35 Stress among Employees

Dr. Radha Kanwal Sharma

 

1.      Learning Outcome

 

2.      Introduction

 

3.      Symptoms of stress

 

4.      Stress experience

 

5.      Work Stress Model

 

6.      Outcomes of stress

 

7.      Management of stress

 

8.      Summary

 

 

1. Learning Outcomes:

 

After completing this module the students will be able to:

 

·  Understand the concept of stress.

 

·  Causes of stress among employees.

 

·  Harmful outcomes of stress.

 

·  How to cope with stress.

 

2.  Introduction

 

Stress has been defined in different ways over the years. Originally, it was thought that stress is the pressure from the environment, and then it was assumed to be the strain within a person. But researchers today explain that actually it is the outcome of interaction between the situation and the individual. It is the psychological and physical state that is a consequence when the resources of the individual are not sufficient to cope with the demands and pressures of the situation. Stress is fairly common at the work place. People have to work effectively against time and it is not always possible to create an organizational climate conducive to work. Various factors affect individual behaviour. Minimal level of stress is required for organizations to operate effectively. Excessive stress is harmful for the individual as it causes mental and physical disequilibrium and subsequently leads to physical and mental disturbance. People suffer from high blood pressure, heart attack when stress is beyond control of the human beings. It is therefore necessary to identify causes of stress and discuss its remedies. Selye defines stress as “the nonspecific response of the body to any demand”. Stress is a dynamic condition in which a person is faced with lot of constraints while functioning in the organization. Stress causes discomfort, which leads to disequilibrium in the individual‟s mind set. Stress is not always negative in nature. Stress is also a source of inspiration. When there is a stress for any work it leads to higher performance. When stress is gravest, it reduces employee productivity. Stress is always negatively related to performance.

 

Ivancevich and Matterson have defined stress as “adoptive response, mediated by individual characteristics and/ or psychological processes, which are a consequence of any external action, situation or event that places special physical and/or psychological demands upon a person”. It can be deciphered from the definition that

 

·  Stress is caused due to external ( or internal) factors, situations or events.

 

· These have adverse impact on the individual characteristics and psychological processes.

 

· These factors together put an additional burden on individual, resulting into stress. Factors that cause stress are known as stressors. These can be external as well as internal.

 

External factors: These can be social setting, work ethics in the organization, leadership styles, availability of resources, workload, level of technology and the work environment etc.

 

Internal factors: These are psychological in nature and include emotions, ego state, attitude, perception, motivational factors, need and demographics.

 

If employees feel that external factors are of not much consequence and have no compelling effect the stress is not formed within the minds of individuals. High desires, uncertainty, result of promotion examination, unrealized ambition may cause stress to the individual. Stress should not be confused with anxiety or nervous tension and damaging. These occur as regular features in many cases and have no long – lasting impact on the working capacities of the employees. Anxiety may remain purely psychological and may not cause any physical impact. Similarly, only physical impacts will not be stress unless it is felt by the mind and heart. The psychological and physical impacts are visible in the form of stress. Anxiety is the cause of stress but not otherwise.

 

3. Symptoms of stress

 

Symptoms of stress vary according to its stage. The stress can be mild, stiff and chronic in nature. If the stress is of a mild nature, one recovers from it easily. Mild stress is visible when person develops lack of appetite and high blood pressure. The stress becomes stiffer if these symptoms are not carefully countered. When stress attains a chronic stage, the person develops instability, frustration and feels uncomfortable and fails to cope up with problems. It affects physical efficiency and subsequently a psychological strength. This stage is called “Burn out”. It is a troublesome outcome of stress. In this stage individual becomes emotionally weak and exhibits exhaustion and negative attitude. Executives are highly prone to burn out forms of stress due to job pressure. Emotional exhaustion results due to various factors like personal/ job/ organizational stressors, high expectations from oneself, work overload, role conflict and negative interpersonal interactions. If the treatment is not opted at this stage, a state of “Trauma” is reached. Trauma is a very serious form of stress. It occurs in the organization where employees find it difficult to adjust. This may be caused due to pressure of work, late working hours, inability of employees to fulfil social obligation and poor time management. This work place trauma is carried home by employees and they develop various psychological disorder.

