Managing Stress At Work

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

People from all walks of life suffer from stress in one-way or the other. Employees stress is the growing concern for organizations in today’s environment. When stress becomes excessive it often affects work performance, which has significantly lead to burnout and turnover. (Losyk, 2006) It is necessary to recognize and address the causes of stress and effectively manage prolonged stress. Since it should be an ethical and legal decision for an organization in managing stress. Alqahtani, (2012) argues that stress is expression of individual mental and physical reaction to stressor. The objective is to analyze various pressures that trigger job stress, identifying the causes and outcome, stress is not always negative it may also bring the best out of an individual at times, excessive stress may result into burnout. Allowed being included in the next board meeting to present issues relating to work place stress and how HR can play an active role in managing it.

2. ANALYZING STRESS AT WORK

Recent studies have found out that in todays fast moving environment many organizations have adopted flexible working environment to help in managing employees, work life balance which at times leads to employee commitment towards work that has a positive effect i.e. job satisfaction but also leads to work life conflict. (Kelliher and Anderson, 2009)

2.1 NEGATIVE STRESS

Organization stress has a widespread phenomenon. Where stress at work may often lead to rigorous exertion of physical and mental input due to prolonged stressors acting as triggers from the physical environment (Kelliher and Anderson, 2009) i.e. tangible surroundings influencing the behavior of an individual affecting their control leading to lowering job performance. (Alqahtan, 2012)

Organization culture is one such aspect, which reflects the attitude of the staff, their shared beliefs about the organization and their value system. Organization culture is one of the causes of stress that is associated with poor communication, poor leadership, lack of clarity about the objective and the structure of the organization. (Leka, Griffiths and Cox, 2004)

Alqahtan, (2012) states that workload and working condition has adverse effects in the organization that have an impact on job satisfaction since lack of satisfaction is source of stress. For e.g. Based on a survey carried out among university staff in Malaysia where six different job stressors such as role conflicts, relationship with others, workload pressure, home-work interface (work-life conflict), role ambiguity and performance pressure negatively impacted job satisfaction (Ahsan, Abdullah, Fie and Alam, 2009) interpersonal relationship with fellow employee in organization is essential to gain social support but lack of interpersonal relationship affects job satisfaction producing stress contributing for the outcome of attitudinal stress, where employees experience psychological disturbance due to various constrains that are encountered during the work and whereas Behavioral stress is when an employee stress often leads to turnover and researchers have found that job satisfaction and organization commitment are directly related to factors contributing to voluntary termination of employees at work place. Both the stress outcomes contribute in lowering the performance of an employee at work reflecting the negative effect of stress. (Parasuraman and Alutto, 1984).

2.2 POSITIVE EFFECTS OF STRESS

Stress can also be viewed as a tool by managers to motivate employees and create a passion to work, various stressors such as organizational characteristics, role in organization, relationship with employees, commitment and responsibilities which all act as stringent force for job stress resulting in positive effect such as organizational commitment, job satisfaction, job performance, which provides opportunities and challenges to employees at the work place. (Parker and Decotiis, 1983)

2.3 BURNOUT AND ITS EFFECTS

Prolonged exposure to job stress often leads to burnout, Maslach and Jackson, (1981), p.99 defined burnout as "a syndrome of emotional exhaustion and cynicism that occurs frequently among individuals who do ‘people work’ of some kind" which can be linked General Adaptation syndrome model of stress consisting of three stages: Alarm reaction, stage of resistance and exhaustion. The alarm Reaction stage is the reaction of an individual body when it confront with the stressors, where an individual response on an equal fight or flight. When the stress response system activates in an individual, it allows the body to adapt to cope with the stressors know as stage of resistance but if the stress situation is prolonged it leads to exhaustion where ability of individual starts deteriorating and breakdown occurs (Alqahtani, 2012) which reflects Burnout at an individual level in organization due to negative work experience. Burnout is often associated with job performance where productivity and work effectiveness declines with decrease job satisfaction and organization commitment among those employees who are highly committed to the job; people who are suffering from burnout have adverse impact on their colleagues causing conflict and effecting job task, younger employees are exposed to emotional trauma results in experiencing high rate of burnout leading to resignation from the job because of the available job alternatives that often results into long-term absenteeism and quitting the job in search of employment. (Boyas, Wind and Kang, 2011)

3. ROLE OF HR

As outlined in the previous sentences that the level of stress at work place should be controlled since, too much of stress leads to burnout, HR can play a very vital role in the organization to curb the level of stress by reducing and identifying the root cause of the stressor by implementing stress audit program by measuring the stress in-terms of cost which will help to quantify the decrease in level of job performance.

