Nearly half of today’s workforce — 45% — are highly stressed, experiencing stress frequently or always, according to a new report from Walking on Earth (WONE), a preventative health platform.
The research found that these high-stress employees take 8x as many sick days from stress and make 2.5x more health claims than low stress employees — and these levels of stress translate to an additional annual cost of $5.4m (to organisations with over a thousand people).
Comparatively, the report, which surveyed 1,005 participants from the UK and the US between December 2024 and January 2025, found a meagre 14% exist at the other end of the stress spectrum.
Stressed out by these statistics? Reeva Misra, WONE’s founder and CEO, says we have confused high performance with high stress for too long and wants to use this research to turn workplace stress into a strength.
Sifted sat down with Misra and Dr Lydia Roos, WONE’s chief science officer, to dive into the real cost of workplace stress — and the urgent need for potential solutions.
The cost of chronic stress
Before founding WONE, Misra researched the human brain at the University of Oxford. She found that stress repeatedly cropped up as one of the leading indicators of chronic illnesses, of which around half the people in the UK have, according to NHS England.
“Our healthcare systems are focused on the point we get a disease, often when it’s too late, rather than preventing them in the first place,” she says, adding she also noticed that despite this, no one was focused on diagnosing and treating stress before it became chronic.
But stress isn’t just a healthcare concern. Stress pays in dividends of sick leave, health claims, operational errors, poor relationships and workforce loss. WONE’s report found that absenteeism, presenteeism (being unproductive despite being physically present) and staff turnover alone costs organisations $12k per high stress employee every year.
“The strength and consistency of the linear correlation between stress and business risks really struck me,” says Dr Roos. “There’s really no scenario where a negative stress state without adequate recovery time enhances productivity — we know it impairs cognitive function, drains energy and reduces focus.”
The report also found that highly stressed employees are 11x more likely to make a mistake.
“When high stress employees make up 45% of your workforce, that’s a lot you’re essentially wasting — that’s not even taking into account things that we didn’t include in the financial model, like the cost of health claims and the really critical operational mistakes made, like missing deadlines and taking shortcuts (something 12% of people in the high stress group admitted to doing),” says Dr Roos.
WONE illustrates the risk of stress on a thermometer because as stress temperatures rise, so do the associated costs and risks on the business. For instance, under low stress, only a small fraction (7%) of behaviours are classed as high risk to a business, while during high stress, high risk behaviours increase to 26%.
More promisingly, however, the correlation is also true in reverse. A recent Indeed study led by the Oxford economics professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve found that the top 100 publicly listed US companies that ranked the highest for workplace wellbeing outperformed the S&P 100 index by 11% since January 2021, consistently outperforming the stock market.
Yet, few businesses feel equipped to deal with highly stressed employees.
“There’s still a huge gap between awareness and taking action on this because traditional risk frameworks focus on things like compliance and safety but not on social factors, and that’s because they haven’t had the data,” says Misra, adding that with the advancement of science and the prevalence of wearable devices, like fitness trackers, WONE is able to gather data which was previously unavailable.
Turning stress into a strength
Access to more data has also allowed WONE to develop a new evidence-based approach to stress management at both the individual and organisational level.
At an individual level, there is the “WONE Method”. Based on measurements taken via its platform, combined with data synced from wearable devices such as smart watches and rings, an AI coach creates a personalised plan for the individual with recommended, bespoke micro-moments of recovery — like a two-minute breathing exercise or a five-minute desk stretch — as well as more long-term skills learning to fit their schedule.
WONE says these interventions have resulted in 74% of individuals reporting a reduction in stress and 90% reporting an increase in productivity.
Misra says this connects with the company’s mission “to reduce stress in 100m lives, and by doing so, inspire a more preventative model of health”.
At the organisational level, data is used in an aggregated and anonymised form to provide companies with an overview of their workplace stress, outlining any patterns which could be addressed.
“By creating a stress dashboard, we can reveal patterns and stress ‘hotspots’ amongst teams and departments. We then work with leadership to determine what might be going on there and how they could address it,” says Roos, adding that the result is a “white-glove approach, where we tailor solutions to specific needs and results”, unlike what most other solutions on the market currently offer.
“We’re here to end a stress epidemic in a way that is compassionate and relatable,” says Misra.
As we close out #StressAwarenessMonth, WONE is inviting organisations to take a look at the data themselves. Everyone can relate to the feeling of stress being something like drowning or being snowed under: you can watch the video from WONE here. But now, the numbers paint a clear picture: it’s time for collective, proactive action, to turn Stress into Strength, and build for lasting change.
For more information about WONE, watch this video or reach out to the company here.
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