COPING WITH STRESS IN THE WORKPLACE Linda Holland-Blackwell MGMT201 American Public University System Executive Summary Coping with stress in the workplace can result in the same stress as stress from any other source such as headaches, high blood pressure, indigestion, and other physical symptoms; like irritability, anger, depression. Even if a person has a job and is making a decent salary, there are still stress factors in the workplace that can add to daily stressors. Some of the typical sources of stress in the workplace are work overload, a lack of meaningfulness in work, lack of control in decision making, long hours, and a lack of job security. Burnout is the most common stressor in the workplace. This one of the most serious effects of the workplace. Burnout can cause extreme dissatisfaction, pessimism, unhappiness on the job, and a desire to quit. Burnout stress can cause emotionally exhaustion. A great deal of stress comes from dealing with other people and social interactions. Stress is also affected by status and choosing to adapt. This paper will explore what stress is and the factors that can intensify the effects of stress in the workplace. Stress in today's workplace is growing faster due to individuals dealing with constant work-related demands. Most workers that take on constant demands in the workplace also deal with conflict that can even throw off their work life balance, such as poor career development and the physical
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
Attempts are made to keep employees focused by frequent staff meetings, but people only partially pay attention as managers announce company developments. Management’s perceived need to continually push employees to act right is apparent in the way they handles the missing cover page on Peter’s TPS report. Stress To study stress in the work place, researchers often measure the existing stressors being dealt with by employees. The stressors may be either physical or psychological demands to which an individual responds and, if chronic or persistent, can lead to negative reactions or responses called strains. Physical task stressors include excessive heat, noise, and light, as well as job demands such as a time-pressured work pace, heavier workload, and the amount of hours worked.
Excessive job stress, or that resulting from personal frustration and inadequate coping skills, is referred to as “burnout.” (Iannone, Iannone, & Bernstein, 2014) This psychological condition is also referred to as burn out syndrome. It has been found to be involved in the whole gamut of physical, emotional, spiritual, and interpersonal exhaustion and is commonly associated with alcoholism, all sorts of mental illness, drug problems, suicide and marital conflict (Iannone, Iannone, & Bernstein, 2014, p. 180). A second identifiable issue is bribery and an abuse of authority.
All of the definitions of burnout mention the main factor of burnout to be stress. Pamela Patrick, in her book about Health Care Worker Burnout, defined burnout as “the feeling of emotional exhaustion, a negative attitude shift, and a sense of personal devaluation that occurs over time and in relation to high stress work environment”. Whiton Paine in his book on job stress and burnout used the concept of burnout stress syndrome, or BOSS, which is due to “high levels of job stress, personal frustration and inadequate coping skills”.
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.
Burnout is a pattern of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion in response to chronic job stressors. It is a disorder characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and a low level of personal accomplishments, which primarily affects people who are dealing with other people in their work (Maslach, 1982). Burnout develops due to the persistent emotional strain, which is the result of dealing with other people who cope with serious problems. Thus, burnout could be considered as a type of professional stress, which results from the social interaction between the person who provides
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.
How each individual chooses to relieve their level of stress is a purely personal matter. Stress is reported to cost employers production and money. Certain levels of stress are beneficial to society and individuals, this allows for positive growth; although long term exposure to stress can cause ill-effects to one’s well-being. Work place stress, otherwise known as occupational stress is said by the United Nations’ International Labor Organization to be a global occurrence. It is estimated that occupational stress causes US employers a loss of up to $200 billion a year. This includes low productivity, workers’
We spend much of daily lives working. In fact, Americans spend about eight-times as many hours working as they do eating and drinking (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2013). Approximately seven in ten Americans report that they experience symptoms of stress (Anderson, Belar, Breckler, Nordal, Ballard, Bufka, Bossolo & Bethune, 2013). Stress is elicited by a variety of psychological stimulus associated with our jobs, our residences, our social interactions, and the activities we engage in (p. 249, Franken, 2007). Many Americans live with the burden of an unsatisfying job as well as a stressful workplace. An online survey of 1,848 people in the United States, conducted by the American Psychological Association, found that 74 percent of
This author believes Hayes & Weathington (2007) given a great definition of stress which states “stress is any circumstance that places special physical or psychological anxiety on a person such that requires an infrequent or extraordinary response occurs.” Based on this definition it can be said stress from a job will overlap into one’s private life which only will complicate issues more. The effect of stress can leave individual with the mindset that they are trapped in this situation and will not be able to acclimate to the situation.
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
What happens when you feel over worked, stressed out and like you are unable to meet the demands of your employer? Burn out is the answer. This paper will explore why burn out happens and how to prevent it. It will look at different styles of leadership and what one works best to prevent burn out and help it if it begins to happen. As a leader what is the best way to make sure you do not experience a high turn around in your work place? What is the best way to prevent burn out and how do you catch the signs of it before it is too late? As a leader you want to be able to maintain the best possible working environment and to have your employees be happy and productive.
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
Although work stress is a key issue for all organizations, the problems associated with work stress appear to be particularly acute in organizations with a framework within which to manage and reduce the cost of employee stress, Arroba and James (1990) developed a sequential 4-stage model for stress management. However, while retaining the 4-stage approach, McHugh and Brennan (1992) go beyond the Arroba and James model and develop the concept of total stress management (TSM). The 4-stage model for TSM consists of: 1. the stress audit, 2. stress recognition, 3. adequate training support to prevent, identify, and manage stress, and 4.
INTRODUCTION Today workplace stress is becoming a major issue and a matter of concern for the employees and the organizations. It has become a part of life for the employees, as life today has become so complex at home as well as outside that it is impossible to avoid stress. Selye [1936] defines stress as “a dynamic activity wherein an individual is confronted with an opportunity, constraint or demand”. Organisational stress arises due to lack of person- environment fit. When organizational stress is mismanaged, it affects the human potential in the organization. It further leads to reduced quality, productivity, health as well as