Work-Related Stress and Management of Stress
Stress is a particular
relationship between the person and the environment, which is appraised by the
person as positively challenging or negatively taxing or exceeding his or her
resources and endangering his or her well-being. Stress is described as a
dynamic condition in which an individual is confronted with an opportunity,
constraint or demand related to what he or she desires, for which the outcome
is perceived simultaneously to be both uncertain and important. For example,
employees might be stressed when performance review is taking place, during
which a person is unsure of the nature of the ratings he or she would receive.
At the same time, the person is fully aware that while a good review might lead
to tremendous improvement in pay and positions, a mediocre or poor rating could
lead to being removed from the job. Though the stress might be work-related,
they might have been caused by personal factors, or job-related factors.
Different types of Stress affects
people’s work lives. Not all stress would be termed as bad and therefore, the
goal of stress management is not to entirely eliminate stress from people’s
lives. Stress can have positive effects. Positive stress or Eustress can help
people to respond quickly and with adequate force in times of emergencies such
as avoiding an automobile collision, moving away from flying objects, fighting
a fire etc. Positive stress is useful in speeding up the pace of work to meet
deadlines. It helps one to push one’s limits to improve performance rapidly and
to realize one’s fullest potential over a period of years in career.
Neu-stress is a type of stress
that is neither helpful nor harmful to the persons who are stressed. Stress
could be sometimes anticipatory in which arousal is stimulated by an expected
stressor. This is often caused by inadequate preparation or pessimism. Current
stress is arousal that takes place during an experience. Stress could also
be residual at times, in which the arousal continues to remain even long after
the stressful event has passed. Inability to overcome the trauma of an event is
the cause of residual stress. Lack of support during and first aid immediately
after stressors could be the causes of residual effects on people.
Symptoms of negative stress
Stress
might manifest itself in a number of ways. The symptoms may be physiological,
psychological and behavioral. For example, stress could create changes in
metabolism, increase heart and breathing rates, increase blood pressure, bring
on headache, tighten shoulders, stuttering in speech, creation of trembling all
over the body, backache and arthritis, induce heart attacks or reduce appetite
in a person. Alternatively, an employee who is experiencing a high level of
stress may have psychological impact and as a result might become depressed,
compulsive in action, irritable, confused, bored, accident-prone, startled,
argumentative, distracted, procrastination-prone or indecisive. Behaviorally
related symptoms of stress include changes in productivity, absence, turnover,
increased smoking or consumption of alcohol, fidgeting and sleep disorders.
Stress contributes to illness at least in four ways:
1. By imposing long-term wear and tear on the body and mind, thereby reducing resistance to disease.
2. By directly precipitating an illness such as tension headache or heart attack.
3. By aggravating an existing illness such as increased arthritic pain or flare up of psoriasis.
4. By precipitating unhealthy or illness-generating coping habits like smoking, alcohol abuse, over-eating and sleep deprivation.
Concern over stress in Organizations
Stress has been taking the toll
of a sizeable segment of valuable human resources in organizations every year.
Health authorities estimate that stress plays a role in at least 50% of all
forms of physical illness. A Gallup poll as early as 1994 reported that 71% of
the respondents viewed their jobs as the most frequent cause of negative
stress. Effects of stress include some of the most serious and life-threatening
ailments known in the field of medicine. Therefore, organizations have begun
concerted efforts to enable employees to effectively handle the inevitable
stress.
Stress management programs are
systematic efforts by organizations designed to help employees reduce harmful
stress. These programs include extensive in-house as well as external training
concentrating on techniques of busting stress like transcendental and other
forms of meditation, deep breathing, self-relaxation, physical exercises,
developing positive attitudes, anger management, time management and lifestyle
modification. Some organizations rely on help from their comprehensive Employee
Assistance Programs (EAP) and counselors in meeting various psychosocial
problems of their employees like drug and alcohol abuse, sickness and
disability, indebtedness and family breakdowns.
People
vary in their relation with stress. One style of relating is being
stress-seekers who thrive on challenge, risk and sensation. Stress-avoiders
thrive on security, familiarity and avoiding challenges and risk. Distress
seekers thrive on misery, illness, crises and martyrdom. Distress avoidance is
a style of thriving on health, contentment, involvement. Distress-provokers
thrive intentionally or unintentionally on creating misery, disharmony, illness
or upsetting others. Distress reducers tend to thrive on doing everything
possible to promote growth in those whose lives they touch.
According to Schafer (2004), good managers of
individual stress tend to practice the following habits in their lives:
1. Anticipate, monitor and regulate stressors as far as possible.
2. Become aware of and control their interpretation of stressors
3. Believe that they can influence events and their own reactions to those events.
4. Practice daily deep relaxation to balance positive and negative stress
5. Use mental and physical on-the-spot tension reducers to control arousal
6. Maintain positive health buffers such as daily exercise, good eating habits, adequate sleep and healthy pleasures to build stress resistance and prevent stress build-up
7. Recognize early warning signs of mental and physical distress.
8. Develop means of mobilizing and controlling stress in performance situations.
Tranquility and serenity are rare
in human existence. However, some jobs like that of office managers, sales
persons, drivers and security officers do expose the people who hold them to
high levels of stress than others like the jobs of college professor, trainers
or copy writers . Similarly some industries like telecommunications, financial
services and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) are rated to be the most
stressful industries. Some individuals with aggressive, ambitious personality
types are more prone to stress than other types who are patient, tolerant and
calm.
