Over the past few decades, many people are hearing more about job related stress. With many households depending on duel incomes, people are working more and having less leisure time. Many claim that job stress has contributed to such illnesses as heart disease, depression, gastric problems, exhaustion, and many other related illnesses. This paper will focus on the background issues surrounding stress; as well as, the steps that need to be taken by one’s self and the employer. According to The Random House Dictionary, stress is defined as “physical, mental, or emotional tension.” Job stress occurs when demands are imposed upon the workers in which they can not meet those demands, or when there are not …show more content…
136). At stage four, one can experience problems getting through the day. Once-pleasant activities become quite difficult, and the ability to communicate in social affairs or talking with friends becomes quite burdensome. There is more difficulty sleeping with the occurrence of unpleasant King 4 dreams. The stressed individual develops a feeling of negativism, inability to concentrate, and nameless fears. Stage five is represented by a deepening of the stage four symptoms along with extreme fatigue (Bensahel et al., 1984, p. 137). The final stage can produce terrifying symptoms. This can include heart pounding and panic caused by release of adrenaline. There is often gasping for breath, trembling, shivering, sweating, numb and tingling hands and feet, and sheer exhaustion. The symptoms of stress are frequently conflicting and confusing. “The stress disorder is essentially a step-by-step exhaustion of the body’s fuel reserves” (Bensahel et al., 1984, p. 139) During the early 1980s, workers compensation claims nearly tripled for those reporting stress related illness due to work (Schor, 1991, p. 11). There has been a dramatic increase in the number of stress related illnesses, particularly among women. Jobs have been a major contributing factor to this stress. Only one-forth of wives with children held paying jobs outside the home in the 1960s. By the 1990s, two-thirds of American wives
The definition of stress according to the Oxford dictionary is “A state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or demanding circumstances.”
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
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.
There are four different kinds of stress warnings; Cognitive, Emotional, Physical, and Behavioral symptoms. These all range from moodiness, depression, worrying, aches/pains, and nervous habits. This can all be caused by other medical problems too so make sure you go get checked to find out what’s causing it fully. People can deal with stress like its apart of their life and some can’t deal at all. The way certain people handle stress can depend on your outlook on life or the decisions you make. Mostly if you have a lot to do or a lot of responsibly, your body has its emergency stress response on most of the time. Long term stress leads to depression over anything though.
Issues such as the nature of the job and the kind of social life as well as the threatening situations to life often lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. If these situations are not managed at the source, then a person is likely to suffer dire consequences arising from such events. For instance, stress arising from job-related issues should be noted in advance. The management should take the necessary steps to ensure that their workers and colleagues work in the right environment to avoid stressful incidences (Melinda, Lawrence & Jeanne, 2015). On the other hand, individuals need to be open enough to talk out their sufferings and the situations that may cause stress in their line of
To help reduce stress for myself, even through I know its quite common practice for most managers I would write down a list of all my tasks and then put them in priority order according to timescales, importance and whether I could or could not delegate the task I would also consider how long they might take, having a list especially when I am feeling stressed helps me focus and ticking areas off can have a positive effect on me as the list reduces.
Currie, D (2010). Introduction to Human Resource Management. 2nd ed. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel Development. 293
Work related stress has been emerging as one of the main causes of adverse symptoms of mental health in today’s industrial societies. The direct result of excessive pressures and/or demands placed on individuals at work, work-related stress has caused some people to develop symptoms of depression, anxiety, and other adverse mental health effects. While it might be possible that other co-factors contribute to the development of anxiety and depression in some population groups, evidence suggests that pressure from works is more likely to trigger adverse reactions in some people. In fact, positive correlations have been established between symptoms of work stress and mental health problems. That is, it is not uncommon to witness loss of
Stage II is marked by a worsening of symptoms. At this stage, you may begin to notice symptoms such as trembling, stiffness, or tremors on both sides of the body. Your loved one's facial expression may change and speech may become more difficult. Stiffness may slow your loved one down, but his or her balance is not yet affected.
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
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,
Hayes & Weathington (2007) cited the “National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health” as saying that job stress has developed into
First, stress is defined as an unpleasant state of emotional and physiological arousal that people experience in situations that they perceive as dangerous or threatening to their well being (Patel, 14). Stress is a universal feeling to everyone but the word stress means different things to
Stress is a common issue that faces every human being in different times. Stress can be caused by many factors, but one of the main reasons is work which is called occupational stress or work-related stress. Job stress does not only affect the employees’ performance within an organization, but also it affects their general health. Stress has become a challenge for employers now because high level stress results in low productivity, increased absenteeism and other problems like alcoholism, drug abuse and hypertension (Ahmad, Mohamed. 2017). It became a major problem for employers especially in developing countries where they don’t realize the importance of work-life balance and the impact of stress on the productivity level and the job