What is work stress?
Work-related stress is the response people may have when presented with work demands and pressures that are not matched to their knowledge and abilities and which challenge their ability to cope. Stress occurs in a wide range of work circumstances but is often made worse when employees feel they have little support from supervisors and colleagues and where they have little control over work or how they can cope with its demands and pressures.
There is often confusion between pressure or challenge and stress and sometimes it is used to excuse bad management practice. Pressure at the workplace is unavoidable due to the demands of the contemporary work environment. Pressure perceived as acceptable by an individual, may even keep workers alert, motivated, able to work and learn, depending on the available resources and personal characteristics. However, when that pressure becomes excessive or otherwise unmanageable it leads to stress. Stress can damage your workers’ health and your business performance.
Stress results from a mismatch between the demands and pressures on the person, on the one hand, and their knowledge and abilities, on the other. It challenges their ability to cope with work. This includes not only situations where the pressures of work exceed the worker’s ability to cope but also where the worker’s knowledge and abilities are not sufficiently utilised and that is a problem for them. A healthy job is likely to be one where the pressures on employees are appropriate in relation to their abilities and resources, to the amount of control they have over their work, and to the support they receive from people who matter to them. As health is not merely the absence of disease or infirmity but a positive state of complete physical, mental and social well-being (WHO, 1986), a healthy working environment is one in which there is not only an absence of harmful conditions but an abundance of health promoting ones. These may include continuous assessment of risks to health, the provision of appropriate information and training on health issues and the availability of health promoting organizational support practices and structures. A healthy work environment is one in which staff have made health and health promotion a priority and part of their working lives.
What causes stress?
Poor work organisation, that is the way we design jobs and work systems, and the way we manage them, can cause work stress. Excessive and otherwise unmanageable demands and pressures can be caused by poor work design, poor management and unsatisfactory working conditions. Similarly, these things can result in workers not receiving sufficient support from others or not having enough control over their work and its pressures.
Research findings show that the most stressful type of work is that which values excessive demands and pressures that are not matched to workers’ knowledge and abilities, where there is little opportunity to exercise any choice or control, and where there is little support from others. The more the demands and pressures of work are matched to the knowledge and abilities of workers, the less likely they are to experience work stress. The more support workers receive from others at work, or in relation to
work, the less likely they are to experience work stress. The more control workers have over their work and the way they do it and the more they participate in decisions that concern their jobs, the less likely they are to experience work stress. Most of the causes of work stress concern the way work is designed and the way in which organisations are managed. Because these aspects of work have the potential for causing harm, they are called Stress-related Hazards
Stress-related Hazards
Work Content:
Job Content
• Monotonous, under-stimulating, meaningless tasks
• Lack of variety
• Unpleasant tasks
• Aversive tasks
Workload and Work pace
• Having too much or too little to do
• Working under time pressures
Working Hours
• Strict and inflexible working schedules
• Long and unsocial hours
• Unpredictable working hours
• Badly designed shift systems
Participation and Control
• Lack of participation in decision making
• Lack of control (for example, over work methods,
work pace, working hours and the work
environment)
Work Context:
Career Development, Status and Pay
• Job insecurity
• Lack of promotion prospects
• Under-promotion or over-promotion
• Work of ‘low social value’
• Piece rate payments schemes
• Unclear or unfair performance evaluation systems
• Being over-skilled or under-skilled for the job
Role in the Organisation
• Unclear role
• Conflicting roles within the same job
• Responsibility for people
• Continuously dealing with other people and their problems
Interpersonal Relationships
• Inadequate, inconsiderate or unsupportive
supervision
• Poor relationships with co-workers
• Bullying, harassment and violence
• Isolated or solitary work
• No agreed procedures for dealing with problems
or complaints
Organisational Culture
• Poor communication
• Poor leadership
• Lack of clarity about organisational objectives and
structure
Home-Work Interface
• Conflicting demands of work and home
• Lack of support for domestic problems at work
• Lack of support for work problems at home
The effects of workstress on individuals
Stress affects different people in different ways. The experience of work stress can cause unusual and dysfunctional behaviour at work and contribute to poor physical and mental health. In extreme cases, long-term stress or traumatic events at work may lead to psychological problems and be conductive to psychiatric disorders resulting in absence from work and preventing the worker from being able to work again. When under stress, people find it difficult to maintain a healthy balance between work and non- work life. At the same time, they may engage in unhealthy activities, such as smoking drinking and abusing drugs. Stress may also affect the immune system, impairing people’s ability to fight infections.
When affected by work stress people may:
• become increasingly distressed and irritable
• become unable to relax or concentrate
• have difficulty thinking logically and making decisions
• enjoy their work less and feel less committed to it
• feel tired, depressed, anxious
• have difficulty sleeping
• experience serious physical problems, such as:
- heart disease,
- disorders of the digestive system,
- increases in blood pressure, headaches,
- musculo-skeletal disorders (such as low back pain and upper limb disorders)
Work stress is thought to affect organisations by:
• increasing absenteeism
• decreasing commitment to work
• increasing staff turn-over
• impairing performance and productivity
• increasing unsafe working practices and accident rates
• increasing complaints from clients and customers
• adversely affecting staff recruitment
• increasing liability to legal claims and actions by stressed workers
• damaging the organisation’s image both among its workers and externally
The effects of workstress on organisations
If key staff or a large number of workers are affected, work stress may challenge the healthiness and performance of their organisation. Unhealthy organisations do not get the best from their workers and this may affect not only their performance in the increasingly competitive market but eventually even their survival.
