What is Stress?
Stress is a dynamic condition in which an individual is confronted with an opportunity, or demand related to what he or she desires and for which the outcome
is perceived to be both uncertain and important.
Stress is not necessarily bad in and of itself. While stress is typically discussed in a negative context, it also has a positive value. It is an opportunity when it offers potential gain. More typically, stress is associated with constraints and demand. The former prevent you from doing what you desire. The later refers to the loss of something desired.
Two conditions are necessary for potential stress to become actual stress. There must be uncertainty over the outcome and the outcome must be important.
Potential Sources of Stress
We classify three sets of factors --environmental, organizational, and individual-- that act as potential sources of stress. Whether they become actual stress depends on individual differences such as job experience and personality. When stress is experiences by an individual, its symptoms can surface as physiological, psychological, and organizational, and individual outcomes.
Environmental factors Just as environmental uncertainty influences the design of an organization's structure, it also influences stress levels among employees in that organization. Changes in the business cycle create economic uncertainties. When the economy is contracting, for example, people become increasingly anxious about their security. Potential uncertainties political uncertainties are the second type of environmental factors. For instance, threats by Quebec to separate from Canada and become a distinct, French speaking country increase stress among many Canadians, especially between Qebecers with little or no skills in the French language. Technological uncertainty is the third type of environmental factors that can cause stress. Because new innovations can make an employee's skills and experience absolute in a very short period of time, computers, robotics, automation, and similar type of technological innovation are threat to many people and cause them stress.
Organizational factors There is no shortage of factors within the organization that can cause stress. Pressures to avoid errors or complete tasks in a limited time period, work overload, a demanding and insensitive boss, and unpleasant co-workers are few examples. We've categorized these factors, around task, role, and international demands: organizational structure, organizational leadership, and the organization's life stage.
Task demands are factors related to a person's job. They include the design of the individuals' job (autonomy, task variety, degree of automation.), working conditions, and the physical work layout.
Role demands relate to pressure placed on a person as a function of the particular role he or she plays in the organization. Role conflicts create expectations that may be hard to reconcile or satisfy. Role overload is experienced when the employee is expected to do more than time permits. Role ambiguity is created when role expectations are not clearly understood and the employee is not sure what he or she is to do.
Interpersonal demands are pressures created by other employees. Lack of social support from colleagues and poor interpersonal relationship can cause considerable stress, especially among employees when a high social need.
Organizational structure defines the level of differentiation in the organization, the degree of roles and regulations, and where decisions are made. Excessive roles and lack of participation in decisions that affect an employee are examples of structural variables that might be potential sources of stress.
Organizational leadership represents the managerial style of the organization's senior executives. Some chief executive officers creat a culture characterized by tension, fear, and anxiety. They establish unrealistic pressures to perform in the short run, impose excessively tight controls, and routinely fire employees who don't "measure up"
Individual factors Primarily these factors are family issues, personal economic problems, and inherent personality characteristics.
National surveys consistently show that people hold family and personal relationships dear. Marital difficulties, the breaking off of a relationship, and discipline troubles with children are examples of relationship problems that create stress for the employees that aren't left at the front door when they arrive at work.
Economic problems create by individuals overextending their financial resources is another set of personal troubles that can create stress for employees and distract their attention from their work.
Studies shows that stress symptoms reported prior to beginning a job accounted for most of the variance in stress symptoms in stress symptoms reported nine month later. This led the researchers to conclude that some people may have an inherent tendency to accentuate negative aspects of the world in general. if true, then a significant individual factor influencing stress is a person's basic dispositional nature. That is stress symptoms expressed on the job may actually originate in the person's personality.
Stressors are additive A fact that tends to be overlooked when stressors are reviewed individually is that stress is an additive phenomenon. Stress builds up. Each new and persistent stressor adds to an individual stress level. So a single stressor may be relatively unimportant in and of itself, but if it is added to an already high level of stress, it can be "the straw that breaks the camel's back." if we want to appraise the total amount of stress an individual is under, we have to sum up his or her opportunity stresses, constraint stresses, and demand stresses.
