Dealing with Stress and Burnout in the Workplace Essay

At the psychological level, stressful and poor working conditions can cause continuing feelings of humiliation, insecurity and worthlessness. Not having a secure understanding of the future can cause large amounts of anxiety and futility that roots high levels of fatigue from day-to-day life, therefore making everyday coping difficult. Individuals who experience high levels of prolonged stress often attempt to relieve these pressures by adopting unhealthy coping behaviours; for example, the excessive use of alcohol, smoking, and

Introduction Stress affects millions of people. One of the most common forms of stress is that related to our careers and the workplace. In today 's economic difficulty, work related stress is even more pronounced than ever before. Everyone who has ever held a job has, felt the pressure of work-related stress. Any job can have stressful elements, even if you love what you do. According to the American Psychological Association 's (APA) annual Stress in America Survey. Only 37 percent of Americans surveyed said they were doing

Psychological stressors include interpersonal conflict, role stressors, work-family conflict, and emotional labor, which is the regulation of one’s emotions to meet job or organizational demands. Another psychological stressor that may have the most influence in determining an individual’s response to a situation is a lack of control or predictability, which is related to the amount of autonomy an employee perceives in controlling how and when they perform the tasks of their job. (Landy & Conte, 2009) Stress may result in negative behavioral, psychological, or physiological consequences and the effects of multiple stressors can be cumulative. Absenteeism, accidents,

Stress has been linked to hypertension, heart attacks, diabetes, asthma, chronic pain, allegeries, headaches, skin disorders, cancer, immune system weakness and decrease blood count (Cummings et al, 2005). It has also been linked to an increase risk of alcoholism and drug use. High levels of stress can lead to higher absenteeism, larger staff turnover and low productivity. The symptoms are evident in the quantitative data, with an

There are numerous challenges that organizations are faced with in order for them to survive and grow. These challenges are mainly faced by people who are tasked with making decisions on a daily basis within the organizations because a majority of the challenges are human based. The employees working in an organization are likely to suffer from occupational stress depending on their work. Occupational stress comes along when an employee is faced with demands within the workplace, and they are not able to complete or carry out these demands. The failure to complete the demands placed upon them would cause the employee mental and physical strain as their body would have a physiological reaction. According to research there are various factors that contribute to stress in the workplace. These factors include isolation, extensive working hours, negative workloads, unhealthy working environments, harassment, bullying by management, and lack of motivation or advancement opportunities. The factors mentioned are not exhaustive as there might be other causes to occupational stress depending on the individual or employees.

Hakanen, J. J., & Bakker, A. B. (2017). Born and bred to burn out: A life-course view and reflections on job burnout. Journal Of Occupational Health Psychology, 22(3), 354-364. doi:10.1037/ocp0000053

It is evident that the relationship between work stress and mental health has been established by numerous research studies. As discussed in Koesky (1993), the fact that all jobs involve some degree of stress makes it all the more alarming as to the level of stress experienced by individuals working in the human services. That is, given that these individuals are heavily involved in the lives of others, they often develop mental health symptoms that are characteristic of work-related stressors. In fact, “This involvement, which requires caring commitment and empathic responding, places workers at risk for a special type of strain commonly referred to as 'burnout'” (Koesky, 1993, p. 319).

I would like to conclude on a few points that we have discussed. The term stress was coined by Dr. Hans Selye from the University of Montreal and the basic definition of stress is the body’s response to any demand placed on it, pleasant or unpleasant (Cunningham, 2000). Some major causes of stress are “high physical, mental and or emotional demands, lack of variety, short work cycles, fragmented or meaningless work, underutilization and high uncertainty of work” (NOHSC, 2000, P. 29). There are also psychological stressors that affect workplace but that I will save that for another

Many believe that stress is a simple problem, however it is often misunderstood and more complex than they believe (p. 181, Griffin & Moorhead, 2014). Stress is the physiological and psychological response to excessive and usually unpleasant stimulation as well as threatening events in the environment (p. 284, Schultz and Schultz, 2010). Stress appears in silent and subtle ways but this negative response affects millions of employees in all levels of all types of jobs (p. 284, Schultz and Schultz, 2010). If identified

Stress can come at very different levels. Stress can come in many different forms. Financial stress is a hard thing, and a lot of time takes time to fix the financial stressor. Financial stress a lot of time can not be avoided. Family relationship stress is another hard subject. It is a hard subject because a lot of the time kids and divorce are involved. Forty to fifty marriages end in divorce apa.org (American Psychological Association) and that all has to do with stress in the end. Lastly, workplace stress. Workplace stress is where a lot of people feel stuck. Yes, the person may dislike going to their job everyday, their workload is too heavy but it is a paycheck. The paycheck is what is held over a person’s head and makes them get up everyday and give a sense of security. In the end all three of these subjects of stress tie back together. It starts with the work place stress, when a person has a heavy work load at work and not enough pay to pay bills then Next comes financial stress. Once the person working has a heavy work load and not enough money the family relationship problems come because they are stressed about making ends meet and provide for their family. See how it all sort of flows together? The top three stressors sort of play off of one another. Of course this is not always the

In defining the concept of stress, occupational stress and role stress are examined based on the fact that people's lives are characterized with stressors that contribute to numerous threats to their well-being. Since the concept of role stress, which is related to occupational stress, is not found in the dictionary, the starting point in the definition and analysis of stress is the use of the term stress (Riahi, 2011, p.722). While stress was initially described as the experience of some form of strain by any living organisms, the description has been expanded to a phenomenon that contributes to severe and distressing experience,

Psychological stress is a result of many factors and should be dealt with very carefully. Stress can be defined as “An excess of demand made upon the adaptive capabilities of the mind and body”.(Joseph 1). Another way of putting it, is that there are some things that put certain demands on us. The effects of stress should not be limited to unpleasant emotional states. Many studies have concluded that the effects on our physical health from stress can be extremely detrimental. These adverse physical effects include heart disease and formations of cancer. There are also some societal issues that psychological stress can hamper.

Finally, there are stressors in our personal lives that may have nothing to do with work but may spill over into our work lives. Things like divorce, birth of a child, death of a family member, and financial issues can cause stress in our personal lives. These stressors cause us to be distracted and we lose focus on what we are doing at work. This can cause accidents on the jobs or a decrease in productivity. Furthermore, as we let the stress of our personal lives spill over into our work lives we may become agitated, short-tempered, and difficult to be around. Our attitude then begins to affect those working around us, which in turn causes stress in their lives.

According to Elkin and Rosch (1990) workplace related stress in a major problem in the U.S. and it creates a major expense for corporations. Koeske, Kirk, and Koeske (1993) indicate that all jobs have some level of stress but jobs that are in the human services have additional stressors because they “derive from intense involvement in the lives of others”. (p.319). They also refer to the type of stress experienced by individuals working in human services as “burnout” (Koeske, Kirk, and Koeske, 1993, p.319). Another factor that can influence our stress level is how we handle life’s demands. There are different ways of reacting to the situations we face every day of our lives. We have all heard of expressions such as ‘road rage’ and ‘going postal’. These are terms that we have come to identified with violent reactions to stressors caused by situations all of us face every day. How many of us have experiences in the road that

Stress is a major element in the life of an employee even manager and executives experience stress many times in their working activities.