Work plays an important part in the lives of many human beings and it affects their everyday well-being. Working is a huge challenge for a majority of the American people. The workplace is a big contributing factor of job stress. Psychological ill health is related to the problem of job stress. There are interventions that can be implemented to prevent or at least to reduce psychological problems.
Stress can be defined as an interaction between people and any kind of demand within their environment. A stressor can be an event or an object which is harmful for an individual. Stress can happen when the demand outweighs a human's ability to deal. Factors that may cause job stress include long work hours, job insecurity, conflict among workers and supervisors, shift work, or hazards. Job stress can cause low productivity, low employee morale, high turnover, increased call ins, sickness and negative results. Aspects that need to be considered when diagnosing job stress include age, sex, race, income, education, marital status and personality.
It is vital to determine who is affected by job stress. It seems as though most people are affected by job stress at one time or another. Job stress is on the rise. People all over the world are beginning to suffer from job stress. Job stress doesn't occur in just one profession but it tends to occur more in streamlined countries. Job stress can affect an employee's personal life. Job stress can cause anxiety, depression, ulcers, chronic disease, and heart disease. In most job stress related cases, individuals are distressed by trying to combine occupational and family demands, such as caring for their children or sick and aging parents (Wiersma & Berg, 1991, p.1210). According to Lazarus (1991), employees who are not able to control their lives at their working place are more likely to suffer occupational stress and thus, can experience impaired health (p.4). Numerous studies have shown that low control, heavy job demands may cause mental strain, job dissatisfaction, cardiovascular disease, etc. (Locke & Taylor, 1990, p. 160). Family responsibilities also became a source of stress. It usually occurs in single parent families or in those which both parents work. This
At the psychological level, stressful and poor working conditions can cause continuing feelings of humiliation, insecurity and worthlessness. Not having a secure understanding of the future can cause large amounts of anxiety and futility that roots high levels of fatigue from day-to-day life, therefore making everyday coping difficult. Individuals who experience high levels of prolonged stress often attempt to relieve these pressures by adopting unhealthy coping behaviours; for example, the excessive use of alcohol, smoking, and
Introduction Stress affects millions of people. One of the most common forms of stress is that related to our careers and the workplace. In today 's economic difficulty, work related stress is even more pronounced than ever before. Everyone who has ever held a job has, felt the pressure of work-related stress. Any job can have stressful elements, even if you love what you do. According to the American Psychological Association 's (APA) annual Stress in America Survey. Only 37 percent of Americans surveyed said they were doing
Psychological stressors include interpersonal conflict, role stressors, work-family conflict, and emotional labor, which is the regulation of one’s emotions to meet job or organizational demands. Another psychological stressor that may have the most influence in determining an individual’s response to a situation is a lack of control or predictability, which is related to the amount of autonomy an employee perceives in controlling how and when they perform the tasks of their job. (Landy & Conte, 2009) Stress may result in negative behavioral, psychological, or physiological consequences and the effects of multiple stressors can be cumulative. Absenteeism, accidents,
Stress has been linked to hypertension, heart attacks, diabetes, asthma, chronic pain, allegeries, headaches, skin disorders, cancer, immune system weakness and decrease blood count (Cummings et al, 2005). It has also been linked to an increase risk of alcoholism and drug use. High levels of stress can lead to higher absenteeism, larger staff turnover and low productivity. The symptoms are evident in the quantitative data, with an
There are numerous challenges that organizations are faced with in order for them to survive and grow. These challenges are mainly faced by people who are tasked with making decisions on a daily basis within the organizations because a majority of the challenges are human based. The employees working in an organization are likely to suffer from occupational stress depending on their work. Occupational stress comes along when an employee is faced with demands within the workplace, and they are not able to complete or carry out these demands. The failure to complete the demands placed upon them would cause the employee mental and physical strain as their body would have a physiological reaction. According to research there are various factors that contribute to stress in the workplace. These factors include isolation, extensive working hours, negative workloads, unhealthy working environments, harassment, bullying by management, and lack of motivation or advancement opportunities. The factors mentioned are not exhaustive as there might be other causes to occupational stress depending on the individual or employees.
According to Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary (2013), stress in general is a physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation (Full definition of stress, 1c.). Job stress may involve the type of work your do, your boss, or co-workers or your hours you work. When it comes to job stress, it can take a toll on your productivity, as well as your physical and emotional health.