 

3.1 General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS): The general adaptation syndrome (GAS) refers to development of individuals‟ responses to stressful events in the form of physiological, psychological and behaviour patterns. These are of three types:

 

  1. Alarm Stage: This is a warning stage and occurs as first sign of stress. During this stage muscle becomes tense, pupils dilate and there is an increased hormone flow. Increased pituitary adrenaline secretion, increased respiration, heart trouble and high blood pressure are major symptoms of alarm stage. Regular physically exercises and expert psychiatric treatment can prevent this occurrence.
  2. Resistance Stage: If the alarm stage is not controlled in time, body organs build up resistance but exhibit its ill effects. During the resistance stage individual is unable to rest and becomes irritable. There is increased nervousness, tension frustration and uneasiness in the routine work environment. Individual develops ulcer, loss of appetite and illness.An individual may feels that he has overcome the stress situation but its ill effects persist for a long time. It is therefore necessary to identify roots of stress and find a solution.
  3. Exhaustion: When the body, as well as mind is affected, it is believed the stress has reached the stage of exhaustion. In this stage individual experiences physical and mental pressures and develops ulcers and high blood pressure. Exhaustion leads to irritability, negative attitude; individual appears fatigued and displays helplessness in his behaviour. Organizations where employees suffer from exhaustion must take corrective action. Poor health of employees, negative emotions and depression reduces the organizational effectiveness to a large extent. Large numbers of organizations have started to recognise impact of stress and facilitate physical and psychological treatment of employees on a regular basis.

 

4.  Stress Experience

 

All individuals do not experience stress with same intensity. Some people overreact to stressors and gets stressed easily while others have „take it easy policy‟ and are less streeseed.na individuals extent of experiencing stress depends upon following factors:

 

4.1 Perception: An employee‟s perception of a situation is a decisive factor about the extent of experienced of stress. A simple transfer from one place to another may be perceived as lot of reshuffling and adjustment problems by one person but an opportunity to see new places and learn newer things by the other. Thus this situation is stressful for first person and not for the other.

 

4.2 Past Experience: Sometimes a person may / may not experience stress due to his /her past experiences. Positive experiences about a situation in the past may not give stress whereas past negative experience of the similar situation may stress a person. A person who was fired in the past because his could not achieve sales targets will always carry this fear to his next job.

 

4.3 Social Support: presence of type of individuals at the workplace also increases/ decreases stress. Working along with a confident and knowledgeable co worker in a stressed situation may help an employee behave in an identical way while the opposite of this will not be true.

 

Individual Differences: motivation, attitudes, personality and abilities are unique for every individual. These factors also influence how a person responds to stress; e.g. type A personalities experience more stress as compared to type B.

 

5. Work Stress Model

 

Work Stress model was developed by Krietner. It explains the mechanism of stress. The stressors lead to stress, which in turn, lead to many consequences. This model explains the relationship among stressors, stress and outcomes with the help of moderators. Moderators are those variables that cause the relationship between stress and outcomes to be stronger for some people and weaker for others.

 

Stressors/ Sources of stress: Environment, Organization, Group and individual factors can cause stress and have impact on the performance of a job.

 

5.1Individual Stressors: most common personal stressors are type of personality, role overload, role conflict and role ambiguity.

 

5.1.1 Personality: Type of personality of an individual defines his response to stress. Type A personality people are more prone to stress. Such people always move rapidly; are impatient and always in hurry; always do multitasking, try to do many things in little time and do not have time to enjoy life.

 

Type B persons are less prone to stress as they exhibit opposite behavioural patterns. They are not much concerned with time; are patient; have no pressing deadlines; love to enjoy life; are never in hurry and take life easy.

 

5.1.2 Role conflict: Role conflict occurs when people face competing demands. A person may not be capable of handling two or more pressures at any one time. It leads to stress. It can be inter role conflict or personal conflict.

 

Inter role conflict occurs when an employee has two roles which are in conflict with each other. It is common in matrix organizations where a subordinate has to report to two different bosses.

 

Personal conflict occurs when personal values of an individual are in clash with organizational goals; e.g. giving bribe to get projects may be normal in an organization whereas it may be in conflict with personal ethics of an employee.

 

5.1.3 Role ambiguity: Role is a set of activities associated with certain position in the organization or in the society. If these work activities are ill defined; the person will be able to perform as expected. This is role ambiguity. Role ambiguity is more pronounced with the organizations which are fluid in nature and subject to change with environment factors. Role ambiguity is also noticed in managerial cadre where job specifications and roles are not clearly defined because of the general nature of the job. Principle of unity of command is not followed strictly and therefore there is always a conflict about reporting channels. Role ambiguity can lead to (1) Psychological strain and dissatisfaction. (2) Under utilization of human resources, and (3) feeling of futility on how to cope with the organizational environment.

 

5.1.4 Task structure: High stress jobs are those in which the employees have little or no control over the operations, work under time constraints and have major responsibilities for human beings and other resources. E.g. defence services, police, foreman, mangers, inspector, etc. On the contrary there are low stress jobs like teachers, craft worker, farm labour etc. Studies indicate that higher risk of coronary diseases is linked to high stress jobs. This is due to high “level of psychological demand” and the high “level of decision control” over the work.

