A third of UK workers cannot get to sleep at night through anxiety, and three-quarters cannot 'switch off' when they leave their office a survey shows.

'Easy to approach managers'
When they were asked what contributed to a good working environment, the top factor selected was 'having management staff who were easy to approach' which polled at 81%.

The next highest factor was 'flexible working' at 74.7%. However, in the North East - the only area in the country which answered this way - this was turned around as flexible working was the most important factor at 82.8 % against 79.3% for approachable management.

The Scottish came out top when it came to preferring to have the radio playing in the background at work - giving it a rating of 34.5%!

Sales, marketing and media professionals unsurprisingly put having a relaxed dress code as a 52.2% preference for a good work environment while this only rated 29.5% for the finance sector. And the sales, marketing and media men and women saw an active social scene as important at 53.7 % while the healthcare workers only rated it at 29.8%.

Samaritans' internet survey asked which qualities staff felt were important in their managers.

The right to a work-life balance
The top response at 80% was that managers respected the staff's right to having a work:life balance. The next, at 77% was that a manager should be able to spot when a member of staff needs support. This is a crucial element of WorkLife training.

In Yorkshire the top quality for being an effective manager was being a good communicator. In the education profession, staff rated it very highly - at 40.9% - that a manager shows an interest in their home life. In the financial world - one of the most stressed professions - staff thought one of the most important factors in their managers - at 74.3% - was that they tried to reduce staff stress levels.

The survey showed that the most popular way of handling stress was to have a cup of tea, but the second most popular was to take a 'sickie'. The Welsh were more likely to take a sickie while Londoners would surf the internet and make personal calls. Those in the South-West are most likely to pop out for a cigarette break to combat stress!

Overall the survey found that 11% of us feel our bosses don't care about us and one in five believe their boss lacks training at handling employees' personal matters and over one in five say that their boss lacks the personality to do this.

Stress in the workplace is frequently cited as the number one issue affecting employee productivity. Significantly, WorkLife has been designed to support the Health and Safety Executive's Standards and Guidelines for tackling work-related stress. These standards were launched in November 2004 to help employers and employees work together to prevent excessive work related stress. The standards define the culture of an organisation where stress is being managed effectively.

"I believe the survey's findings show that not enough is being done at ground level to tackle stress in the workplace and highlight the need for the sort of training we are offering," said Jonathan Moran for Samaritans.

He added: "Samaritans has been running communications skills training in the workplace for three years for organisations such as the Inland Revenue, National Air Traffic Services, Cancer Research UK and Citizen's Advice. An academic study is being carried out over an 18 month period by our partners at Nottingham University which will measure the impact of WorkLife training. We are also developing a fully interactive version of the WorkLife programme on CD-ROM in conjunction with The Media Trust. This contains key elements of the training and will be available in the autumn."

The Samaritans research survey carried out via the internet by Tickbox.net put a series of questions to 1500 employed people aged 16 years and above. www.samaritans.org