Whenever there is some kind of demand or threat, our body may respond with stress. Stress is an imprecise term. It is usually defined in terms of the internal and external conditions that create stressful situations, and the symptoms that people experience when they are stressed.
When we feel threatened, our body tries to adjust to that situation by releasing a flood of stress hormones, like adrenaline and cortisol, which rouse the body for emergency action. Our blood pressure rises, the heart beats faster, our breath quickens, themuscles are tenseand our senses sharpen. All with a goal to increase our strength and stamina, speed up the reaction time, and enable us to focus better. This is known as the “fight or flight” or mobilization stress response, and is ourbody’s way of protecting us.
Long-term stress, on the other hand,involves increasingly higher levels of prolonged and uninterrupted stress. For example, workers in stressful jobs often show an increased “resting” heart rate. Pelletier believes that the deleterious effects of stress are created only by unrelieved long-term stress.
Symptoms of Stress in Organizational Context
Stressors can arise from within an individual (internal) or from the environment (external). Internal conflicts, non-specific fears, fears of inadequacy, and guilt feelings are examples of stressors that do not depend on the environment. Internal sources of stress can arise from an individual’s perceptions of an environmental threat, even if no such danger actually exists. Environmental stressors are external conditions beyond an individual’s control.
Bhagat has reported that external stressors can seriously impair work performance. There are many aspects of organizational life that can become external stressors. These include issues of structure, management’s use of authority, monotony, a lack of opportunity for advancement, excessive responsibilities, ambiguous demands, value conflicts, and unrealistic workloads. A person’s non-working life (e.g. family, friends, health, and financial situations) can also contain stressors that negatively impact job performance.
According to Williams and Huber, thesymptoms of long-term work-related stress on an individual levelcan be: “constant fatigue, low energy level, recurring headaches, gastrointestinal disorders, chronically bad breath, sweaty hands or feet, dizziness, high blood pressure, pounding heart, constant inner tension, inability to sleep, temper outbursts, hyperventilation, moodiness, irritability and restlessness, inability to concentrate, increased aggression, compulsive eating, chronic worrying, anxiety or apprehensiveness, inability to relax, growing feelings of inadequacy, increase in defensiveness, dependence on tranquilizers, excessive use of alcohol, and excessive smoking”. Furthermore, job stress can make people more susceptible to major illnesses. High stress managers are twice as prone to heart attacks as low stress managers.
The effects of employees stress on the organization, however, may include: High absenteeism, poor performance and productivity, low morale, poor motivation, increased employee complaints, increased ill-health, and accidents and incidents reports.
Managing Stress at Work
Basically, there are three strategies for dealing with stress in organizations according to Jick and Payne:
1) Treat the symptoms – when a person is already suffering from the effects of stress. This includes both the identification of those suffering from excessive stress, as well as providing health-care and psychological counselling services.
2) Change the person – this approach is to help individuals build stress management skills to make them less vulnerable to its effects. Examples would be teaching employees time management and relaxation techniques, or suggesting changes to one’s diet or exercise.
3) Remove the cause of the stress. This would involve reducing environmental stressors such as noise and pollution, or modifying production schedules and workloads. Lawless reported that four different employer programs were effective in reducing job burnouts, where the percentage of people reporting a burnout was reduced by half. They are: i. supportive work and family policies, ii. effective management communication, iii. health insurance coverage for mental illness and chemical dependency, and iv. flexible scheduling of work hours.
Other proven methods that help coping with stress and its symptoms are certainly: setting aside relaxation time, healthy diet, getting plenty of sleep, starting physical activity (such aswalking, running, dancing), and increasing social engagement. Even just a brief exchange of kind words or a friendly look from another human being can help calm and soothe thenervous system.
Managing stress is a skill that many of us may still need to master. However, as with any skill, practice can help. Making a few small changes in the way we do things can lessen the negative effects of work-related stress on ourlife and health.
Sonja Vos Ralevska