At a corporate office in Bengaluru, an employee in the sales division has been struggling for months. Targets have increased, deadlines have shortened and promotions have stalled despite longer working hours. He has begun experiencing fatigue and frequent gastric problems, but has not spoken to anyone at work about it.
During the company’s annual health assessment, he filled out a work stress questionnaire developed by researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS). His responses place him in the “red” category, indicating high work stress combined with psychosomatic symptoms and poor coping ability. The company has not revealed his personal identity. Instead, it has received a broader report showing that employees in the sales department are reporting disproportionately high stress levels compared to other divisions. Recommendations follow: reduce excessive workload, revisit targets, improve managerial communication and introduce interventions to address work-life imbalance.
This is how the Tool to Assess and Classify Work Stress (TAWS-16), a work stress assessment tool developed by researchers at NIMHANS, is now being used by multinational companies and public sector undertakings across India.
Developed in 2023, the tool was created after the institution’s researchers working on workplace mental healthcare realised that companies were more comfortable discussing “work stress” than mental illness itself.
The Tool to Assess and Classify Work Stress (TAWS-16) is a 16-item, five-minute questionnaire developed to measure employee work stress, coping abilities and psychosomatic symptoms. It is the first tool designed specifically for the Indian workforce to address work-related stressors like workload, deadlines and work-life balance.
“Two years ago, when we were trying to integrate mental healthcare in workplace settings, we faced a lot of barriers because of stigma issues. However, everyone was interested in understanding work stress,” Dr Gautham M Sukumar, professor of epidemiology at NIMHANS, told The Indian Express.
That distinction became crucial. Most existing tools measure general stress, such as financial troubles or personal loss, but not stress specifically arising from workplace structures and expectations. “There was no tool that specifically measures stress due to work-related factors. The companies were interested in having such kinds of tools,” he said, adding that the tool is primarily meant to identify patterns within organisations, whether stress is concentrated in a certain department, designation or type of work.
The NIMHANS team reviewed several stress assessment models used in India and abroad. Many were too lengthy, unsuitable for Indian workplaces, or designed only for specific sectors. Then it developed a generic framework that could work across offices, schools, hospitals and factories alike. The tool identifies 16 major workplace stressors, including excessive job demands, role ambiguity, role conflict, deadline pressure, effort-reward imbalance and strained interpersonal relationships at work. “When I say work stressors, I mean like a boss asking an employee to prepare 10 powerpoint presentations in 10 minutes,” Dr Sukumar explained. “So it’s like an increased job demand on you.”
But the researchers felt measuring exposure alone was insufficient. “People have an uncanny ability to cope. And people who actually cope, they thrive. They don’t feel stressed. So, the stress factor comes in only when you’re not able to cope with what is thrust on you. That angle of coping was missing in most of the tools,” he said
To address this, the questionnaire now not only asks employees whether they are exposed to stressful conditions, but also evaluates whether they are coping with them. It additionally tracks psychosomatic symptoms, physical manifestations of chronic stress such as fatigue, hypertension, gastritis and sleep disturbances. Using this combination of stress exposure, coping capacity and symptoms, the tool categorises employees into green, yellow and red groups. The results are then compiled into department-wise reports for companies.
“It’s an action-oriented tool. It basically gives interventions as well. We conduct an assessment, we give a report and say this is the particular part of the company where employees are more stressed,” Dr Sukumar said.
Importantly, researchers say the process is designed to protect employees. Companies generally share anonymised data, and before assessments begin, employers are required to sign agreements stating that the findings will not be used to penalise workers. “We take an agreement where the employer says that he will not take any legal action on the employee because of the result of this finding,” Dr Sukumar said.
Initially, the tool was developed as a mobile application. But over time, companies grew reluctant to upload employee information to an external server. “Most companies don’t want to use the app because the data will fall on our server. So, they were taking our questionnaire but putting it into their own software,” he said.
Today, the tool is used through internal company systems, Google Forms and institutional surveys, and has also been adopted by students and researchers for academic work.
Its growing use comes at a time when conversations around burnout, toxic workplaces and employee wellbeing are increasingly moving into the mainstream, especially after the pandemic blurred boundaries between work and personal life.
Dr Sukumar is careful to distinguish between work stress and mental illness. “We are only assessing work stress,” he said, adding that the tool is primarily meant to identify patterns within organisations, whether stress is concentrated in a certain department, designation or type of work.
“For employees, it may offer something workplaces have long struggled to provide, acknowledgment that stress is not merely an individual failing, but often a structural problem,” he added.