Consequences of stress
Stress shows itself in a number of ways. For instance, an individual who is experiencing a high level of stress may develop high blood pressure, ulcers, irritability, difficulty in making routine decisions, loss of appetite, accident proneness, and the like. These can be subsumed under three general categories: physiological, psychological, and behavioral symptoms.
Physiological Symptoms Most of the early concern with stress was directed at physiological symptoms. This was predominantly due to the fact that the topic was researched by specialists in the health and medical sciences. This research led to the conclusion that stress could create changes in metabolism, increase heart and breathing rates, increase blood pressure, bring on headaches, and include heart attacks.
Psychological Symptoms Stress can cause dissatisfaction. Job-related stress can cause job-related dissatisfaction. Job dissatisfaction, in fact, is “the simplest and most obvious psychological affect” of stress. But stress shows itself in other psychological states---for instance, tension, anxiety, irritability, boredom, and procrastination.
Behavioral Symptoms Behaviorally related stress symptoms include changes in productivity, absences, and turn over, as well as changes in eating habits, increased smoking or consumption of alcohol, rapid speech, fidgeting, and sleep disorders.
Managing Stress
From the organization’s standpoint, management may not be concerned when employees experience low to moderate levels of stress. The reason is that such levels of stress may be functional and lead to higher employee performance. But high levels of stress, or even low levels sustained over long periods of time, can lead to reduce employee performance and, thus, require action by management.
While a limited amount of stress may benefit an employee’s performance, don’t expect to see employees to see it that way. From the individual’s standpoint, even low levels of stress are likely to be perceived as undesirable. It’s not unlikely, therefore for employees and management to have different notions of what constitutes an acceptable level of stress on the job.
Individual Approaches An employee can take responsibility for reducing his or her stress level. Individual strategies that have proven effective include implementing time management techniques, increasing physical exercise, relaxation training, and expanding the social support network.
Many people manage their time poorly. The things they have to accomplish in any given day or week are not necessarily beyond completion if they manage their time properly. The well-organized employee like the well organized student can often accomplish twice as much as the person who is poorly organized. So an understanding and utilization of basic time management principles can help individuals better cope with tensions created by job demands.
A few of the more well known time management principles are (1) making daily list of activities; (2) prioritizing activities by importance and urgency; (3) scheduling activities according to the priorities set; and (4) knowing your daily cycle and handling the most demanding parts of your job during the high part of your cycle when you are most alert and productive.
Noncompetitive physical exercise such as aerobics, walking, jogging, swimming, and riding a bicycle have long been recommended by physicians as a way to deal with the excessive stress levels. These forms of physical exercise increase heart capacity, lower at-rest heart rate, provide a mental diversion from work pressures, and offer a means to "let off steam"
Individuals can teach themselves to reduce tension through relaxation techniques such as mediation, hypnosis, and biofeedback. The objective is to reach a state of deep relaxation, where one feels physically relaxed, somewhat detached from the immediate environment, and detached from body sensations. Importantly, significant
Changes in heart rate, blood pressure, and other physiological factors result from achieving the deep relaxation condition.
As we noted in this chapter, having friends, family, or work colleagues to talk provides an outlet when a stress level becomes excessive. Expanding your social support network, therefore can be a means for tension reduction. It provides you to hear your problems and to offer a more objective perspective on the situation. Research also demonstrates that social support moderates the stress-burnout relationship. That is, high support reduces the likehood that heavy work stress will result in job burnout.
Organizational Approaches several of the factors that cause stress—particularly task and role demands, and organizational structure—are controlled by management. As such, they can be modified and changed. Strategies that management might want to consider include improved personnel selection and job placement use of realistic goal setting, redesigning of jobs, increased employee involvement, improved organizational communication, and establishment of corporate wellness programs.
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