Source of stress in an organization.

In what ways do they affect the individual employee?  What can manager and supervisors do to make the workplace less stressful?

What Is Stress?

Stress is the combination of psychological, physiological, and behavioral reactions that people have in response to events that threaten or challenge them. Stress can be good or bad. Sometimes, stress is helpful, providing people with the extra energy or alertness they need. Stress could give a runner the edge he or she needs to persevere in a marathon. This good kind of stress is called eustress. Unfortunately, stress is often not helpful and can even be harmful when not managed effectively. Stress could make a salesperson buckle under the pressure while trying to make a sales pitch at an important business meeting. Moreover, stress can increase the risk of developing health problems, such as cardiovascular disease and anxiety disorders. This bad kind of stress is called distress, the kind of stress that people usually are referring to when they use the word stress.

A convenient way to think about stress is in terms of stressors and stress responses. Stressors are events that threaten or challenge people. They are the sources of stress, such as having to make decisions, getting married, and natural disasters. Stress responses are psychological, physiological, and behavioral reactions to stressors. Anxiety, depression, concentration difficulties, and muscle tension are all examples of stress responses.

The connection between stressors and stress responses, however, is not as straight forward as it may seem. Mediating processes, for instance, stand in between stressors and stress responses. Whether stressors lead to stress responses depends on mediating processes like how people appraise potential stressors and how well people are able to cope with the negative impact of stressors. Furthermore, a number of moderating factors, such as personality traits and health habits, influence the links between stressors and stress responses. These mediating processes and moderating factors help determine whether people experience stress-related problems like burnout, mental disorders, and physical illness and are the focus of many stress management techniques that emphasize cognitive-behavioral approaches

Work

The specific types of stressors that employees are exposed to in the workplace fall into four categories of demands: task demands, interpersonal demands, role demands, and physical demands.   Among these categories, work overload, boundary extension, role ambiguity, role conflict, and career development are particularly relevant stressors.  Additionally, an employee's home-life can interfere with his or her job.

Work overload is a good example of a daily hassle that is particularly relevant in the workplace. When employees feel overwhelmed from trying to work on more tasks than they can handle or from trying to work on tasks that are too difficult for them, they are suffering from work overload. Work overload is common after layoffs among the remaining workers who are assigned more tasks. It is also common among newly appointed managers who feel unprepared for their new, unfamiliar roles.

Boundary extension is another good example of a daily hassle that is particularly relevant in the workplace. Some jobs, such as public relations and sales, require employees to work with people in other occupational settings.  Such boundary extension can be difficult for employees, especially if it involves any of the following difficulties:

• Dealing with very diverse organizations
• Maintaining frequent and long-term relations with people in other organizations
• Interacting in complex and dynamic environments
• Not having screening mechanisms like secretaries or voice mail
• Participating in non routine activities
• Trying to meet demanding performance standards

 

Role Ambiguity and Role Conflict

Two more good examples of daily hassles that are particularly relevant in the workplace are role ambiguity and role conflict. When employees are unsure about what is expected of them, how to perform their job, or what the consequences of their job performance are, they are experiencing role ambiguity. When employees finds it difficult to perform their job effectively because of the multiple explanations about their job performance, they are experiencing role conflict. Role conflict takes place in five basic ways:

• Receiving conflicting or incompatible expectations from another employee
• Receiving different expectations from two or more other employees
• Receiving expectations that lead to incompatible roles
• Receiving too many expectations, expectations leading to too many roles, or expectations leading to roles that are too complicated
• Having values and beliefs that conflict with expectations

Career development is a good example of a major life event specifically related to work. Changing jobs or occupations can be stressful.  People may feel frustrated and afraid, for example, after being laid off or fired from their job.  Similarly, employees may feel belittled or embarrassed after being demoted.  These feeling may be even more damaging for employees if such changes in occupational status interfere with their family life.

Sources of Stress

Stressors, the sources of stress, include three types of events, referred to as daily hassles, major life events, and catastrophes. Additionally, specific types of stressors occur within certain domains in life, such as family, work, and environment.

Stressors

Daily hassles are the little hassles or annoyances that occur practically everyday, such as having to make decisions, arguing with friends and family, trying to meet deadlines at work, stepping on a piece of bubble gum that someone carelessly spitted out, and caught in traffic jams. Although a wide variety of daily hassles can be sources of stress, they often involve conflicts between behaviors people may or may not want to do. In particular, daily hassles that involve interpersonal conflicts seem to have an impact that lasts longer than does that of most other daily hassles. Additionally, according to a survey of middle-aged adults, the top ten daily hassles are as follows:

1.      Concerns about weight

2.      Health of a family member

3.      Rising prices of common goods

4.      Home maintenance

5.      Too many things to do

6.      Misplacing or losing things

7.      Yard work or outside home maintenance

8.      Property, investments, or taxes

9.      Crime

10.  Physical appearance

Managers should play a role to ensure that workplace is less stressful by discussing work matters with their subordinates.  While discussing the subordinates will be able to share their work problem, in a way when they are able to speak out the problem is already one way to release the stress.  Whenever a difficult task is being assigned to an employee, the manager should at certain period discuss the progress of the task with the employee giving him the opportunity to speak out and managers to offer assistance along the line. 

Another way is the implementation of the organizational development program, is a special approach towards organizational change in which the employees themselves are given the opportunity to formulate the change that is required within the stipulated rules.   Team building is another approach or process to improve team effectiveness.  During the team building exercise the employees are given equal opportunity to speak out what is in their mind and all ideas are being recorded by the facilitator for future follow-up.

During such process, confrontation meetings will be held to bring about solutions between inter groups or inter departments which will reduce stress at workplace.