Introduction

Over the past 30 years, the discourse of work stress has become one of the key frames of reference by which people make sense of the problems they encounter in their working lives (Wainwright and Calnan, 2002). In 2007/08, the UK Labour Force Survey found that 17% of workers reported that their job was very or extremely stressful; a third had discussed work stress with their line manager; 442,000 workers felt that stress was making them ill; and work stress accounted for 13.5 million lost working days (ONS, 2009). As well as charting the extent of the ‘epidemic’, this self-reported data also reveal that notions of work stress have moved from the sphere of academic debate into the public domain, providing a web of meaning through which workers can make sense of their experiences at work.

The discourse of work stress may be on everyone's lips, but we wish to argue that it is about to fall. The academic theories of work stress that underpin the popular discourse are riven with conceptual problems and methodological difficulties, and policymakers and employers are increasingly turning to the currently rather amorphous concept of ‘wellbeing’ to provide an alternative means of understanding and addressing the relationship between work and health. The aim of this chapter is to elucidate the fall of work stress and the rise of wellbeing, and to argue for a conception of wellbeing that is theoretically grounded in the social determinants of illness behaviour and resilience.

The popular discourse of work stress

During the second half of the 20th century, ideas about work stress crossed the boundary between science and popular discourse. Today these notions are so deeply embedded in the popular imagination that they appear naturalised and universal, so much so that it is difficult to imagine a time before work stress, or a place where it might not be found. In this sense, we can speak of a popular discourse of work stress – a set of shared assumptions, norms, expectations and ways of being in the world that collectively provide a web of meaning through which adverse experiences at work can be interpreted and made sense of.