Sources of stress at work pdf

The logic underlying this moderating variable is that social support acts as a palliative, mitigating the negative effects of even high-strain jobs. Personality also affects the degree to which people experience stress and how they cope with it.

Perhaps the most widely studied personality trait in stress is Type A personality, Type A — particularly that aspect of Type A that aspect of Type A that aspect of Type A that manifest itself in hostility and anger - is associated with increased levels of stress and risk for heart disease. In the Self-assessment library available online , take assessment III. Consequences of stress Stress shows itself in a number of ways. For instance, an individual who is experiencing a high level of stress may develop high blood pressure, ulcers, irritability, difficulty making routine decisions, loss of appetite, accident-proneness and the like.

These symptoms can be subsumed under three general categories: physiological, psychological, and behavioral symptoms. Physiological symptoms Most of the early concern with stress was directed at physiological symptoms.

This was pre-dominantly due to the fact that the topic was researched by specialists in the health and medical sciences. This research led to the conclusion that stress could create changes in metabolism, increase heart and breathing rates, increase blood pressure, bring on headaches and induce heart attacks.

The link between stress and particular physiological symptoms is not clear. Traditionally, researchers concluded that there were few, if any, consistent relationships. This is attributed to the complexity of the symptoms and the difficulty of objectively measuring them. More recently, some evidence suggests that stress may have harmful physiological effects. For example, one recent study linked stressful job demands to increased susceptibility to upper respiratory illnesses and poor immune system functioning, especially for individuals who had low self-efficacy.

Psychological symptoms Stress can cause dissatisfaction. Job-related stress can cause job-related dissatisfaction. Job dis-satisfaction, in fact, is 'the simplest and most obvious psychological effect' of stress.

But stress shows itself in other psychological states - for instance, tension, anxiety, irritability, boredom and procrastination. The evidence indicates that when people are placed in jobs that make multiple and conflicting demands or in which there is a lack of clarity about the incumbent's duties, authority, and responsibilities, both stress and dissatisfaction are increased.

Similarly, the less control people have over the pace of their work, the greater the stress and dissatisfaction. Although more research is needed to clarify the relationship, the evidence suggests that jobs that provide a low level of variety, significance, autonomy, feedback and identity to incumbents create stress and reduce satisfaction and involvement in the job. Behavioural symptoms Behaviour-related stress symptoms include changes in productivity, absence and turnover, as well as changes in eating habits, increased smoking or consumption of alcohol, rapid speech, fidgeting and sleep disorders.

There has been a significant amount of research investigating the stress-performance relationship. The most widely studied pattern in the stress-performance literature is the inverted-U relationship. The logic underlying the inverted U is that low to moderate levels of stress stimulate the body and increase its ability to react. Individuals then often perform their tasks better, more intensely, or more rapidly. But too much stress places unattainable demands on a person, which result in lower performance.

This inverted-U pattern may also describe the reaction to stress over time as well as to changes in stress intensity. That is, even moderate levels of stress can have a negative influence on performance over the long term as the continued intensity of the stress wears down the individual and saps energy resources.

An athlete may be able to use the positive effects of stress to obtain higher performance during every game, or a sales executive may be able to psych herself up for her presentation at the annual national meeting. But moderate levels of stress experienced continually over long periods, as typified by the emergency room staff in a large urban hospital, can result in lower performance. In effect, to do so would expose the individual to the risk of 'career burnout'.

In spite of the popularity and intuitive appeal of the inverted-U model, it doesn't get a lot of empirical support. At this time, managers should be careful in assuming that this model accurately depicts the stress-performance relationship.

Managing stress From the organization's standpoint, management may not be concerned when employees experience low to moderate levels of stress.

The reason, as we showed earlier, is that such levels of stress may be functional and lead to higher employee performance. But high levels of stress, or even low levels sustained over long periods, can lead to reduced employee performance and, thus, require action by management.

Although a limited amount of stress may benefit an employee's performance, don't expect employees to see it that way. From the individual's standpoint, even low levels of stress are likely to be perceived as undesirable. It's not unlikely, therefore, for employees and management to have different notions of what constitutes an acceptable level of stress on the job. What management may consider to be 'a positive stimulus that keeps the adrenalin running' is very likely to be seen as 'excessive pressure' by the employee.

Keep this in mind as we discuss individual and organizational approaches toward managing stress. Individual approaches An employee can take personal responsibility for reducing stress levels. Individual strategies that have proven effective include implementing time-management techniques, increasing physical exercise, relaxation training and expanding the social support network. Many people manage their time poorly.

The well-organized employee, like the well- organized understanding and utilisation of basic time-management principles can help individuals better cope with tensions created by job demands. These forms of physical exercise increase heart capacity, lower the at- rest heart rate, provide a mental diversion from work pressures, and offer a means to 'let off steam'.

The objective is to reach a state of deep relaxation, in which one feels physically relaxed, somewhat detached from the immediate environment, and detached from body sensations. Importantly, significant changes in heart rate, blood pressure and other physiological factors result from achieving the condition of deep relaxation. Although personal interventions outside the workplace were not considered by the organisations, it is important to emphasise the power of such interventions and that they should be included in future intervention packages.

For example, physical activity programmes have been among the few organisational interventions that show convincing effects on absenteeism in accord with our previous reviews, but physical activity could be encouraged more generally. The results suggest that employees in private organisations and NGOs report more perceived causes of stress and have fewer interventions in place to help employees manage stress compared with public sector organisations, notably National Health Service NHS employers.

