The Effects Of Stress On The Workplace

In today’s world Stress has become a ubiquitous word. It doesn’t matter if you are working in a highly competitive environment like at Wall Street or in a quiet neighbourhood like in country side or in any tier 2 or tier 3 cities; some amount of stress is inevitable. Stress is a highly serious problem in today world having repercussions on the physical and mental health of individuals. This negative effect can be disastrous for the organizations also. Due to stress the wellbeing of the employee falls and as a result organization itself becomes unwell. The organization sustainability falls as its productivity reduces. Stress can originate from many sources, like relationship problems, obligations and promises to family, friends

In this paper, I expect to discuss factors which lead to stress in the workplace. Are individuals stressed in the workplace? What causes stress in the workplace? Who is mostly stressed: men or women? Are individuals being exposed to stress management techniques? By recognizing stress in the workplace, employers can act appropriately to reduce stress. The outcome can benefit social and family relationships, as well as preserve ones health and make people more productive in organizations.

Stress can be defined as an interaction between people and any kind of demand within their environment. A stressor can be an event or an object which is harmful for an individual. Stress can happen when the demand outweighs a human's ability to deal. Factors that may cause job stress include long work hours, job insecurity, conflict among workers and supervisors, shift work, or hazards. Job stress can cause low productivity, low employee morale, high turnover, increased call ins, sickness and negative results. Aspects that need to be considered when diagnosing job stress include age, sex, race, income, education, marital status and personality.

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.

According to Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary (2013), stress in general is a physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation (Full definition of stress, 1c.). Job stress may involve the type of work your do, your boss, or co-workers or your hours you work. When it comes to job stress, it can take a toll on your productivity, as well as your physical and emotional health.

Stress has now become an important phenomenon in health related problems. Employees suffer a lot of stress in organization related to their job. Employees have task relate stress, environment related stress. Organization satisfies and motivates employees to do their work. But through job satisfaction and motivation employee stress is not reduced. Instead stress is something else. Employee experience a high level of stress. Stress can’t be reduced when employees do not have proper information about doing work in organization.

Stress can be caused by many different things within an organisation but the main causes of stress can be broken down into “six management standards” Anon (2009) how to tackle work related stress http://www.hse.gov.uk/ I used these areas to construct the chart below and discussed stress at a team meeting and asked my team to complete a Circle of influence around areas over which they felt they had no control Appendix 1 we also discussed what we / I could do to manage the six main causes of stress

Stress is a psychological term that occurs when an individual perceives that environmental demands exceed his or her adaptive capacity.

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

The article reviewed is called “Dealing with the Stressed: Workplace Stress Costs the Economy More Than $30 Billion a Year, and Yet Nobody Knows What It Is or How to Deal with It” by Ken Macqueen, with Martin Patriquin and John Intini. It begins with an excellent visual of the ‘cubie world’ many of use deal with on a daily basis. Authors describe a “fabric-covered box,” where “some troll in the IT department monitors your every keystroke,” and where your “boss is going to tug your electronic leash if he sees you leaving this early.” Stress? "Yet Nobody Knows What It Is." You just answered the question.

“Commonly cited causes of work stress include low salaries (46 percent), lack of opportunities for growth or advancement (41 percent), too heavy a workload (41 percent), long hours (37 percent) and unclear job expectations (35 percent),” (APA, March 8, 2012). These job stressed transmit into lives lived outside of work too. When managers are taking all of these stresses home it can be impossible to actually de-stress from work while away. When I surveyed the managers 100% reported that they feel stressed outside of work. 75% rated this question a 5, they are stressed to the highest degree. Although stress outside of work can relate to many non-work problems. The next question asked to survey “I handle stress well.” the ratings were not ones to match with having stress outside of work also.

According to Cavanaugh, Boswell, Roehling, and Boudreau (2000), organizational stress is an emotional feeling that results from external demands placed on an employee in a workplace setting. Therefore, it is critical that aspects in an organizational setting, which result in feelings of stress, are properly addressed (Cropanzano, Howes, Grandey & Toth, 1997). According to Narayanan, Menon, and Spector (1999), the traditional manner in which the construct of organizational stress is assessed, is via indirect reports in the form of surveys and questionnaires. However, traditional methods of assessment in the form of surveys and questionnaires, can often miss valuable information regarding which environmental variables are truly controlling the behavior (Kushwaha, 2014). Therefore, a behavioral analytic solution is needed on order to properly assess the broad construct of workplace stress.

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

Workplace stress is an issue that competent employers cannot afford to ignore, and it is important for them to take positive measures to tackle it. Wright and Bonett (2007, p.142) believe that if an organisation assume that workplace stress is not an issue for them, or that employees who appear unable to cope with the pressures of working life are ‘not good enough’, then the likely consequences for the business could be: poor job performance, high cost in sick pay, negative impacts on customer relationship, the risk of legal claims against the organisation etc..