WORK STRESS

WHAT IS STRESS?

Stress physiological and psychological responses to events in the environment Stress can be positive or negative. Stress can be positive when the situation offers an opportunity for a person to gain something. It acts as a motivator for peak performance. Stress can be negative when a person faces social, physical, organisational and emotional problems.

GENERAL ADAPTATION SYNDROME

In

1974 Dr Hans in stress that

Selye, a research,

pioneer concluded

physiological

response to stressful situation is fairly consistent among people. This respond is called General Adaptation Syndrome.

There are three stages in it:

Stage 1. Alarm Reaction Stage 2: Resistance Stage 3: Exhaustion

EXPERIENCING STRESS
The four major factors defines how an individual experiences the stress.

Perception Of Stress It depends on perception of the situation.

Past Experience Depending upon the familiarity and prior experiences with the stressors , an individual perceive a situation.

Social Support The presence or absence of other people influences how

individual in a workplace experiences stress and respond to stressors.

Individual Difference Individual differences in people or employee experiences

stress and if they do, how they respond to it.

TYPES OF STRESS
The degree of Stress experienced depends on many factors:

First, the demand must be perceived as threatening. Second, the threat must be to something that is important to people. Finally, people experiencing the threatening demand must be uncertain about the outcome.

Based on the stress experienced, it has been classified into four various types:
   

Constructive Stress Destructive Stress Episodic Stress Chronic Stress

CONSTRUCTIVE VERSUS DESTRUCTIVE STRESS

The form of stress which has a negative impact on the state of mind and physical system is called destructive stress.

Stress that

has a positive

impact resulting in a feeling of excitement and enthusiasm

called constructive stress.

EPISODIC VERSUS CHRONIC STRESS

The pattern of high degrees of stress followed by an interval of relief is referred to as episodic stress.

Chronic stress is one in which a person faces stress continuously and he can neither fight or flee.

CAUSES OF STRESS

General causes

Threat Fear Uncertainty Cognitive dissonance

Life causes

Death: of spouse, family, friend Health: injury, illness, pregnancy Crime: Sexual molestation, mugging, burglary, pick-pocketed Self-abuse: drug abuse, alcoholism, self-harm Family change: separation, divorce, new baby, marriage Sexual problems: getting partner, with partner Argument: with spouse, family, friends, co-workers, boss Etc.

CONTD

Stress at work
The demands of the job The control staff have over how they do their work The support they receive from colleagues and superiors Their relationships with colleagues Whether they understand their roles and responsibilities How far the company consults staff over workplace changes.

PERSONALITY AND STRESS

Personality plays a

significant role in how we perceive stress. This is

classified into two

 

Type A personality Type B personality

TYPE A PERSONALITY TRAITS

They

are impatient, competitive, aggressive,

restless and always try to accomplish several things at once.

Though these people reach greater heights very soon, they cant reach the top as they miss out on analyzing complex problems.

Hostility

and

anger

are

the

most

Toxic

contributors to coronary heart diseases in this type of people.

TYPE B PERSONALITY TRAITS

They

are very much relaxed and do not

feel rushed even under pressure and enjoy a variety of non-work-oriented activities.
Most

of the successful businessmen are

the people who belong to the Type B.

HARDINESS Hardiness is the persons ability to cope with stress. People with hardy personalities have an internal locus of control, are strongly committed to the activities in their lives. Their view change as an opportunity for advancement and growth.

OPTIMISM Optimism is the extent to which a person sees a life in positive or negative terms. In general, optimistic people tend to handle stress better. They usually see positive characteristics of the situation. In contrast, less optimistic people may focus more on the negative characteristics of the situation and expect things to get more worse and not better.

LIFE STRESSORS
Stress

in an organization can also be

influenced by events that take place outside the organization.

Life

stressors are categorized into

y y

Life Change Life Trauma

Life Change

Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe first developed the notion of life change as a source of stress.

A life change is any meaningful change in a persons personal or work situation.

They identified that there are a list of events that can have minor or major impact on individuals.

They assigned points to each event and those were known as Life change units (LCUs). According to them a person can handle a certain threshold of LCUs, but beyond that level problems can set in.

In particular, people who encounter more than 150 LCUs in a year will experience a decline in health the following year.

A score between 150 and 300 will result in 50% chance of major illness and the chance of major illness might rise to 70% if the number of LCU exceeds 300.

Life Trauma

Life trauma is similar to life change, however it is has a narrower, more direct and short term focus.

A life trauma is an upheaval in an individuals life that alters his attitude, emotions or

behaviors.

Major life traumas that may cause stress include marital problems, family difficulties and health issues initially unrelated to stress.

ORGANIZATIONAL FACTORS
Stress at the organizational level can emanate from different factors. A few of these are

Task demands: Stress from task demands emerge from the change enforced on the employees with respect to the demands of their job.

Role demands: Job role demands include impossible work loads, idle period of time, job ambiguity and conflicting performance expectations.

Overload: When there is an expectation from the organization to accomplish more than the ability of the person, it results in work overload.

Underload: Underload occurs when people have insufficient work to fill their time or are not allowed to use enough of their skills and abilities.

Role conflict: Role conflict exists when job functions contain duties or responsibilities that conflict with one another.

Physical demands: The physical demands of the workplace can also take a toll on the employees. Poor working conditions like extreme temperatures, loud noises, radiation, air pollutants, etc .