We have listed potential organisational, individual and personal interventions that were used and found to be helpful. These might be tested as correlates of better workforce health and well-being and less work stress.

A limitation of the study was related to the sample characteristics. Although there were variations, especially with regard to type, size and location of the organisations involved, the sample consisted of only 12 organisations in total. A larger number of organisations would have provided us with more variety of occupations and organisation size and location, which would have given a more complete picture concerning the causes of stress and interventions between sectors.

Our study is exploratory, and although these are perceived causes, the findings should not be understood in terms of epidemiological causal relationships, but rather as important ways in which workers think about and manage work stress, providing clues as to how interventions might be developed, tested and located in these work settings. Qualitative studies offer new insights and provide the in-depth and experience-near perspectives of participants, rather than an overtheorised and superficial analysis.

The findings will contribute to future in-depth work including more varied samples, as well as survey research to test for interventions that correlate with organisational measures of health and well-being.

Future work should also consider how to improve management practices, as these seemed to have the most important influence on reducing work stress. More research is needed to further explore the differences between private, public and NGO sectors and different job types such as education and healthcare to examine whether they respond to the same or different intervention techniques. Finally, research needs to take into account compositional effects including the demographic characteristics of samples, and the cost effectiveness of interventions.

What would you say are the best individual and organisational stress management interventions or practices for yourself and for other employees? Have you had any experience of managing someone who has been off sick because of stress? What would you say are the best individual and organisational interventions or practices for managing employee return to work after sickness leave?

Is there a policy at your place of work for managing stress at work e. Is there a policy at your place of work for managing return to work after sickness absence? What would you say are the best individual and organisational policies for managing employee stress?

What would you say are the best individual and organisational policies for managing employee return to work after sickness absence? Declaration of interest None.

National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. BJPsych Bull. Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Correspondence to Kamaldeep Bhui ku. Received Feb 4; Accepted Feb This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Abstract Aims and method To identify causes of stress at work as well as individual, organisational and personal interventions used by employees to manage stress in public, private and non-governmental organizations NGOs.

Results Participants reported adverse working conditions and management practices as common causes of work stress. Clinical implications Interventions should improve management practices as well as promoting personal interventions outside of the work setting. Method Participants The sample used in this study was purposive e. Procedure and topic guide The topic guide was piloted on six employees who had experienced work stress. Analysis The interviews were transcribed verbatim, excluding any potentially identifying information.

Results Data were organised by three higher themes that captured the aims of the study: perceived causes of stress at work individual and organisational stress management interventions and their perceived effectiveness personal interventions to manage stress at work. Causes of stress at work The narrative data on participants' understanding of factors that may cause stress at work suggested working conditions, management practices, nature of job, life events and financial factors Table 1.

Table 1 Causes of stress at work. Open in a separate window. NGO, non-governmental organisation. Individual and organisational stress management interventions Participants were asked about any interventions at their workplace for managing stress. Table 2 Individual and organisational stress management interventions. Personal interventions to manage work stress Participants were asked general questions about their personal strategies to manage work stress.

Table 3 Effective personal interventions to manage stress at work total number of respondents: Discussion A mixture of personal, organisational and individual interventions were reported in our study, but these are not often captured together, with emphasis often being given to workplace changes or separate public health approaches to lifestyle and physical activity.

Interventions used by employees to manage stress at work: perceived effectiveness Participants in the present study tended to report mainly the presence of primary and secondary organisational interventions as opposed to individual interventions at their workplace.

Strengths and limitations The results suggest that employees in private organisations and NGOs report more perceived causes of stress and have fewer interventions in place to help employees manage stress compared with public sector organisations, notably National Health Service NHS employers. Appendix Topic guide General questions to start the interview 1.

Footnotes Declaration of interest None. References 1. HSE, CBI, Chandola T. Stress at Work. British Academy Policy Centre, Symptoms of mental and physical stress in different categories of municipal work. Scand J Work Envir Health ; 17 suppl 1 : 82—6. Psychosocial work environment and stress-related disorders, a systematic review. Occup Med ; 60 : — Cooper B. Economic recession and mental health: an overview. Neuropsychiatrie Klin Diagnost Ther Rehabil ; 25 : —7. Collier R.

Recession stresses mental health system. CMAJ ; : E48—9. The mental health consequences of the recession: economic hardship and employment of people with mental health problems in 27 European countries. PloS ONE ; 8 : e Children's mental health in times of economic recession: replication and extension of the family economic stress model in Finland. Dev Psychology ; 40 : — Stranks J. Stress at Work: Management and Prevention. Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, Karasek R, Theorell T.

Basic Books, Sage, Cox T. Health and Safety Executive, Cahill J. Psychosocial aspects of interventions in occupational safety and health. Am J Industr Med ; 29 : — The structure of work-related stress and coping among oncology nurses in high-stress medical settings: a transactional analysis. J Occup Health Psychol ; 3 : — Kinman G, Jones F. Talk to your managers first directly and express how you feel. Then, if necessary, talk to other managers and let them weigh in on how you should handle your situation.

Sometimes it feels like work is something you take control of. Sometimes it feels like some kind of mandatory servitude. Know that you are always in control! Speaking up and taking action to improve work responsibilities looks really good to management. Direction and leadership are good. Micro-managing is very bad. Management might think that peering over shoulders and scrutinizing reports is productive.

Reflect to see if there is unclear communication between you and management. Keeping healthy will also help out with productivity.