Abolish Your Costly Epidemic: An Art of Subduing Workplace Stress

V Anusha
Assistant Professor, Department of MBA Nova College of Engineering and Technology Jupudi, Ibrahimpatnam(M), Krishna Dist - 521105, India veeragandhamanu89@gmail.com

M Tulasinadh
Assistant Professor, Department of MBA Nova College of Engineering and Technology Jupudi, Ibrahimpatnam(M), Krishna Dist - 521105, India tulasinad123@gmail.com

AbstractAbolish your costly epidemic: emphasizes on various challenges faced by an employee in a day to day work environment and how to overcome them in a best possible way. Since mid 20th century, a growing number of studies have evaluated the virtues of prescriptive, relaxation-based stress control methods as applied attributes to work settings labeled as Stress-management. Experts and Physiologists had come up with various strategies for implementing the stressmanagement; such strategies have focused exclusively on providing an individual with skill for recognizing and coping with stress in the health-promotion context. A Comprehensive approach to figure-out stress promoters along with preventive and best possible solutions to over-come them. KeywordsStress-management; Pressure; Job-Satisfaction; motivation; Stree-preventions;
I.

affects everyoneit is universal. Stress cuts through every economic, social and cultural boundary, so learning to understand, cope with stress is important for everyone. There are many sources of stress. Not only are they different for everyone, but also depend on an individuals current situation. If stress is not managed properly in a timely manner, it can have severe negative health repercussionsboth physically and mentally. Though the employee stress level varies from role to role in a workplace, if not managed properly, its not only individuals health thats jeopardized. Consistent high levels of employee stress could also jeopardize an organizations bottom line. To avoid any imperil effect most of the Organizations has undertaken the responsibility to create awareness on importance of stress-management among employees by introducing group and individual stress-management interventions to improve coping ability, self-confidence and to minimize vulnerabilities to the stress. Apart from helping individuals some organization went a step ahead and mandated the Stress-management as an integral component of health-promotion at workplaces.

Work-

Employee-

INTRODUCTION

Overwhelmed due to workplace-stress? Youre not the first. The word stress grabs peoples attention pretty quickly because it

II. A.

STRESS , CAUSES AND CURVES

indicates that disruption of bio-cycle or biorhythms is the primary mechanism responsible for the workload stress. ii) Organizational Factors: Numerous studies have examined the effect of roles within a work organization; these studies observed men with role ambiguity (an individual was unsure of work role scope and responsibilities) in terms of low-confidence levels, high job pressure, lack in job satisfaction etc. In some situations role conflict related tensions as well. Apart from role and responsibilities, career development, relationship with colleagues, uncertainty about job, over promotions has contributed an enormous amount of stress at work locations. When put together its various management styles, such as the little allowance or no participation on decision making, lack of effective consultation, restriction on behavior, etc are viewed as potential stressors. iii) Physical and Personal Factors: Adverse environmental circumstances appear to be allied with health disorder in a synergistic way by aggravating the overall job demands placed on employees, thus lowering work tolerance to other stressors and diminishing worker motivation. Surroundings like undue noise, hot or cold, inadequate lighting, poor ventilation, and inappropriate ergonomic design have been associated with employee attitudinal and behavioral problems. Its not a coincidence when a physical discomfort leads to a mass

Stress Stress is an identifiable response that occurs

when

an

individual

is

excited,

fearful,

challenged, or anxious. When it occurs the brain prepares the body to meet the challenges by stimulating the autonomic nervous system. This in turn controls many bodily functions which include breathing, pulse rate, muscle tension, blood pressure and body temperature.
B.

Causes and Curves When its time to discuss assessment,

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) who has made a phenomenal contribution in developing a paradigm to examining the relationship between working conditions and health consequences. As per them a broad classification of stressors are Job demands, Organizational Factors, Physical and Personal Factors. i) Job demands: Workload is an aspect of occupation that can easily be recognized as stressful and has therefore received substantial empirical attention. Spending excessive hours at work place or holding down excessive responsibilities, plays a major role in effecting and imposes a huge amount of stress on an individual. Additionally, it has been observed that shift based work is another job that has impact on health. There exists substantial convergence indication that night shift and rotary shift schedules will lead to sleep disorders. This

ii

psychogenic illness. Apart and above physical conditions, personal or individual factors can also be catastrophic when ignored. Behavior pattern characterize by competitiveness, excessive drive, intense striving for achievement, time urgency and over commitment to profession are the predominant patterns exhibited by an individual.
C.

no

stress

category

Depcting Stree: Occupational stress has gained so much

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Highly Less stressful Not stressful stressful ('a bit') ('quite' or 'extremely')

attention because of which many organizations including NGOs and healthcare professionals started conducting various surveys to evaluating potential stress causers. Survey results conducted are listed below.
1.

Fig C.1

2.

As per American Psychological

Association, American Institute of Stress-NY dated 04.06.2012, Major factors influencing workplace-stresses.
Lack of Job security 6% Juggling Work or Personal Life 20% Work Load 46% People Issues 28%

According to the survey conducted

by General Social Survey(GSS)Candan in 2010, employees (age between 2060 Years) 27%-has experienced high level of stress, 46%-has less stress and only 27%-fall under

Fig C .2

3.