Stress can be caused by many different things within an organisation but the main causes of stress can be broken down into “six management standards” Anon (2009) how to tackle work related stress http://www.hse.gov.uk/ I used these areas to construct the chart below and discussed stress at a team meeting and asked my team to complete a Circle of influence around areas over which they felt they had no control Appendix 1 we also discussed what we / I could do to manage the six main causes of stress
Work related stress has been emerging as one of the main causes of adverse symptoms of mental health in today’s industrial societies. The direct result of excessive pressures and/or demands placed on individuals at work, work-related stress has caused some people to develop symptoms of depression, anxiety, and other adverse mental health effects. While it might be possible that other co-factors contribute to the development of anxiety and depression in some population groups, evidence suggests that pressure from works is more likely to trigger adverse reactions in some people. In fact, positive correlations have been established between symptoms of work stress and mental health problems. That is, it is not uncommon to witness loss of
In this paper I will discuss stress and the workplace stress survey from the American Institute of Stress and if left untreated, how it will negatively affect the workforce. I will explain the results of my survey scores and why I believe they are positive and negative. Additionally, I will describe personal examples of the stressors that are always at work and how to identify and overcome them before they cause irreparable damage.
To begin, a crucial problem caused by stress can often be a performance drop. For example, the infamous ACT exam causes lots of worries for juniors in high school. Whether it be the heavy burden of the test determining their future or the constant reminder of time slipping from them as they try to pace themselves. It causes some to do much worse than they would have on a usual exam. This drop in performance is crucial, because it determines what colleges they attend and what scholarships they are qualified for. A common job for young adults and others is fast food, one of the most stressful occupations. This is seen when taking a short glimpse behind the counter at a McDonald's. The customers are becoming impatient, the co-workers become irritated at each other they are all under a lot of responsibility to make a customer satisfied. Some employees are not able to deal with stress and as a result, they begin to slow down or sometimes even "freeze". Consequently, it makes the worker less productive and they cannot perform their given
We spend much of daily lives working. In fact, Americans spend about eight-times as many hours working as they do eating and drinking (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2013). Approximately seven in ten Americans report that they experience symptoms of stress (Anderson, Belar, Breckler, Nordal, Ballard, Bufka, Bossolo & Bethune, 2013). Stress is elicited by a variety of psychological stimulus associated with our jobs, our residences, our social interactions, and the activities we engage in (p. 249, Franken, 2007). Many Americans live with the burden of an unsatisfying job as well as a stressful workplace. An online survey of 1,848 people in the United States, conducted by the American Psychological Association, found that 74 percent of
Stress can come at very different levels. Stress can come in many different forms. Financial stress is a hard thing, and a lot of time takes time to fix the financial stressor. Financial stress a lot of time can not be avoided. Family relationship stress is another hard subject. It is a hard subject because a lot of the time kids and divorce are involved. Forty to fifty marriages end in divorce apa.org (American Psychological Association) and that all has to do with stress in the end. Lastly, workplace stress. Workplace stress is where a lot of people feel stuck. Yes, the person may dislike going to their job everyday, their workload is too heavy but it is a paycheck. The paycheck is what is held over a person’s head and makes them get up everyday and give a sense of security. In the end all three of these subjects of stress tie back together. It starts with the work place stress, when a person has a heavy work load at work and not enough pay to pay bills then Next comes financial stress. Once the person working has a heavy work load and not enough money the family relationship problems come because they are stressed about making ends meet and provide for their family. See how it all sort of flows together? The top three stressors sort of play off of one another. Of course this is not always the
By reviewing the opinions of the interviewees regarding the area of occupational stress, the authors of the thesis have analyzed potential improvement areas and future challenges for the case company. These changes are important for the company to ensure a healthy work climate and satisfied employees, who will retain a position within the company.
METHODS: a cross-sectional study was conducted from January to July 2014, Participants completed demographic, occupational and lifestyle questionnaire, and a self-reported work-related stress symptoms instrument.
Stress is a common issue that faces every human being in different times. Stress can be caused by many factors, but one of the main reasons is work which is called occupational stress or work-related stress. Job stress does not only affect the employees’ performance within an organization, but also it affects their general health. Stress has become a challenge for employers now because high level stress results in low productivity, increased absenteeism and other problems like alcoholism, drug abuse and hypertension (Ahmad, Mohamed. 2017). It became a major problem for employers especially in developing countries where they don’t realize the importance of work-life balance and the impact of stress on the productivity level and the job