With reference to relevant theories, describe what the main sources of stress at work are in general and as a student

University Degree Education and Teaching

With reference to relevant theories, describe what the main sources of stress at work are in general? Do any of these apply to you as a student? If so, what could you do to alleviate it?

There are a lot of definitions of stress and there are also various angles that you can look from at stress – for example you could look at it focusing on the social and psychological effects, human factors or from the pschophysiological and neuroscience perspective. In my opinion, the best definition of stress gives Richard S Lazarus by saying that 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” (see picture), as this is how I often feel as a student. As you will see from this essay, a lot of stress factors experienced at work, also apply to us as students and the methods to reduce stress at work can also be helpful for us to cope better with university life. There are three main stressors: role stressors, decision making stressors and workplace stressors.

A role stress factor that is probably best known to students is the work role transition, which occurs when a person stars a new job facing uncertainty in a completely new environment. Without a predecessor there is no help available from other the socialization into the role happens informally and randomly. When I started university I was obviously nervous and worried about how I am going to cope with studies and the new environment and whether I am going to find friends. However, it did not stress me because I knew that everyone is going to be in the same situation as me and that I surely will find people who are already in their second year and that they will help me and provide me with useful information on student and academic life. Bunce and West (1994) found out that while some find these conditions as traumatic and stressful, others (like me) see them as an opportunity for personal growth and role innovation. In addition to that Janssen (2000) suggests that role innovation was “an extremely effective way for someone to improve their fit against increased job demands, either by changing themselves or by generating ideas to modify the work environment.”

Another important role stress factor is role ambiguity. A role is the behaviour that others expect from you; therefore, people experiencing role ambiguity don’t know what others expect from them due to a lack of information. Sources of information could be peers, managers, subordinates and even people from outside of the organisation like customers and suppliers. Role ambiguity can lead to reduced organisational commitment, reduced job satisfaction, increased tension, anxiety and intention to leave the organisation. Role ambiguity is very likely to be experienced by students before exams. Students that lack information (e.g. they did not go to revision sessions, did not work through the specimen paper, didn’t talk to friends and lecturers etc.) will be very unsure about what is expected from them. Personally, I try to find out as much as possible about what is going to be expected from me in the exams in order to be able to prepare myself in the best possible way. Nevertheless, you obviously never know what exactly is going to be asked in the exam so some level of uncertainty remains and this might be a huge stress factor to students. However, every individual has a different perception of stress and not all students need structure, thus some of them can tolerate high levels of ambiguity and like to ‘play by ear’.

Boundary-spanning roles are stress factors that occur in roles that involve negotiating and sales or even diplomatic service and national representation. It can be stressful because these roles involve taking activities outside of the organisation which means performing a complex task in a changing environment and being exposed to new and unanticipated problems. I personally did not face that problem, but I know a lot of students who are members of student (business) societies where they have to represent their university in front of other universities and businesses. Those students experience stress because it is a huge responsibility and is ...

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Experiencing a multiple role conflict means that demands of one role clash with those of other roles and most frequently it is a conflict between home and work. Various researches have been investigating this aspect of stress. Cooper et al (2001) found out that the boundaries between home and work nowadays are blurred by the use of mobile phones, emails and laptops, which means that work extends into home life and the other way round. Finegan (2000) found out that home-work interface can conflict in ways less obvious that demand on time and priorities e.g. the values an individual brings with him or her from home can conflict with those the organisation stands for and a lack of it will impact the commitment. I and a lot of my friends, we found ourselves in a multiple role conflict when trying to organize life at university in the first couple of weeks. The student him/herself expects to have a fun time, whereas the university and his parents expect him to study hard and some parents expect from their children that they find a job. As I started university I found it very stressful because my expectations and those others had from me definitely did clash. Because I was working and studying to please my parents (and lecturers’) expectations, I did not have time to fulfil my own expectations and have fun and enjoy myself and relax which really stressed me.

The broadest aspect of role stress is entrapment which occurs when individuals feel trapped in their roles. This is mostly common in large organisations where people think that because of a lack of job opportunities or under qualification, they can’t take another job. However, I as a student also felt entrapped in the stress situation described above. Obviously there is no other way than studying to obtain the degree and I also found it hard to find another, less demanding job. When this occurs, an individual usually experiences burnout – frustration, apathy and the replacement of positive feeling towards the job (or university) by only negative ones. Due to Maslach et al. (1996) and Schutte et al. (2000), burnout is an extreme emotional state involving emotional exhaustion (an individual’s emotional resources are inadequate facing emotionally demanding problems), depersonalization (an individual feels indifference towards work and clients, seeing the clients as objects and work as just something they have to do) and reduced personal accomplishment (individuals feel like they don’t achieve anything and have negative expectations of his/her own performance across work tasks). For a student this might result in dropping out of university if the situation does not change.

As you can see, the main underlying reason for any of these stressors is uncertainty. A way of alleviating it is making decisions, however, this process also involves stress and may reduce the quality of the decision making process. Janis (1982) has found out that individuals display one of five decision making styles when attempting to deal with decisional stress. The behaviour can be unchanged and information about the risks of continuing in the same way ignored (incoflicted adherence) or the most salient/most strongly recommended course of action is adopted uncritically, without any contingency plans and psychological preparation for setbacks (unconflicted change), or the individual hesitates only to choose the easiest way out, ignoring information that suggest that the decision might be wrong (defensive avoidance). Other styles would be to frantically search for a way out and taking upon any plan that could deliver a quick solution (hypervigilance) or carefully research the relevant information in order to appraise of all the alternatives before taking a decision (vigilance). Cameron and Meichenbaum (1982) have developed an approach called stress inoculation, which is used by many psychologists in courses which are supposed to help people understanding decision-making stress and how to cope with it. The program consists of three stages: conceptualization, skill acquisition and activation and rehearsal and application.