 

Jobs are categorized in the following manner:

 

(a)  Low psychological demand/ Low decision control; e.g. watchman, truck driver;

 

(b)   Low psychological demand/ High decision control; e.g. mechanic, sales clerk;

 

(c)  High psychological demand/ High decision control; e.g. sales manager, bank officer;

 

(d)   High psychological demand/ Low decision control; e.g. waitress, telephone operator, cook

 

etc.

 

5.2 Group Level Stressors: Group cohesiveness, group norms and importance of group objective have great impact on employees‟ mindset. Lack of cohesiveness creates conflict. Managers also create stress by exhibiting inconsistent behaviours; failing to provide support; showing lack of concern; providing inadequate direction; creating a high productivity environment by ignoring peoples‟ concern and by focussing on negatives rather than good results.

 

5.3 Organizational Stressors: Organizational stressors can be classified into mission statement, strategies, policies, organizational structure and design, reporting channels, communication, various processes, systems and working conditions. Organization mission and consequent departmental goals have a long lasting impact on the employees. Over ambitious goals are causes of stress among employees. Good organizational policies, procedures, rules, regulations keep employees in high spirit. On the contrary, inadequate compensation, rigid rules, ambiguous organizational policies and faulty job design cause tremendous amount of stress. Poor hygiene in work place, inadequate space, light, lack of physical security at work place is stressors. Stress is caused by inadequate support from subordinates, conflicting job requirements, inadequate and poor performance measurement, and lack of empowerment. Managerial style, role of superior boss, command and control mechanism leave much to be desired from Indian organizations.

 

5.4 Environment Factors: There are numerous environmental factors that cause a great deal of work stress on the employees. These include societal, economic, financial, cultural, domestic and technological factors. Stressors like family demands and obligation, race, caste, creed, ethnic identity, relocation due to transfer also cause adverse effect on individuals.

 

6. Outcomes of stress

 

Outcomes of stress can be physiological, psychological and cognitive. Important outcomes are discussed below.

 

6.1 Stress and Behaviour

 

Stress is psychological state which reflects biochemical reactions in the human body. There are desirable activities and undesirable activities in life that can cause stress. Stress created by desirable and successful activities is called “Eustress”. Eustress is a positive, healthy and developmental stress response. It leads to better performance and better adjusted personality. Stress created by undesirable outcomes is known “Distress”. It is primarily the distress form of stress which causes undesirable effects on physical and psychological well being of the person. Just as extremely high level of stress is harmful and damaging, extremely low level of stress is also equally harmful. It causes boredom, reduces innovativeness and ability to face challenges. Hence a moderate level of stress is desirable for higher level of performance.

 

People under stress are either defensive or offensive in their behaviour. They withdraw from the social environment and confine themselves to isolation.

 

· Frustration: Also known as impediment to goal oriented behaviour; it occurs when desired goal is not achieved. Frustration

is caused firstly due to delay in getting a promotion, non availability of various resources or non attainment of goal.

 

·  Anxiety: Anxiety is the feeling of inability and helplessness in formulating appropriate response for dealing with the

anticipated negative outcome. Factors like frequent changes in organizations, competition, job ambiguity, lack of job

feedback, volatility in the organizations‟ economic environment, job insecurity and personal problems lead to anxiety.

 

6.2 Physiological Response: When stress appears, immediate biochemical changes take place. Health problems start to surface when a person suffers from stress for long period of time. It leads to breakdown of body‟s immune systems and may result in serious health problems such as high blood pressure, ulcer and even heart attack. High level stress can result in physical changes that threaten our health and well-being.

 

6.3 Psychological Response: People have different levels of handling stress. Those who are highly affected by stress tend to be depressed and display lack of self confidence. They develop a feeling of helplessness and elicit sympathy from others. They have a greater fear of unknown, display irritating behaviour, become impatient and tend to blame others for the inefficiency. Such employees lose confidence and display a low productivity.

 

7. Management of stress

 

Stress can be handled at two levels; individual level and organizational level. Therefore, we will discuss individual level strategies and organizational level strategies to manage stress.

 

7.1 Individual Level Strategies

 

It is clear that every individual has different capacity to cope with individual stress. Some of the individual stress reduction strategies are as under:

 

7.1.1 Setting objective for self: Every individual must set for objectives for himself according to ability and skill one possesses. Objectives must be realistic, touchable and should be set according to availability of resources and time. Setting up of high goals without analyzing limitations leads to stressful situation.

 

7.1.2 Social Support: It is important to keep close rapport with relatives. At closer to work place develop friendship with fellow workers who can help in times of crisis, stress and strain. Social support can be easily built by adhering to social functions, norms and following religious activities at work place. This enables individuals to regain sulking self confidence and build self-esteem

 

7.1.3 Physical Fitness: It has been proved that individuals, who exercise and so strengthen their endurance and cardiovascular system, are much less likely to suffer from certain types of stress related illnesses. Regular physical exercises like walking, jogging, light gymnastics exercises keep person fit and develop an ability to sustain greater level of stress.