Career development: The issues related to such as job security, promotions transfers, and other developmental processes like under promotion or over promotion can create anxiety and stress among the persons.

Organizational politics: The disregard for each other in the organization results in rude behavior and becomes a cause for stress.

Aggressive behaviour: A very common form of aggressive behavior in organizations can be observed in the form of violence and sexual harassment.

Sexual harassment: Sexual harassment is unwanted contact or communication of a sexual nature.

ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS

Economic uncertainty: downsizing rightsizing, retrenchment, restructuring, and so on are all done in the name at efficiency and cost reduction improve profitability.

Technological changes: advancements in technology in the form of automation, computerization and robotics.

Political uncertainty: political disturbance in the external environment has

tremendous impact on the working of business organizations.

CONSEQUENCES OF STRESS

Unhealthy consequences of stress can result in various changes in the individuals.

Some of these changes remain unnoticed for a long time as most of the individuals assume these symptoms as part of their life style and keep avoiding them.

Since symptoms of stress are varied they are mostly mistaken. Special attention needs to be given to prolonged headaches, elevated blood pressure and depression.

The various consequences of stress are:

Physiological Consequence Psychological Consequence and Behavioral Consequence

PHYSIOLOGICAL CONSEQENCES

The symptoms as part of the physiological consequences include the heightened blood pressure, increased pulse rate, sweating, hot and cold flashes, headaches and gastrointestinal disorders. It has been fond that there has been a very high correlation between job dissatisfaction and heart attack. This type of stress is borne by the organization as well. The cost to employer is seen in 3 ways, namely: y First cost is in terms of health insurance to employees in case of serious illness. y Secondly, majority of accidents cased by employees in the workplace setting cold be because of emotional turmoil. y Lastly, it cold be legal hassles between employer and the employee because of stress related worker compensation claims

PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES

Excessive amount of stress in an organization can case boredom, dissatisfaction, anxiety, tension, irritability and depression.

All of these take away the well-being feeling of the individual and contribute to poor concentration, indecision and decreased attention span at work.

Individuals who are not able to move away from the stressors may resort to various psychological substitutes such as anger, criticism, negativism, denial, apathy, fantasy, hopelessness, withdrawal and forgetfulness.

JOB BURNOUT It refers to the adverse effects of the working conditions in which the ability to confront and manage stress reduces significantly and job satisfaction and stress relief seems impossible. According to Lee and Ashforth(1996), there are 3 components of Job Burnout:
A state of emotional exhaustion y Depersonalization of individuals y Feeling of low personal accomplishment
y

Characteristic fond to be associated with high degree of burnout according to Etzion et al(1998):
Burnout candidates experience a great deal of stress as a relt of job-related stressors. y They tend to be idealistic and self motivated achievers. y They often seek unattainable goals.
y

BEHAVIOURAL CONSEQUENCES
When stress becomes distress job performance gets affected and workplace accidents become very common. High stress levels impair or ability to remember information, make effective decisions and take appropriate actions. Negative stress can even make very polite and sober people to shout at their colleges. Performance decline is a major outcome of negative stress. The relationship of stress and performance can be explained with an example of a student who does not consistently study all through the year, however before the commencement of exam, the tension starts building p forcing the student to study.

(Contd..) This stress makes him perform well, however if this stress persists for a long time, the ability to perform will decrease because of depleted energy, overload and anxiety. Yerkes-Dodson Law(1908) explains the above process by stating that stress leads to improved performance to an optimum point after which the stress has a detrimental impact on performance. Mcgrath(1976) suggests that performance decline beyond the midpoint in the Yerkes-Dodson curve because of the increased difficulty level of the task performed.

MANAGING STRESS
Stress is an aspect of life that cannot be avoided and since it cannot be eliminated completely, one needs to understand the techniques and strategies to control its effects. Management of stress contains three levels

Awareness: be aware of the symptoms of stress y Identify the source of stress y Coping with stress: Develop strategy to cope with stress, either by directly removing or by helping individuals mange their emotional feelings in constructive ways.
y

INDIVIDUAL COPING STRATEGIES

The stress faced b individuals can be because of the circumstances they are in or their own temperament. If stress is de to job related factors or environmental factors, the following coping strategies can be followed

y y y y y y y y y

CHANGE THE JOB TIME MANAGEMENT SEEK HELP EXCERCISE RELAXATION ROLE MANAGEMENT HANDLING STRESS BY GETTING CLOSE TO PEOPLE GETTING CLOSE TO YOURSELF AND TO OTHERS PLACING THE STRESSFUL SITATION I N PERSPECTIVE

ORGANISATIONAL COPING STRATEGIES

Organizations are increasingly realizing the importance of stress management for their employees. Organizations have started realizing de top the reasons that, they are partly responsible for the stress of the employees and also the reason that people with lower level of stress functions more effectively. The two organizational strategies for helping the employees manage stress are

Institutional Progammes- are undertaken through established organizational mechanisms such as properly designed jobs and work schedules. y Collateral Programmes- is an organizational programme specifically created to manage stress. They have adopted stress management programmes, health programmes and other kinds of programmes for this purpose.
y

THANK YOU
Done By, Bikramjeet Bhattacharjee K. Rohit Vinod Khanna.R Yovan Anand Raja R. Gokulnath