Stress – Causes and Management of Stress at Work

“Being in control of your life and having realistic expectations about your day-to-day challenges are the keys to stress management, which is perhaps the most important ingredient to living a happy, healthy and rewarding life.” – Marilu Henner

Every individual has certain amount of tolerance towards pressure. It can be inescapable, rather acceptable in terms of the achievement of positive results of the organization within the limited span of time. But when it continues too long, it becomes stress – Pressure which is bearable is converted into stress after it exceeds certain limit. Stress may in general be defined as continuous feelings of worry about your work or personal life that prevents you from relaxing. It has also been defined as, “The reactions of individuals to new or threatening factors in their work environments.”

There are situations when the stress leads to negative response. Stress is manifested in many ways, such as, short temperament, panic reactions and irritability. It can be positive or negative. If an employee is going to get a new position which is dynamic and full of challenges, he develops positive stress. Alternatively, there may be situations that are threatening and anxiety-arousing which create negative stress. There are many causes for stress to develop.

One of the causes of stresses at work relating to the tasks an employee handles is the task itself. How it has been proposed or designed, how much time is required to carry out the task and how much time is to be spent on it. At the same time, what his manager expects from him or her in terms of the tasks being assigned. All these factors are related to work and cause stress.

Moreover, interpersonal relationships become a source for stress. That is to say, how frequent an employee is in contact with his colleagues, with his boss and how the relationship is being maintained with them. How pleasant, irritating or exasperating the interactions are to him. Additionally, personal problems or dilemmas may be a reason of stress – intensifying more worries, disturbance and affecting job activities.

Employees who have reasonable educational background and are qualified to perform better tasks than what they have been assigned for currently can exhibit role-based tensions that can lead to stress. Besides, the employees who are career concerned show stress if they find lack of job security. Also, geographical mobility, such as, employees transfer to the new location, can be a cause of stress since they find it to be difficult to adjust with a new environment.

Apart from that, there are many reasons of stress concerning the roles being assigned in the organization. There may be circumstances when the roles of manager or employee are not clearly defined and there is a lot of ambiguity, as to which tasks should be performed and which should be excluded. They experience role ambiguity. It is thus leading to stress. And it happens quite often that the employees face problems as different groups of people have different expectations from them in the organization and it is difficult for the employees in such situations to fulfill dissimilar expectations at the same time. These inconsistent expectations are associated with the role which is called as role-conflict– causing stress.

Similarly, role-overload and role- underload are such situations that lead to stress for the employees. The former indicates that the employees are expected to do the tasks which are beyond their capacity and the time permits them to perform such tasks, while in case of latter, they have too little work to do – Stress in both situations is bound to develop.

In any case, stress can lead to negative consequences resulting in nervousness, depression, anger, fatigue, irritability. The adverse consequences of stress affecting organization give rise to absenteeism, low performance and low productivity. The research is evidenced by the facts that the effect of stress manifests accidents, addiction to alcohol, hypertension, blood pressure, coronary heart diseases, diabetes etc.

Nonetheless, stress is the realism of our life -that needs to be handled as and when needed – hence the need for managing stress effectively. There are various ways to cope with stress and a few of them would be outlined in this.

There is a technique called RAT (Role analysis technique) that helps to analyze what job includes and what is expected of it so as to break it down in to various components while clarifying who will do and what. This technique will be useful to eliminate imposing overload tasks.

In case of transfers, employees should be offered such facilities and arrangements that they get contended. Besides, providing recreational facilities and employee assistance programs can be a source of reducing the stress.

Career counseling is another way to help the employees who wish to make professional progress and achieve personal goals. It also makes the employees aware of what additional qualification or specialized skills should be acquired in order to move upward and to get promotion.

It is worth mentioning that meditation, yoga, breathing exercise is very much advantageous in reducing the stress. Meditation or breathing exercise is a good way to reduce stress and provide a change and relief. Breathing exercise may be done in the work place, as it requires little time. It’s a proven fact that a little physical exercise brings considerable change in moods and temperament of individuals while lessening tensions and stress.

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Written by:
K. A. Fareed (Fareed Siddiqui)
Writer, Trainer, Author, Blogger, Software Developer
BBA, MBA-Finance, MPhil-Financial Management, (MSc-Software Engineering)
(PhD-Management)
MA-English, MPhil-English
Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications and Programming
Certificate course in English language proficiency
Level 1 – Leadership and Management ILM – UK
Pursuing CMA-USA
Individual Member of Institute of Management Consultants of India