Various physiological symptoms

experienced by individuals due to stress:

iii

Fig C.3

30%

48%

individual-oriented

stress-management

26%

approaches has attained lot of recognition because strategies are simple to implement,
31%

can be assessed in short term, do not require interruption in organization schedules and fits nicely into managements view as an individuals difficulty. At the same time organizational change approaches necessitate an accurate, valid evaluation of work factors which can generate undue stress and an extensive knowledge of the dynamics of change process in an organization so as to minimize the potentially undesirable outcomes. Organizational change strategies which have potential for preventing or reducing the stress include quality circles which bring bench level works into decision-making, worker representation committees, on more health and safety training extensive

54% 35% Negative impac on professional life Difficulty managing work and family Interfering with their family life. Fought with people Complain form a friend or family Always or often under stress at work

Unlike most advanced countries, Indians too are facing the occupational stress issues, this trend has been observed in recent time. This has become most predominant in individuals who work in lonely places who handles shift based and time based work (E.g. Armypersonnel, multinational organizations) etc. To avoid any significant impact on the society, collaborative efforts has initiated a government and university partnership*, and a considerable number of counseling centers were established.
III. ACT OR ACCEPT

programmers for workers whose work being altered, creation of more psychologically compassionate imperative In spite of complexity in job stress research, the intrinsic worth of both individual-oriented and to an extent organization-oriented approach to reduce stress has been explored. Given an emphasis on subjective element of stress, it is not surprising to find that most stress reduction techniques are focused on the individual rather than the organization and uses individual-orientated outcome measures to assess of organization. Studies of
iv

(HOW TO OVERCOME STRESS)

evaluation set and

systems. publicize

Its a

to

comprehensive policy on stress and work-life balance, process to track constant employee feedback, craft a workplace that can afford time exchange, support and encourage employees, devise a healthy physical work environment, encourage effective, official communication processes among various groups with in the organization. As an individual perspective eliminating self-defeating behavior, avoiding pitfalls,

time and task prioritizing, making good and healthy food choices, most importantly seeking professional help when needed, comes handy in minimizing or reducing the stress at workplace. While its is evident that some simple stress reduction techniques may provide the broad benefits, stress-management techniques ideally should be aligned with the requirements of the organization and the population it has to address. For maximum effectiveness, all levels or workers need to play a vital role in program selection, design and evaluation. Course of action is more apt to be made by beginning with small focus of intervention on a specific target group for better evaluation. This can be enlarged in stepwise fashion to comprehend the needs and demands of specific group area.
IV. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

time,

multidisciplinary

interventions,

primary, secondary and tertiary preclusion programs and interventions for specific population proved an ample and effective approach to stress-management. Further more interventions should respond to culture, gender and work type-specific issues that may moderate workplace-stress. Providing the most efficacious stress-management interventions ultimately allows employee and employer to work cooperatively to achieve the common ultimate goals.
V.

REFERENCES

1. Burke, W. (1982). Organization Development: Principles and practices. New York: Little, Brown & Co. 2. Burton S., & Steane, P. (Eds.). (2004). Surviving your thesis. London: Routedge. 3. Hackman, John Richard and Oldham, Greg R. (1980). Work Redesign, MA: Addison-Wesley. Lawler, E. E., III. 1986. High Involvement Management. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 4. Alderfer, C.P. (1969). An Empirical Test of a New Theory of Human Needs: Organizational Behavior and Human Performance. Vol. 14, pp.142-175. 5. Lawler, E.E. (1994), Motivation in Work Organizations, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA,. 6. Maslow A.H. (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation: Psychological Review, vol. 1, pp.370396. 7. Mowday, RT., Steers, R.M. and Porter, L.W. (1979). The Measure of Organization Commitment. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 14:224-247. Electronic Resources: 1. Times of India: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/200306-25/lucknow/27177848_1_pac-jawans-stressmanagement-workshop 2. http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/201303-04/news/37436270_1_chandrashekhar-sahuagricultural-research-crop

Conducting

the

stress-management

programs with employees and management has shown substantial amount of positive results in turns of employee dedication, employee motivation, job satisfaction and performance. A large-scale study has also proven that worksite stress-management programs are cost effectual as there was a considerable drop in terms of medical utilization and reduced absenteeism. Nevertheless, the great variety of stressmanagement techniques evolved over the

3. http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-inprogress/2012/12/26/5-daily-rituals-to-managework-stress/ 4. http://www.statisticbrain.com/stress-statistics/ 5. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008x/2011002/article/11562-eng.htm 6. http://helpguide.org/mental/work_stress_managem ent.htm 7. http://www.eatsmartmovemorenc.com/NCHealthS martTlkt/1_docs/manage_stress/ms_entireworkboo k.pdf 8. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/workpl ace-stress-1-million-americans-skipeveryday_n_1332172.html 9. American Psychological Association http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/work-stress.aspx

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