More than half of UK workers use alcohol to de-stress after a hard day or week, whilst 62% confess to using alcohol as a reward for work success and achievements.
The team at www.totiuss.com conducted research to determine which professions rely the most on alcohol to de-stress at the end of the day; as well as gaining insight into the drinking habits of the UK public.
The job sectors within which employees were revealed to be most likely to use alcohol to de-stress were finance, marketing and healthcare.
The professions that were shown to be least likely to use alcohol to de-stress were hair & beauty, transport & logistics and IT & technology.
More than 1,300 UK adults, who were in full or part-time employment, were polled for the purpose of the study, and asked questions around their drinking habits in relation to their working life.ย Everyone taking part was asked if they used alcohol specifically to de-stress after a tough day or week at work, to which 54% confessed that they did. As many as 62% also admitted that they rewarded themselves with alcohol for work success or achievements.
When delving into which job sectors de-stressing with alcohol was most prolific in, the top five were revealed to be:
- Finance โ 16%
- Marketing โ 12%
- Healthcare โ 9%
- Education โ 9%
- Business & Management โ 7%
On the other end of the scale, the sectors least likely to use alcohol as a means of de-stressing (among the 46% who stated they did not) were hair & beauty, transport & logistics and IT & technology.
Women were revealed to be more likely to drink alcohol specifically to de-stress from work than men, according to the research, making up 71% of the total respondents who said that they did.
When relevant respondents were asked to specify the reason(s) that they felt (specifically) caused them to need to de-stress with alcohol, the top answers were revealed to be:
- Heavy workload โ 55%
- Long hours โ 36%
- Difficult clients/customers โ 28%
- Poor management โ 17%
- Lack of support โ 14%
The poll also revealed that 47% of the respondents agreed that there was a drinking culture among their team or at their workplace and 21% of those people felt โsomewhat pressuredโ to drink alcohol on work nights out or at events when they didnโt necessarily want to.
Carmela Coop-Rodia, Co-Founder of www.totiuss.com, said:ย โUnfortunately, drinking is so normalised in our society, particularly within certain company cultures or professions, and nobody bats an eyelid when you sit down with a glass of wine at the end of the day to un-wind. However, it can โ and quite quickly โ be a gateway to a destructive relationship with alcohol that is completely avoidable. One glass of wine after a tough day or week can easily lead to finishing the whole bottle and even on to the next and the impact this has on your mental and physical health can be astounding. What starts with you trying to de-stress can lead to further low mood, anxiety and have the opposite impact you intended.
โTo see that women were more likely to turn to alcohol to de-stress from work unfortunately came as no surprise to us. One of the reasons our unique alcohol-free wellness programme is initially aimed at women, is because various studies have shown that women start to have alcohol-related problems sooner and at lower volumes of drinking than men. Besides that, us women are regularly told we can have it all; the career, the family, the dream lifestyle and all of the success, but the pressures we face can often leave us using alcohol as a means to cope. All it tends to do is make having it all, all that much harder!โ
