The team has developed a technique for measuring how content workers are after spending 10 years testing 15,000 public sector employees, in a bid to enable companies to gain a recruitment and retention edge over rivals.

The psychologists concerned are now launching a spin-off company, QoWL Ltd, to make the pyschometric testing method available to employers to help measure quality of working life in their staff.

QoWL director Alan Bradshaw said: 'Stress at work may be less important than people think. Our results indicated that general well-being, working conditions, management support and relationships all appear to be more important factors than stress in determining quality of working life.

'For office environments, practical issues tend to be particularly important in determining employees' quality of working life, both in terms of the physical working environment such as buildings, temperature, comfort and equipment, and ease of getting to and from work such as transport, travelling time and parking.'

He added: 'In some cases, it appears that workplaces where employees experience higher workload demands can also be those with a higher quality of working life.

'In these cases employees tended to have more autonomy and control in the workplace.'