People and Organisations

 There are usually limited channels in which employees can express their view. Wagner and Hollenbeck (2003)3 argue “ having voice provides employees with an active, Constructive outlet for their work frustration”. Their argument suggests that since opinions, views and feelings cannot be expressed to anyone to change the current situation, there would be an accumulation of anger and frustration within individual. Up to a certain point, the anger would be released, usually at the wrong person or time, such as colleagues, client etc.  

Robin Fincham and Peter Rhodes (1999)4 also argues in his book that “job such as selling or negotiating carry boundary- spanning pressure” it can be clearly seen from this argument that there are roles which involves activities of the organisation which seem to carry higher than average level of stress.

When employees of an organisation feel stressed, their well-being is negatively affected. They don’t feel good, and this has a direct affect on the organisation. The organisation effect can include, high absenteeism and staff turnover, Interdepartmental conflict, Deterioration in industrial relation, Reduction in long-term productivity and General dissatisfaction, low morale and poor work performance. The more damaging affects include Pervasive negativity, lack of organisational commitment, destruction and ultimately organisational breakdown.

Management role in reducing work stress, employee’s stress can have an enormous impact on organisation in terms of cost. As many studies have shown, there is a high correlation between stress and job performance. Rowland Goodwin (1976)5 clearly state in his book that “it is belief of some mangers that a degree is necessary within working environment in order to get the best out of people”. He is indicating that at moderate levels, stress is beneficial in that it can cause individuals to perform their job better and attain higher job performance. However, at high levels, stress can decrease productivity of organisation instead as well as well as mental and physical health of individual within organisation. Rowland Goodwin (1976) also argues this issue as he outline at end of his book that “I believe stress to be potentially damaging to mental and physical health and to the best-laid scheme of the most financially astute boards of director”.

 Reduction of employees stress as an organisation policy the first step any organisation should take to help its employees reduce and cope with stress is to incorporate into the company policies a positive and specific intent on reducing undue stress. This would indicate top management is committed to such a stress reduction program. Managers are required to provide personal counselling to employees to identify undue stress level and then to advice and corrective measures for individual.

Managers should be clear about their expectation of employees and clearly convey these expectations to each person. Warr (1998)6 argues “both personality and job characteristic and job complexity mediate between self evaluation and job satisfaction”. Secondly mangers should device a performance evaluation feedback system such that each employee would be aware of his/her performance level based on the feedback received. Therefore communication management’s expectation in as organisation, it would appear that all employees have a clear understanding of their roles they were hired for and the duties expected of them, management should communicate its expectation to employees whether as a group or as individuals. Since increased communication is the primary solution in this case. Management should also promote working environment where employees are encouraged to voice their concern, question etc to their respective superiors. Mangers themselves, should adapt a managing style that is sensitive and responsive to employees stress. Communication of Management expectation can be achieved by analysing each role in the organisation to clarify priorities and resolve conflict between roles. This approach would first, clarify any ambiguity an employee may have about his/her position. Secondly, it effectively eliminates the stress from not knowing what or how much to do. Informing employees of their job expectation by managers is only the beginning to reduce stress level. Employees also require feedback from their performance measures. A middle manager or team leader’s role could entail many different responsibilities and duties such as managing, co-ordinating, leading, planning etc.

Despite a detailed job description when the individual was hired, there often exists a cloud of ambiguity as to what the position exactly encompasses given the wide-ranging scope of the position. Work stress arises as a result of this because employees would be distressed over uncertainty of the sufficiency of their tasks in relevance to their position and role. Furthermore, employees may not be clear as to the amount of work expected of him or her. When employees do not know how much effort they should commit to their job in order to satisfy their superior’s expectation, a certain level of employees work stress would arise in that individual would be constantly worried about the adequacy of his/her level of effort. In essence, employees need to know exactly the task expected of them and the level of effort to put into those tasks.

From time to time managers need to carry out training programs to provide employees with a broader and skills enabling them to better handle the experience from their roles. Employee’s stress is often caused by the lack of skills or knowledge to meet designated objectives and goals. These programs usually takes on two forms – knowledge- based development and skills-based-development programs usually involve a conference or seminar where the aim is to broaden the attendees’ knowledge of a certain topic such as informatics’ seminar briefing employees on the latest networking technologies. The knowledge gained from such programs may or may not be utilised in the everyday job routines of employees. Alternatively, skill-based development programs focus on training employees to become more proficient in the use of certain behaviours such as assertiveness training. While job-training programs can reduce work stress, there are essentially three conditions to its success. First, the job training much is required by the employees. No benefit would be derived if an employees trained for something that is not relevant to the work he/she performs everyday. Secondly management must discourage any perception by employees that training programs are a form of reward or punishment, or else the entire purpose of the training initiative would be lost and also the preparation is required to benefit fully from the program. However Rowland Goodwin (1976)7 argues “in addition to training about stress at work, the solution to the problem may require a fundamental change both in the behaviour of management and unions and in the way institution are organised”. His argument is that training is to enough to solve the problem of employees stress alternative to training programs managers need to change their behaviour toward their employees in way that their employees would be happy with and stress less.  

Work stress places a very high toll on both employees and employers. An employee subject to high levels of stress could experience both physical and mental side effects. Physical side effects such as hypertension, coronary disease, infections, ulcers could greatly decrease the lifespan of the person. The psychological effect such as repressed emotions, anger, and isolation has a direct negative impact on organisational productivity. Therefore the managers in an organisation have great responsibilities in reducing the stress of their employees, and in general are concerned about their well-being. There are numerous methods to counter the stress problem. The First step for management is to set out the intention to reduce employee stress in as an organisation goal. Provisions detailing the organisation’s planned approach should be drafted. Informing employees of management’s expectation is one method to reduce a large portion of the anxiety employees may have about their jobs. Secondly, management must provide subordinates feedback on their performance. Management should also provide job training for all employees to enable them to better perform their jobs and reduce the stress associated with the feeling of inadequacy to perform one’s duties.