Stress Management

Stress is a part of everyday life and as such is a part of all organisations. Cole in his 2004 book ‘Management Theory and Practice’ describes stress as:

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

To begin with, there are many things that cause the increase of workers working more than 50 hours. For instance, technology

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

Rones, P. L., Ilg, R. E., & Gardner, J. M. (1997, April). Trends in Hours of Work Since the Mid-1970s. Retrieved September 16, 2016, from http://data.bls.gov/search/query/results?cx=013738036195919377644%3A6ih0hfrgl50&q=trends+in+hours+of+work+since+mid+1970s

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.

Over the past few decades, the work overload has raised and worsened causing an increase in work hours as well as levels of stress within employees. As stated by Stefani Forster in her article “Sweden Adopts A 6-Hour Work Day: Should Canada Follow Suit?” employees who work longer hours are associated with a decrease in productivity per hour. Sweden has decided to switch to a six hour work day unlike Canada’s average eight our work day, for the organizations to succeed. Much of a company’s success is based on the employee’s performance as well as the ability to complete tasks well and on time. This can be achieved by decreasing the amount of hours an employee works in a day as employees are happier, more energetic and achieve work related

For this reason, I think for future research the sample should have the same number of employers and employees to make the sample be fairly distributed. I believe this way the researchers won’t have more opinions from one group of the participants than the other group. Furthermore, a new research should be done about the relationship of work stress and health. This is because some participants said that stress can be positive and negative. According to the article, the stress can be positive if its short term because it can make people to have a better performance at work. While stress can also be negative if it becomes long term because it can affect people’s health what won’t allow people to perform well at their workplaces and daily life activities. I believe the topic of work stress and health is really interesting in which people probably will be able to answer more clearly the influence that work stress can have on people’s

The amount of people working more than 50 hours has increased since the 1980’s. Anna Burger, researcher and provider of charts in this article, believes there are two important things that contribute to less increase in work hours. One being “‘labour-market regulation.’” It is, in her words, “comprised of things like how difficult it is to fire people and how rigid working-hour rules are.” This is saying that giving employees fewer rights, allows their bosses to pressure them into staying later. The second being the amount of part-time employment. The more part-time employees there are, the less hours for one person to work. Burgers work attempted to explain why people begin working extreme hours, but she didn’t discuss the "Veblenian” explanation.

Stress is one of the number one causes that contribute to people’s health problems. According to Weber.edu, “in Healthy People 2000, a report from the U.S.

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).

In this paper I will discuss stress and the workplace stress survey from the American Institute of Stress and if left untreated, how it will negatively affect the workforce. I will explain the results of my survey scores and why I believe they are positive and negative. Additionally, I will describe personal examples of the stressors that are always at work and how to identify and overcome them before they cause irreparable damage.

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

Hayes & Weathington (2007) cited the “National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health” as saying that job stress has developed into

Stress is not only affecting individuals, but also affects how are businesses function and how our society operates (Morrison 1).