Social workers have difficult jobs. People preparing for this career in college usually know this, but they don’t fully understand what it will feel like to encounter these challenges every day as a working professional.
Difficult clients, non-competitive wages, high stakes. These stress factors are common to almost everyone in the noble profession of social work. In this article, we take a look at a few common stress factors and provide recommendations that will make them easier to manage.
Social Workers See People At Their Worst
Social workers are like ER doctors. They generally only see people at their worst. Their job, of course, is to make a bad situation a little better. Still, where most professions experience highs and lows, social workers live within a decidedly wanting baseline.
Most people know this going in, but they don’t know exactly what it will feel like. What does your emotional health look like when you go to work with a headache after a night of no sleep and have to spend all day with people who have just lost custody of their kids?
The situations are stressful and complex. While there are wins along the way, social workers need to be prepared for consistent emotional hardship.
Their Work is High Pressure
Admittedly, social workers are facilitators. If they are working with a recovering addict, it is not up to them if the person can stay clean or not. That said, they are consistently entrenched in high-pressure situations. Will the family be reunited? Will the reformed felon successfully re-enter society? Will the troubled youth find their way in a difficult world?
For many people, these questions are only asked by bad television programs. For social workers, they are core components of the job—and the answers often are unhappy. High stakes are a common source of burnout for any profession. In social work, they are a constant feature of the job.
Low Pay
While the social work payscale can vary, salaries can be as low as $42,000 in some parts of the country. Positions that pay higher generally require graduate degrees and still fall below $80,000. While these salaries are considerably above the poverty line, they fall well short of the potential earnings for people with similar educational credentials in other occupations.
The pay is particularly non-competitive when taken with the other factors we’ve described up until this point. Social workers are not compensated for the high-pressure stress of their jobs the same way that professionals in business occupations are.
The pay is not terrible, but it can be disheartening when taken with all of the other stress factors.
Lack of Recognition
People don’t usually ask for or want the services of a social worker. There are settings in which people on the caseload will be grateful. Often, they are resistant or even hostile to the arrangement.
It can be difficult to work consistently with people who do not want and are not responsive to your services. Workplace appreciation is commonly valued higher than salary by people who are considering a new job. Unfortunately, for social workers, recognition can be a rare feature of their jobs.
High Caseload
The average social worker could have up to thirty people on their weekly caseload. This depends both on the needs of their community, and the type of social work that they are doing. Social workers working with children may have higher caseloads while those working in the healthcare setting generally have lower ones— largely because each case is very demanding.
Regardless of the specific number, most social workers find that they are constantly being pushed to their limits. High work volume coupled with lots of pressure and inadequate recognition can lead to burnout that transitions into work dissatisfaction, and even churn. In the next few headings, we will take a look at steps social workers can take to manage their stress.
Connect with Likeminded Professionals
Social workers spend a lot of time working with people on their caseload. They don’t always have the opportunity to connect on a personal level with other people in their profession. Making a point of communicating regularly with other professionals can help with feelings of stress and isolation.
Some organizations implement mentorship programs to connect new social workers with established professionals. This is a good way to pass along advice, and also just help people develop friendships with their colleagues.
Eudaimonic Happiness
Some psychologists lump emotional well-being into two categories:
- Short-term bliss. Scrolling through social media. Eating something high in fat or covered in salt.
- Long-term happiness. Good health. Mindfullness. Sustainable habits.
While there is room in life for hedonic pleasure, eudaimonic joy is what will ultimately decide your emotional baseline. In other words, it determines how happy you are when everything is normal.
Eudaimonic habits can help manage your stress, improve your health, and help you feel happier even during difficult situations.
There are many things you can do to develop eudaimonic habits. Regular physical activity helps trigger serotonin in your brain. Cutting back on caffeine will reduce cortisol levels (the chemical responsible for stress) in your body.
Spending time with pets, sitting in a garden, reading books, eating a balanced diet, and limiting your screen time are all ways to “hack” your brain chemistry to enjoy a better emotional baseline. This will make it much easier to handle work-related stress— and any other issues that surface in your life.
It’s important to take work-related stress seriously. Sometimes, you won’t even notice that you feel bad until it has been going on for some time. Then, one day, you realize that the tightness in your chest, or your regular sleepless nights owe to a larger issue.
Unfortunately, by the time it gets to that point, it’s not always easy to do something about it at that point. Pay attention to your feelings, and deal with your stress as it comes up. Things will get better.
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