Most companies are starting to recognise the importance of resilience in the workplace, and many organisations are beginning to invest in their people’s wellbeing through vital training and development programmes.

While this is all positive change and key to the development of staff and organisational success, it is also important to establish where work stresses originate. Eliminating or at least reducing these can help build a stronger team, creating increased productivity and results.

So, what is the top reason for workplace stress? Difficult people!

An interesting survey recently completed by business consultants Sarah Bond and Gillian Shapiro, showed that 75% of British employees interviewed admitted that the biggest drain on their resilience reserves was “managing difficult people or office politics at work.”

Personally, I was surprised to read that, expecting stress from overworking to come out on top, but this, along with having to withstand personal criticism, came in after the dreaded office politics.

This may not be a surprise to all of you, but if it is, perhaps now is a good time to try and gauge where the stress originators are in your team. Is everyone working together as they should? Are your people a tight-knit team who work smartly together? Or is there perhaps one or two who aren’t in the ‘Friday night drinks crowd’ so to speak? If so, maybe it’s time to find out why.

Establishing this could just point you in the direction of the resilience drain for your people (that’s not to say it will be those one or two team members, but digging a bit deeper could give you the answer).

If you discover a stress originator then you may need to have some difficult conversations.

When dealt with effectively, hopefully you’ll find that stress levels drop and resilience is able to increase within your team.