There Are Standards for Stress. Wait, What?

Why experts have spent decades defining stress, mental workload, burnout, monotony, and psychological health at work.

Stress feels intensely personal, which makes it slightly odd that committees have taken years trying to define it.

Somewhere, probably in Geneva, experts have spent countless hours debating mental strain, tedium, reduced attention, and exhaustion. The result: international standards.

We often talk about stress as if everybody means the same thing — but standards writers are professionally suspicious of assumptions like that. Before the experts could attempt to solve workplace stress, they first had to agree what “stress” meant. They also needed definitions. Humanity has accomplished many things. Agreeing on a definition of monotony probably ranks among its duller achievements.

Seeing as categorising monotony is such an unusually niche undertaking, I assumed my research had reached its strangest destination. It hadn’t.

Standards committees, it turns out, are not content merely to define what makes people tired, stressed or bored. Some have also wandered into the territory of wellbeing. That journey eventually led me to a standards committee devoted to Ayurveda and Yoga: ISO/TC 249/SC 2.

If stress seemed too subjective to standardise, yoga seemed even less likely. Yet even yoga eventually needs common terminology, shared expectations, and a mutual understanding of the concepts being discussed. But at what point should a practice dedicated to inner peace acquire a standards committee?

The fascinating thing, at least to me, is not that stress occurs — it’s that many of its causes can be systematically identified and managed. Even more thought-provoking: international standards exist for something many people consider purely private.

“There are standards for seat belts.”

“Of course.”

“There are standards for avocados.”

“I suppose so.”

“There are standards for psychological health at work.”

“Wait, what?”

Disappointingly, these stress standards aren’t called Keep Calm and Carry On — Parts 1 to 4.

Instead, ISO 45003 is titled Occupational health and safety management — Psychological health and safety at work — Guidelines for managing psychosocial risks. That’s quite the mouthful, but perhaps warranted, seeing as ISO describes it as the first international standard focused specifically on psychological health and safety at work.

ISO 10075–1, meanwhile, defines concepts such as mental strain and fatigue-like states, monotony, reduced vigilance, and burnout — because ergonomists realised people were using the same words to mean different things. Its companion standards, ISO 10075–2 and ISO 10075–3, deal with design principles and measurement relating to mental workload.

Most people don’t require an international standard to recognise that staring at a spreadsheet for ten hours may eventually affect their enthusiasm for further spreadsheets. Yet researchers spent decades distinguishing different forms of mental workload and their effects.

So, if there’s one takeaway from my research, it’s that “not every difficult task is stressful — not every easy task is relaxing”. People have spent decades trying to define the difference.

The deeper insight, however, is that stress, yoga, monotony and wellbeing all seem intensely intimate. Yet the moment people need to discuss, teach, manage or research them, they start looking for a common language. That, ultimately, is what standards are for.

What feels too personal to be standardised — until you stop and think about it? Let me know on X: @AsStandardsGo

Disclaimer: If my manager, their manager, or anyone else responsible for my performance review is reading this: all references to monotony are purely technical.

Illustration by Vanicon Studio on Unsplash