Canada's National Occupational Health & Safety Resource (2000) defined Job stress as the harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when requirements of the job do not match the capabilities, resources, or needs of the worker
Stress Intervention
The word “STRESS” is never new to us as it inevitably comes into every walks of our life. We feel tension and anxiety when we are experiencing difficulties in dealing with family issues, workloads, relationships, studies and etc.
Some people may feel little or no stress whereas others feel hard to handle on a similar matter as individual adaptation and experiences are different. When stress results in good consequences which provides us with motivation to meet our daily challenges, produces personal growth, we call it eustress. Whereas, stress which causes detrimental effect on our body, we call it distress (Ivancevich, 2001:544). However, we should not allow stress to build up because it can produce tensions which are serious enough to interfere with our normal daily activities. Recent studies have also shown that too much stress will impact greatly on our overall health. This would eventually affect individual performance.
Canada’s National Occupational Health & Safety Resource (2000) defined Job stress as the harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when requirements of the job do not match the capabilities, resources, or needs of the worker.
There are different signs and symptoms that can indicate a person is having difficulty in coping with the level of stress. People who are at stress may experience physical impact such as headaches, insomnia, chest pain, indigestion, and frequent illnesses and there are also signs of behavioural differences such as absenteeism, reckless driving, use of excessive drugs, procrastination, withdrawal / isolations from others. Psychologically, some people might also have problems such as irritability, depression, frustration, hypersensitivity, lack of concentration and apathy.
Connor & Worley (1991) state that change in work responsibilities, processes or products; in the equipment or technology used; or even as a result of being relocated within the same organization will inevitably impact on employees with certain level of stress. This job stress results from the interaction of the worker and the conditions of work. It is a conflict between job demands on the employees and the amount of control an employee has over meeting these demands. Air traffic controllers, nurses, doctors, teachers and bus drivers are just some examples of many stressful occupations. In general, workplace stress exists when there is a high demand in a job and little amount of control over the situation. It impacts on both employers and employees.
Connor & Worley (1991) also state that employees often experience different type of role conflicts (role related stressors) in organization. Most of us experience some inter-role conflict because our work time or behaviour conflicts with non-work role expectations. At times inter-role conflict occurs when individual receives contradictory messages from different people. For example, boss wants us as a team leader to take greater control over the team’s decisions, whereas employees on the team urge us to give them more freedom. There is also existence of person role conflict when we must demonstrate emotions (e.g. compassion) toward a client even though we do not actually feel so. Employees at times face role ambiguity as they are
uncertain about their job duties, performance expectations, level of authority, and other job conditions.
Organizational downsizing is a stressor not only for those who lose their jobs, but for the survivors. When company reduce workforce, workload has severe impact on employees. Some employees are given more tasks and fewer resources or time to complete them. They also experience job insecurity and loss of friends at work. Restructuring, privatization, mergers and other forms reorganization are stressful because employees face increased job insecurity, uncertain work demands and new forms of interpersonal conflict. Less commonly, work underload also cause stress to employees when they receive too little work or given tasks that do not make sufficient use of their skills or knowledge.
Nykodym & George (1989) commented that career women would face added pressure of being traditional homemaker, mother and supportive wife in addition to working at their chosen profession. They then have to deal with the stress and perhaps the guilt of not being the “perfect” wife, mother and homemaker.
Workplace violence, sexual harassment and bullying are significant interpersonal stressors in some industries. Employees who experience violence, bully or harassment usually have symptoms of distress after the event. A study reported that the greatest cause of work-related stress among British bus drivers is their perceived risk of physical assault. Australian studies estimate that almost three quarters of victims experience or seek counselling for depression, fatigue, sleep disorders and higher blood pressure after the event of workplace bullying (McShane & Travaglione, 2003:229).
Researches over 50 years of study concluded “environmental factors also dictate a person’s reactions to stress include the ability to cope, the length and duration of the stressful event, and the intensity of the stress level reached” (Nykodym & George 1989:1). Performance deteriorates when there is increased workload or environmental stress from temperature, noise, or bad lighting.
The cost of stress take many forms – these include absenteeism, higher medical costs, staff turnover and associated cost to recruit and train new staff, possible violence at work – this would result in reduction of productivity and efficiency.
A recent study (International Labour Organization, 2001a) showed us some estimates related to the cost of work-related stress. In United Kingdom, over 40 million working days are lost each year due to stress-related disorders; in Australia, the Federal Assistant Minister for Industrial relations estimated the cost of occupational stress to be around A$30 million in 1994; and in United States of America, more than half of 550 million working days lost each year due to absenteeism which were related to stress.