In terms of organizational
factors, any attempt to lower stress would have to begin with employee
selection, during which care has to be taken to ensure that an employee’s
abilities match the requirements of the job. Subsequently, improved
organizational communications will keep ambiguity-induced stress to a minimum.
Similarly a performance planning program such as Management by objectives will clarify
job responsibilities, provide clear performance objectives and thus reduce
anxiety. If stress can be traced directly to boredom or work overload, jobs
should be redesigned to increase challenge or reduce the work load. Redesigns
that increase opportunities for employees to participate in decisions and to
gain social support have also been found to lessen the burdens arising out of
stress.
Stages of Reaction to Stressors
Stages of coping refer to primary
appraisal and secondary appraisal. Primary appraisal involves the
determination, based on one’s knowledge of the stressor, whether we are
potentially threatened or are in jeopardy. Assessment of resources for dealing
with the stressors is called secondary appraisal. Hans Selye is considered the
father of Stress Management Studies. He specified the General Adaptation
Syndrome (GAS) to depict the stages undergone by people
facing stressful situations. GAS comprises of three phases, the first being
alarm, a state of heightened alertness and bodily arousal, followed by
Resistance, a stage of putting up with and opposing the stress-causing force.
The third phase would be one of exhaustion, when the person begins to give up
the struggle against the stressor and submits meekly to the reality.
Major sources of organizational
stress include confusing directions and conflicting demands from two or more
people. The other sources are too much work or too little work, career
insecurity and lack of opportunities, irritating habits of co-workers, conflict
of work with responsibilities of personal lives, impersonal and dehumanizing
effect of use of high technology, extreme conflicts and so on. Stress in modern
organizations occurs due to the demands of meeting targets and deadlines at
work. For many employees, change creates stress. A dynamic environment
characterized by takeovers, mergers, restructurings, forced retirements and
mass retrenchments has created a large number of employees who are stressed
out.
For example, General Electric,
under the leadership and guidance of its CEO Jack Welch introduced the formula
called 20:70:10 wherein the whole workforce was divided into three categories
namely the top 20% of best performers, the middle 70% of average performers and
the bottom 10% of poor performers. While the first two groups were rewarded in
two different ways, people in the third group were earmarked for summary
dismissal. As a consequence, employees wanting to save their jobs at each year
were supposed to have performed not only better than last years and better than
the targets, but also better than at least 10% of the people. Since the process
of eliminating continued every year, the performance standards kept rising each
year for all the employees. This resulted in a highly stressful working situation
for employees of the organization, quite a few among them succumbed to stress
related disorders.
Quelling negative stress and
maintaining functional stress, involves eliminating or modifying the sources of
stress, developing optimism and hope, taking good care of one’s body, using
relaxation techniques, talking out of one’s problems with others, rewarding
oneself for a job done well and leading a complete, satisfying personal and
social life. Job stress stems from any situation in the workplace which a person perceives to be fearful. Office politics is
a fear-producing factor to many employees. To defend oneself against highly
stress producing, devious and unethical office politics, an employee must take
steps like documenting one’s side of the story, confronting the devious persons
and maintaining a consistent record of high levels of integrity and good
performance outcomes. Employers must provide support and nurturing and also
strive to create an environment that is planned, efficient and orderly. Communication
to employees should be timely, accurate and appropriate.
Stress
could be sometimes anticipatory in which an arousal is stimulated by an
expected stressor. This is often caused by inadequate preparation or
pessimistic feelings by the victims of stress. Current stress is arousal that
takes place during an experience. Stress could also be residual at times, in
which the arousal continues to remain even long after the stressful event has
passed. Inability to overcome the trauma of an event is the cause of residual
stress. Lack of support during and first aid immediately after stressors could
be the causes of residual effects on people. Stress could be reactive to
specific situations or endogenous or in born in certain people who are more
vulnerable to stressors.
Handling persons with high levels of stress is a challenge for every Human Resource professional. Over the years, management practitioners have evolved the following formula for handling persons with stress:
1. Being attentive and use effective listening as a step towards building rapport with the person who expresses symptoms of stress.
2. Allow the affected person time to ventilate his or her feelings freely.
3. Acknowledge even small degree of truth in what the person is saying.
4. Demonstrate your understanding and empathy towards the victims.
5. Encourage their participation in caring, supportive relationships
6. Help the people to interpret difficulty and change as a positive challenge or opportunity rather than a life-threatening tragedy.
7. Build confidence in their abilities to master difficulties and challenges that might come along.
8. Strengthen their beliefs in universal and everlasting values and ideals.
9. Re-create their perception of being in control by making them realize their ability to influence the events around them and / or their reactions to them.
10. Enable them to respond constructively and objectively to their life’s events.
11. Help persons with stress to generate innovative and situation-specific solutions to difficulties and dilemmas.
Rational thinking, realistic
self-talk, re-examining assumptions and beliefs being held for a long time,
praying, solitude and contemplation, being in nature, reading and writing,
hypnosis, bio feedback and auto suggestion, music, yoga, hydrotherapy, massage
and humor are some of the need-based stress management strategies advocated by
organizers of workplace wellness programs all over the world, to recuperate
employees from their anxiety producing work situations. Engaging in voluntary,
intrinsically satisfying and socially sanctioned leisure experiences and
recreational activities during one’s free time is found to be a sound antidote
to stress, as it rejuvenates a person and compensates for the energies lost at
work. Whatever be the nature of the programs conducted to help people against
stress, they are aimed at goals like low illness risk, maximizing energy for
daily living, enjoyment of daily lives, continuous development of one’s
abilities and commitment and responsibility towards the common good.