 

7.1.4 Using bio feedback: Biofeedback is a machine used to train people to detect and control stress related symptoms such as tense muscle and hypertension. Muscle relaxation and meditative techniques then can be used to combat stress.

 

7.1.5 Cognitive restructuring: it is the practice of identifying and eliminating negative and stress inducing thoughts. It helps a person to develop more reasonable beliefs about the outcomes associated with events.

 

7.1.6 Time management: Time management is one of the best methods of reducing stress. Life has become very fast. Everyone is pressed for time. Lot of multitasking and different roles playing is to be done perfectly in a limited span of time. It is therefore necessary to plan time adequately. 1. Daily list of activities to be to be attended to should be prepared; 2. Activities should be prioritized according to importance and urgency; 3. Activities should be scheduled according to priorities set; and 4. Most important and demanding parts of job should be done when one is most alert and productive.

 

7.1.7 Other techniques: Using techniques of muscle relaxation, deep breathing exercises, yoga and meditation are other physical techniques that help in mind and body relaxation.

 

 

7.2 Organizational Level Strategies

 

Organization plays a decisive role in ensuring stress free environment. Stress in the organization is due to two reasons (i) organizational structure and policy and (ii) personal development and growth that the job can provide. Following strategies help eliminating stress from the work place:

 

1.      Improvement in the physical work environment:

 

2.      Job redesign to eliminate stressors;

 

3.      Organizational goals must be in realms of achievement. Too much high goals not only put the employees under undue

stress but also creates unhealthy work environment.

 

4.      Clearly defined policies of organization with reference to training / development, promotion, leave, wages/ salary

administration, discipline, incentives etc;

 

5.      Clearly defined authority and responsibility, adherence to principle of unity of command;

 

6.      Setting up and following of proper channels of communication;

 

7.      Improvements in organizational structure if the need be;

 

8.      Changes in workloads and deadlines;

 

9.      Changes in work schedules, provision of flexi hours and sabbaticals;

 

10.  Encouraging employees participation in management ;

 

11.    Employee empowerment and more autonomy;

 

12.  Career planning for mangers must be developed and implemented in letter and spirit;

 

13.  Workshops for role clarity and role analysis should be organized.

 

In addition to these strategies, programmes on stress management should be conducted which should cover following areas:

 

·         Team building;

 

·         Behavior modifications;

 

·         Career counseling ;

 

·         Time management;

 

·         Enlightening employees about „ Burnout‟;

 

·         Training in relaxation techniques;

 

·         Other physical fitness related programmes.

 

 

7.2.1 EAPs: Organizations, these days are resorting to EAPs i.e. Employee Assistance Programmes. These programmes deal with wide range of stress related problems (either work related or otherwise). EAPs are based on following approach:

 

Diagnosis: Employees with stress related problems approach for help. EAP staff helps them diagnosing the problem;

 

Treatment: After correct diagnosis, counseling/ support therapy is provided to relive stress. If the need be, concerned employee is referred for professional consultation;

 

Screening: this entails periodic examination of employees in high stress jobs to detect early indicators of stress;

 

Prevention: Education and persuasion are used to encourage employees, who are in high risk group of stress, to effectively cope with stress.

 

8. Summary

 

Stress is “adoptive response, mediated by individual characteristics and/ or psychological processes, which are a consequence of any external action, situation or event that places special physical and/or psychological demands upon a person”. Minimal level of stress is required for organizations to operate effectively. Excessive stress is harmful for the individual as it causes mental and physical disequilibrium and subsequently leads to physical and mental disturbance. Stress causes frustration and anxiety. Stress can be managed by achieving physical fitness, biofeedback, yoga, meditation, time management, and by living a simple life. Organizations play a vital role in combating stress.

Learn More:

  1. Aswathappa,K. (2008). Organizational Behaviour. Himalaya Publishing House, New Delhi
  2. Gupta, S.K., Joshi, Rosy. (2013). Organizational Behaviour. Kalyani Publishers, New Delhi
  3. Kondalkar,V.G. (2009).Organizational Behaviour.New Age Publishers, New Delhi
  4. Prasad, L.M. (2009). Organizational Behaviour. Sultan Chand & Sons, New Delhi
  5. Robbins, S., Timothy.A.J.,Sanghi, S. (2009).Organizational Behaviour: Text and Cases. Pearson Prentice Hall, New Delhi
  6. http:// www./Employee empowerment/Stress Mgt/McShane07.pdf
  7. http://www./Employee empowerment/Stress Mgt/Occup. Environ Med-2002-Michie-67-72.pdf
  8. http://www.voiceofresearch.org/pdf
  9. http://www.managementstudyguide.com/employee-stress.htm
  10. http://www.helpguide.org/articles/stress/stress-at-work.htm