- Difference between strategy, a vision and a mission?
- Sources of Stress
Stress is a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.
Stress is a part of every people daily life. Leaving home or commuting daily, managing finances, living with roommates, juggling work, and relationships all contribute to the normal stress of being a human. In addition, it is not uncommon for human being to feel stressed and anxious about wasting time, meeting high standards, or being lonely. Stress can also come from exciting or positive events. Falling in love, preparing to study abroad, or buying a car can be just as stressful as less-happy events.
Stress because of job comes in different forms and affects the worker mind and body in different ways. Small things can make worker feel stressed, such as a copy machine that never seems to work when he or she need it or phones that won't quit ringing. Major stress comes from having too much or not enough work or doing work that doesn't satisfy the employee. Conflicts with boss, coworkers, or customers are other major causes of stress.
It's normal to have some stress. Stress releases hormones that speed up the heart, make the breathe faster, and give the worker a burst of energy. Stress can be useful when you need to focus on or finish a big project. But too much stress or being under stress for too long isn't good for employee. Constant stress can make worker more likely to get sick more often. It can also lead to long-term health problems such as , , back problems, and .
How does it affect workplace?
Workplace stress is the harmful physical and emotional response that occurs when there is a poor match between job demands and the capabilities, resources, or needs of the worker.
The health effects of stress in the workplace have become a cause of serious concern – not only for employees, but for the employers as well. Stress prompts the body to prepare itself and fight away the factors causing stress. This is a normal reaction of body for any stress producing condition, and triggers many changes in the body –also called fight or flight syndrome. The body bounces back to normal after these episodes of stress.
However, when such conditions are faced at the workplace, stress is endured by employees for long periods as job conditions don’t change immediately and stress in the workplace carries on for long periods of time. Such prolonged periods of stress affect the health of employees adversely and may cause some serious chronic diseases.
How does stress effect health?
- Cardiovascular Disease – The jobs that place employees under immense psychological pressure and where employees have little or no control over the work processes make them prone to Cardiovascular Disease.
- Musculoskeletal Disorders – Prolonged conditions of workplace stress increase the chances of employees developing musculoskeletal disorders of back and upper extremities.
- Psychological Disorders – Workplace stress causes burnout, anger, disturbed relations and other undesirable psychological conditions.
- Cancer, Ulcer and Impaired immune function – Going through long periods of stress in the workplace may give rise to Cancer, Ulcer and Impaired immune function.
- Injury at the workplace – Chances of workplace injury are more for the employees who are working under stressful job conditions.
- Select a company and identify departmentation structure it use. Draw an organizational chart for the company.
The company that I was chosen is using a Divisional Structure. A divisional structure that overlays functional groupings allows an organization to coordinate intergroup relationships more effectively than does a functional structure. Each product division contains the functions necessary to that service the specific goods or services it produces.
The advantage of this Divisional Structure is:
Quality products and customer service - Functions are able to focus their activities on a specific kind of good, service, or customer. This narrow focus helps a division to create high-quality products and provide high-quality customer service.
Facilitates teamwork - People are sometimes able to pool their skills and knowledge and brainstorm new ideas for products or improved customer service.
The disadvantage of the Divisional Structure is:
Poor communication between divisions - Divisional structures normally have more managers and more levels of management than functional structures have, communications problems can arise as various managers at various levels in various divisions attempt to coordinate their activities.
Conflicts among divisions - divisions may start to compete for organizational resources and may start to pursue divisional goals and objectives at the expense of organizational ones
- The Matrix Organization.
Matrix organizational structure is a technique of managing an organization or more commonly, part of an organization through a series of dual-reporting relationships instead of a more traditional linear management structure. In contrast to most other organizational structures, which arrange managers and employees by function or product, matrix management combines functional and product departments in a dual authority system. In its simplest form, a matrix configuration may be known as a cross-functional work team, which brings together individuals who report to different parts of the company in order to complete a particular project or task. The term "matrix" is derived from the representative diagram of a matrix management system, which resembles a rectangular array or grid of functions and product or project groups.
In a matrix organization, each project manager reports directly to the vice president and the general manager. Since each project represents a potential profit centre, the power and authority used by the project manager come directly from the general manager.
At a more detailed level the advantages that most organizations seek through using a matrix organization structure include
- Improved ability to access resources across the old functional and geographic silos.
- better coordination on shared technologies across the organization (such as IT)
- Improves access to a diverse range of skills and perspectives.
- improved global or regional projects
- increased communication and coordination across the business
- reflects the needs of global or regional customers
- Ideal for project based organization
- Resource sharing
- Better coordination between the team
- Better balance between time, cost and performance
- Shared authority and responsibility
- Minimization of project costs, due to sharing of resources.
- Minimization of conflicts
- Balance between time, cost and performance
- Sharing of authority and responsibility
- Stress distribution between the team
Disadvantages are:
- Two bosses can create conflict of authority
- Limited applicability
- This structure is suitable for the large organizations only.
- The complete responsibility of success or failure goes to the managers.
- This structure is more suitable for the project based organizations.
- Not suitable for small organizations
- Complete responsibility of the Manager for success or failure
- The team lead gets all the credit
- Suitable only for project based organization.
REFERENCES
1.http://www.google.com/sourceofstress
2.http://www.wikipedia.com/sourceofstress
3.http://www.JabatanBekalanAir.com.my
4.http://www.ProjectManagement.com
5.http://www.wikipedia.com
6.http://www.MatrixStructure.com