This story is part of our monthlong “Work Well” initiative, which focuses on thriving in the workplace. You can find more stories from this project here.
If you sometimes find yourself stressed out at your job and working off the clock to keep up, you're in the majority.
In a new YouGov poll for The Huffington Post, 58 percent of workers say they're at least sometimes overwhelmed by their work, while 28 percent feel that way only rarely. Just 9 percent say work never overwhelms them.
While most of those who responded to the poll don't feel that they spend too much time at their jobs, a majority admit that they've occasionally resorted to dealing with work in what's supposed to be their spare time.
Fifty-four percent of workers say they at least sometimes answer work emails or phone calls at a time when they're not scheduled to be working. Twenty-one percent say they do so "all the time."
And although 57 percent of workers say their job offers paid vacation time, a significant fraction -- 13 percent -- say they don't feel comfortable using all of the time off they're entitled to.
For all the modern technology available in many workplaces, there's little consensus on whether it's made things better or worse.
Twenty percent of workers say smartphones and emails make their job more stressful than it would be otherwise, while 26 percent say these technologies make their job less stressful.
The rest say technology doesn't affect their job, or that the question doesn't apply to them.
The survey shows something of an age divide in the responses. Workers under age 45 are 10 points more likely to see technological advances as alleviating their workplace stress, while those 45 and older are about evenly split on whether the technologies help curb stress.
The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted Dec. 3-7, among U.S. adults, including 528 who are currently working. It used a sample selected from YouGov's opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.
The Huffington Post has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov's nationally representative opinion polling. Data from all HuffPost/YouGov polls can be found here. More details on the polls' methodology are available here.
Most surveys report a margin of error that represents some, but not all, potential survey errors. YouGov's reports include a model-based margin of error, which rests on a specific set of statistical assumptions about the selected sample, rather than the standard methodology for random probability sampling. If these assumptions are wrong, the model-based margin of error may also be inaccurate. Click here for a more detailed explanation of the model-based margin of error.
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