice.

These can sound less concrete than workload or pay.

But they directly shape how people experience difficult work.

Two teams can have similar workloads and very different stress levels if one has predictable priorities, supportive managers and realistic deadlines while the other operates through constant urgency and uncertainty.

Management quality can also influence whether employees feel safe raising concerns before stress becomes severe.

Control and employee voice are important

The HSA’s own model of work-related stress places significant emphasis on control.

That means having some influence over how work is carried out, how breaks are taken, how schedules are arranged and how tasks are completed.

Lack of control can make demanding work harder to tolerate.

The new all-island research similarly found positive associations between employee voice, fairness, trust and wellbeing.

That helps explain why two jobs with identical hours can feel very different.

A person who can prioritise tasks, influence their schedule and raise concerns may experience pressure differently from someone facing the same volume of work with almost no control.

Is all workplace pressure bad?

No.

The HSA distinguishes between manageable challenge and harmful stress.

Pressure can sometimes improve alertness, motivation and performance.

A difficult project with a clear end date, enough resources and a supportive team can be demanding without being damaging.

The problem is excessive or sustained pressure, particularly when workers feel unable to cope or unable to influence the situation.

That distinction is important because the goal of workplace wellbeing should not be to eliminate every difficult deadline or demanding task.

It should be to prevent normal challenge from becoming chronic, unmanageable strain.

What can employers actually change?

The new research points toward several interventions that are more structural than a conventional wellness programme.

1. Review workload

If employees are consistently working late or unable to take breaks, the first question should be whether the amount of work is realistic.

2. Reduce unnecessary urgency

Not every task needs to be marked urgent.

Constant deadline pressure can create a workplace where prioritisation becomes impossible.

3. Improve management support

Managers can reduce stress by clarifying expectations, giving useful feedback and addressing problems early.

4. Give people more control where possible

Autonomy over scheduling, task order and work methods can improve how demanding work is experienced.

5. Protect the ability to disconnect

Teams can establish norms around after-hours communication and genuinely respect time off.

6. Strengthen employee voice

Employees should have credible ways to raise concerns about workload, staffing or workplace practices.

The HSA takes a risk-management approach to workplace stress: identify stressors, assess the risk and introduce controls.

That is very different from telling every stressed employee to become individually better at coping.

What can an employee do?

Structural problems need structural solutions, but individuals are not powerless.

If work is persistently affecting sleep, mood, concentration or physical health, the HSA advises speaking to the employer and, where appropriate, a GP or medical practitioner.

It can also help to identify the specific source of the pressure rather than treating “stress” as one undifferentiated problem.

For example:

• Is the workload impossible within normal hours?
• Are priorities constantly changing?
• Is the role unclear?
• Is one manager or relationship driving the problem?
• Is after-hours communication making recovery impossible?
• Is there enough staffing or resource to do the work safely?
• Do you have any control over how the work is organised?

A concrete problem is easier to raise than a vague statement that work is stressful.

The wellbeing-programme paradox

The Vhi-sponsored survey reported that around half of workers said workload leaves little time to use employer wellbeing benefits.

That captures a common contradiction.

An organisation can offer extensive wellbeing resources while simultaneously creating working conditions that make those resources difficult to use.

A lunchtime wellbeing session is of limited value if employees feel unable to leave their desks.

An unlimited annual-leave policy means little if the culture discourages taking leave.

A meditation subscription cannot solve systematic understaffing.

This does not mean employers should abandon wellbeing programmes.

It means the programmes should sit on top of healthy work design, not substitute for it.

Why this belongs in a conversation about happiness

Work occupies a large proportion of adult life.

It affects:

• income;
• time;
• relationships;
• sleep;
• autonomy;
• identity;
• physical health;
• and the amount of energy people have left outside work.

That makes workplace wellbeing a happiness issue as much as an employment issue.

A satisfying job can provide purpose, social connection, achievement and financial security.

A chronically stressful job can spill into almost every other part of life.

The new Irish research is therefore useful because it shifts the conversation away from the idea that wellbeing lives entirely inside the individual.

Sometimes improving wellbeing means learning better coping skills.

Sometimes it means taking a break.

And sometimes it means changing the way the work is organised.

What the research does — and does not — prove

This was observational survey research.

It shows strong associations between working conditions and reported wellbeing.

It cannot prove that one particular workplace factor directly caused an individual’s stress.

People differ in health, personal circumstances, personality, finances and responsibilities outside work.

But when the same workplace factors repeatedly appear across thousands of workers — workload, deadlines, management, fairness, autonomy and the ability to disconnect — they deserve attention.

That is especially true because many of those factors are changeable.

The bigger takeaway

The headline from the new research is not that Irish workers need to become more resilient.

It is that good work appears to be good for wellbeing, while poorly designed work can be harmful.

The strongest workplace wellbeing strategy may therefore be less glamorous than a new app or annual wellness week.

It may involve:

• realistic workloads;
• competent managers;
• fair treatment;
• clear priorities;
• meaningful employee voice;
• and permission to stop working when the working day is over.

Those changes are harder than buying a wellbeing platform.

They may also matter more.

This article discusses population-level workplace research and is not medical advice. If stress is persistently affecting your health, sleep, mood or ability to function, consider speaking with a GP or appropriate health professional.

Related Compound guides

For the individual side of the same problem, see Stress symptoms: what helps in Ireland and Burnout symptoms and recovery. If time away from work is not actually restoring you, read Why time off doesn’t feel like a break.