(Losyk, 2006)

HR can arrange for Management training and organization development program so that employees have a clear picture of the organization structure, purpose of the organization, better work system, management system and various practices done at the organization to have an effective leadership and management practice.

(Leka, Griffiths and Cox, 2004)

There should be increase in the level of communication within the organization so that lower level of the people is free to communicate their seniors; rewriting the job description because it will enable role clarity so that there will be no role conflict and ambiguity in the organization; to have better relation and avoid interpersonal conflict HR can have stress-reduction program so that they tend to live a healthier lifestyle and work in a group helping each other reflecting the team building sprit among the group; To reduce home-work interface HR arrange for Healthy marriage relationship seminars to discuss family issues that allows better functioning of family, financial training by arranging a financial planner who would give free seminars to employees with the hope of planning a better future through their retirement plans, pension and investment and by also assisting the employee to pay back their credit card and loan debt. Initiate family support since research have found out organization that are highly family supportive have less stresses employees, for instance provide flexibility for married women so that mothers have adequate time for their children. Organization should encourage breaks to divert their attention from work so that employee get some time to breath fresh air to distress and relax from work load pressure; to tackle with behavioral stress which is often associated with psychological disturbance organization must have violence and harassment policy since violence is a kind of added stress which cannot be tolerated and organization must implement a zero tolerance policy. All theses factors will help an organization to retain it productive employees and help in making the healthy and happy employee organization sending the message to its employees that how much they value their people. (Losyk, 2006)

4. CONCLUSION

The above study emphasizes how organization efforts on flexible working condition often lead to work intensification, which has a positive and negative implication of stress but often due to prolonged stress. (Kelliher and Anderson, 2009). Work stress causes burnout that results as exhaustion or a breakdown hampering job satisfaction and commitment of an employee all contributing to lowering the job performance of an individual related to work stress. (Parasuraman and Alutto, 1984). In order to manage the prolonged stress in organization within employee HR plays a significant role in managing stress by implementing various stress management techniques, which will have optimistic outcome for both employees and organization. (Losyk, 2006)

Referencing

Alqahtan, A. (2012) Organizational Stress: Causes and Management. International Journal of Innovations in Business, 1 (1), p.2-7. Available at: http://www.cibmp.org [Accessed: 18th February 2013].

Ahsan, N. Abdullah, Z. Fie, D. Alam, S. (2009) A Study of Job Stress on Job Satisfaction among University Staff in Malaysia: Empirical Study. European Journal of Social Sciences , 8 (1), p.123-124. Available at: http://ejournal.narotama.ac.id/files/A%20Study%20of%20Job%20Stress%20on%20Job%20Satisfaction%20among%20University.pdf [Accessed: 18th February 2013].

Boyas, J. Wind, L. Kang, S. (2011) Exploring the relationship between employment-based social capital, job stress, burnout, and intent to leave among child protection workers: An age-based path analysis model. Children and Youth Services Review, 34 (1), p.50, 51,52, 54. Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com [Accessed: 18th February 2013].

Kelliher, C. and Anderson, D. (2009) Doing more with less? Flexible working practices and the intensification of work . Human Relations, 63 (1), p.85. Available at: http://hum.sagepub.com/content/63/1/83.abstract [Accessed: 18th February 2013].

Parasuraman, S. and Alutto, J. (1984) Sources and Outcomes of Stress in Organizational Settings: Toward the Development of a Structural Model. The Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 27 (2), p.332, 333, 340. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/255928?uid=3738256&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102067928151 [Accessed: 3rd February 2013].

Parker, D. and Decotiis, T. (1983) Organizational Determinants of Job Stress. organizational behavior and human performance , 32 (2), p.165-166. Available at: http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu [Accessed: 18th February 2013]

Losyk, B. (2006) Getting a Grip on Stress: What HR Managers Must Do to Prevent Burnout and Turnover. Employment Relations Today, 33 (1), p.9-15. Available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ert.20093/abstract [Accessed: 18th February 2013].

Maslach , C. and Jackson, S. (1981) The measurement of experienced burnout . Journal of occupational behavior , 2 p.99. Available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ [Accessed: 18th February 2013].

Leka, S. Griffiths, A. Cox, T. (2004) WORK ORGANIZATION & STRESS. [PDF] Nottingham: world health organization. p.7-23. Available through: Google scholars http://www.who.int/occupational_health/publications/en/oehstress.pdf [Accessed: 20th April 2013].