Reducing Employee Stress

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Reducing Employee Stress

• rashmidiwan_at_nuepa.org

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Views on Job-Related Stress

• Fight or flight response is based on
  classifications made by Dr. Hans Selye regarding
  a persons response to stress
• Involves three stages
• Alarm Stage
• Resistance Stage
• Exhaustion

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Stages of Job-Related Stress

• Alarm Stage muscles tense, respiration rate
  increases, blood pressure and heart rate increase
• Resisting Stage causes poor decision making and
  physical illness
• Exhaustion when a person cannot sustain
  resistance indefinitely, and may cause illnesses
  such as ulcers or headaches

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Views on Job-Related Stress

• The General Adaptation Syndrome viewpoint
  suggests that people can only take so much stress
  before a serious, debilitating condition results
• To maximize performance, low levels of stress are
  preferable to stimulate individuals to work
  harder and accomplish more
• Eustress term for good stress, level of stress
  that is productive

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Motivation, Efficiency and Stress
Acute Attention, Emotional balance, Rational
thinking
DISTRESS
DISTRESS
Effort
Boredom apathy, Impaired attention
Excitement, disorganized behavior, passivity
EUSTRESS
Motivation
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Causes of Stress

• Individual Stressors
• Interpersonal Stressors
• Organizational Stressors

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Individual Stressors

• Type A personalities
• impatient, competitive, aggressive, always feel
  like theyre under pressure, do lots of things at
  once, and have a hard time relaxing
• Type B personalities
• more mild-mannered, in less of a hurry, and far
  less competitive

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Individual Stressors

• Type A people are twice as prone to heart disease
  and fatal heart attacks as type B individuals
• Type B have better performance records in top
  management positions.
• Hard for type A to change their behavior and
  adopt a type B style due to the deeply ingrained
  patterns of behavior

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Individual Stressors

• Changes in ones life also produce stress, e.g.,
  death of a spouse, or getting fired
• Demographic attributes individuals with high
  income levels report relatively less stress in
  their lives
• Job attributes of women and minorities may be
  responsible for higher stress levels

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Interpersonal Stressors

• Negative emotion at work employee jealousy and
  employee envy
• Employee jealousy thoughts, emotions and
  behaviors that result from loss of self-esteem
  and loss of outcomes associated with a working
  relationship

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Interpersonal Stressors

• Employee envy thoughts, emotions, and behaviors
  that result from loss of self-esteem in response
  to another individual obtaining outcomes desired
  by self
• Studies show
• Males have greater workplace envy
• Females have greater workplace jealousy
• Greater jealousy and envy result in lower job
  satisfaction and intentions to quit
• Envy and jealousy are stress inducers because
  they arise from the perception of threats in the
  work environment

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Interpersonal Stressors

• Workplace Romance Positive personal emotions
• Observers of romantic relationships fear
  favoritism might occur, or charges of sexual
  harassment may occur when it turns sour
• As more women are in workforce and longer work
  hours occur, the likelihood of workplace romance
  increases

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Organizational Stressors

• POLICIES
• Unfair, inequity in pay, rigid rules and
  ambiguous procedures, frequent transfers
  necessitating relocations
• STRUCTURES
• Centralization and formalization, lack of
  involvement in decision making, little
  opportunity for career advancement, high degree
  of specialization, inter departmental conflict,
  
• PROCESSES
• Poor communication, inadequate feedback on
  performance, ambiguous and conflict goals, unfair
  control systems, inadequate information

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Organizational Stressors

• Working conditions stressful due to employees
  lack of control and pressures to produce work
  that is not intrinsically rewarding also creates
  stress
• Emotional labor an occupational mask donned by
  employees who must always display a positive
  demeanor to customers
• Role conflict when two or more sets of demands
  are made on an employee so that compliance with
  one set of demands makes it more difficult to
  comply with another

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Organizational Stressors

• Role ambiguity the absence of clarity regarding
  how to perform ones job
• Role overload when too many activities are
  expected of an employee, given the time available
  and ability level of employee
• Shift work 20 of the U.S. workforce, and it
  causes loss of sleep, appetite, depleted social
  interaction, etc.

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Extra Organizational Stressors

• Fast pace of social and technological change
• Economic and financial conditions including
  inflationary pressures
• Caste system, ethnic identity, minority issues,
• Family demands and social obligations
• Relocation and transfers

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Reactions to Stress

• Physical problems
• Ivancevich and Matteson have developed a model
  for estimating the annual costs associated with
  replacing employees lost to heart disease it is
  based on
• Number of employees
• Employees in age range of 45 to 65
• Estimated deaths due to heart disease per year
  .6 of total number of employees

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Reactions to Stress

• Estimated premature retirement due to heart
  disease
• Companys annual personnel losses
• Annual replacement costs cost of hiring and
  training
• Alcoholism and drug abuse affects between 6 and
  10 percent of all employees both are linked to
  higher levels of stress

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Reactions to Stress

• Absenteeism, turnover, and dissatisfaction are
  correlated with stress levels
• Workplace violence violence and sabotage may
  result from stress
• Involves fairly petty expressions of aggressive
  behavior characterized as covert, verbal,
  involving brief displays of intense anger
• Mass Psychogenic Illness
• Five common symptoms Headaches, dizziness,
  nausea, abdominal cramps and cough

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Reactions to Stress

• Burnout a reaction to prolonged and
  energy-depleting difficulties
• Primary symptom is feeling drained or used up
• Typically affects people who are highly
  conscientious and work in helping professions
• Employees may feel that they are not being
  properly rewarded
• Frustrations lead to apathy and feelings of
  failure, with physical symptoms of high blood
  pressure, ulcers, mental symptoms such as
  depression

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Coping with Stress Organizational strategies

• Creating a supportive organizational
  climate-more towards decentralization, free flow
  of communications and information, participation
  in decision making process, changes in policies
  on performance appraisal, equitable distribution
  of reward, job redesign, role clarity, career
  planning and development

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Coping with Stress Individual strategies

• Self control, analyzing consequences of ones
  own behaviour, increasing an individuals control
  over the situations rather than being solely
  controlled by them, networking and building
  social support, counseling

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Coping with Stress

• Time management
• Time logs
• Structuring time
• Saying no
• Making to do lists

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Thank you