Identify possible causes of stress in this environment. 2. If you were designing a stress management program for these postal employees, what would you include in your program (e.g., how would you improve this situation)?
Industry/Organization Psychology
CASE STUDY #6: STRESS
Since 1981, nearly 50 people have been killed in thirteen post office massacres. One of the worst incidents in U.S. history occurred in an Oklahoma post office in 1986 when 15 people were killed by a postal employee. Two other episodes both occurred on the same day at two separate post offices. On May 7, 1993, a disgruntled postal worker in California and another in Michigan went on rampages that in each case resulted in the death of a fellow employee.
Why have these slayings occurred in the post office? It could be argued that with an organization as large as the Postal Service (750,000 employees) there are bound to be a few violent employees. The former U.S. Postmaster Anthony Frank recently commented that the problems reflect the type of worker that the postal service has been required to hire - veterans and the mentally disabled. Frank was cited as saying that "When you mandate that...in a tiny, tiny minority of cases you're going to have people slip through who are basically unbalanced people trained to kill....It's a lousy thing to say, but I think it needs to be said".
Contrary to these views, comments of current and former postal workers and managers suggest that the stressful nature of the work environment is driving some workers to the breaking point. An episode of the TV news show 20/20 reported that violent acts by coworkers in the post office were commonplace events. One postal worker said, "Every day I go to work, I wonder if somebody will be there with a gun. That's how bad it is where I work". One retired postmaster described the environment in the post office as having "an aura of fear".
What could possibly be creating such an aversive work environment? The analyses of these events published in newspaper and magazine articles reveal several major sources of job-related stress in the post office. There is pressure from supervisors to improve productivity. Since Congress stopped subsidizing the Postal Service, it has been forced to compete with private postal services, such as FedEx and UPS. To be competitive and profitable, the mail must move quickly and efficiently. According to an official of the American Postal Workers Union, "You have an extremely high-stress, machine-paced work environment, managed by supervisors who are doctrinaire, quasi-military, and breathe down workers' necks".
A second stressor, the monotony of the work, has been created by the rapid automation of postal work. Postal employees talk of "huge mail factories" with high-speed letter-sorting machines. A postal employee who operates one of these machines must sort 3,600 letters per hour at the rate of one per second for a full day’s work. Supervisors keep track of each worker's error rate through computer monitoring while, through one-way windows, postal inspectors watch for mail theft.
The post office is rapidly achieving full automation by introducing a new machine, the optical reader, which can read 35,000 letters per hour. One of these machines will replace 35 workers sorting mail by hand and 17 workers manning the letter-sorting machines. This newest trend in automation is expected to eventually reduce the post office's work force by 100,000. Hence, the third stressor, job insecurity, is indeed very salient to many postal employees.
What is the post office doing to help employees deal with the stress? At the time of the Royal Oak shootings, a 1-800 number was installed for workers to call if they had complaints or problems. Hundreds of stressed workers tried to call this help number. However, only one person had been assigned to answer these phone calls, so most went unanswered.
1. Identify possible causes of stress in this environment.
2. If you were designing a stress management program for these postal employees, what
would you include in your program (e.g., how would you improve this situation)?
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