To me it was very important to take decisions in order to not be so stressed anymore. After a couple of weeks of ignoring the problem (incoflicted adherence), I quit my job after realizing that I have earned enough money to enjoy myself without worrying myself and my parents about the budget and therefore gaining more time for studying (vigilance).

There is a third group of stressors that is connected to the workplace. There are various aspects that can cause stress and affect an individual’s performance. Poor work design and poor work management alongside with environmental stressors (e.g. noise, light, temperature etc.) can affect a worker’s mental well-being. The wrong level of stimulation (under- and over-stimulation) can also lead to stress and result in apathy, boredom, reduced level of motivation (Caplan et al. 1975), absenteeism and medical symptoms such as back pain, ulcers, skin disorders, hypertension and respiratory complaints. In addition to that, time pressure and deadlines lead to long working hours and excessive work loads and as a result of that to stress and increased alcohol and cigarette consumption, depression, low self-esteem, coronary heart disease and burnout. The demand-control model by Karasek (1979) suggests that a demanding job combined with a high level of control creates a challenging role, whereas the same amount of demand without control leads to stress. Zohar (1977) found out that little things like workplace hassles – e.g. missing equipment, contributed significantly to burnout caused by stress. The probably most important impact on stress is an individual’s relationship with co-workers. Dorman and Zapf (2002) found out that social stressors impacted on irritability and depression. Social stressors can range from low-level animosities through unfair treatment to the most extreme behaviour of bullying and harassment.

This is why it is very important for students to obtain as much information as possible about the university they are applying to before actually going there. Through open days and talking to friends and family a prospective student should get enough information about the studying and living conditions in order to make the right decision. Unfortunately, there are no precautions that can prevent negative social experiences, so this might remain as a stressor.

After finding out that life is not only stressful when you are already a working grown-up but also when you are a student, the main question arising is how to beat stress. In working life, there are two approaches to stress management – by individual and by organisational strategies. As individuals, we develop our own coping strategies according to our personality (see next paragraph) and our organisational values (e.g. Kinicki et al. 1996). Researchers (e.g. Folkman and Lazarus 1980 or Guppy et al. 2004) have found out, that we develop one out of three coping strategies. If our strategy is appraisal focused, we logically analyse what is worrying us by trying to find the causes (logical analysis) or we simple accept the situation and try to find something positive in it (cognitive redefinition). Another opportunity is to simply deny the problem (cognitive avoidance). If our strategy is problem focused, we tend to obtain guidance by talking about the problem or we take direct action by role innovation (Bunce and West 1996, Janssen 2000) which suggests that we apply new skills and procedures in order to improve our performance or we change some features of our work environment for example by developing alternative easier rewards to rewards that are difficult to obtain. A strategy that is emotion focused would involve affective regulation (which means that we would try to avoid paying attention to our problems) or resigned acceptance (where we accept the situation and expect the worst to happen), using palliatives (such as smoking, daydreaming, taking a day off etc.) or by emotional discharge (e.g. losing temper and violence) which usually makes the situation worse.

In an organisation, managers can focus on strategies which are organisational (also known as primary) or individual (also known as secondary). Organisational focus would involve: organizing the work task and the work environment (e.g. improving communications, defining work roles, ensuring manageable workloads), applicant screening and selection, career guidance, continuous training, promotion and transfer screening, mentoring and coaching, courses aimed at management to improve management skills, sick-leave policy, staff attitude surveys, career and succession planning strategies. Individual approaches would mean that the employee him/herself has to obtain a specific medical examination before starting the job, gain information on stress covering nutrition and weight control, smoking, alcohol and caffeine reduction, exercise and take part in sportive activities on a regular basis, seek for support after traumatic events e.g. in form of individual counselling, obtain training in determination, obtain biofeedback, motivate himself e.g. by believing in himself, obtain training in imagery skills, try progressive muscle relaxation. Both approaches are important, as for example many stressors cannot be designed out of organisations e.g. deadlines, certain structures and practices and therefore the employees have to reduce their stress level themselves. There is a lot of support for students experiencing stress. Each university at least provides advice on how to cope with stress and most of the time, the advice is to relax: Do some enjoyable activities whenever possible, take a short break after meals to relax, take breaks during the workday to relax, if you notice tension in your body during the day, take a minute to breathe deeply, stretch and relax etc. If you apply the organisational approach to reducing stress then you notice that the university is trying its best to improve studying conditions in order to reduce the stress factor for students. However, just like in organisations, some stressors like coursework deadlines or tests can’t be removed completely so it’s up to the student how he deals with stress reduction – e.g. by time management or following the advices given by the university.

As you can see, there are various factors that might stress a student as well as an employee in a business. However, what affect these stressors have on an individual and how they are dealt with depends on the individual itself and his personality. There is for example the negative affectivity (NA) theory - scoring high on a NA scale (through tests) means experiencing more pessimism and therefore more negative moods. Therefore, there is a direct link between NA and stress: because of having a more negative view of the world, pessimistic individuals tend to identify more stressors in the environment. It also depends on the fact whether the individual has got a Type A or Type B personality. Type A people display that behaviour: strong and sustained drive to achieve poorly defined and self imposed goals, intense desire to compete, desire for recognition and promotion, involvement in numerous and varied activities which have deadlines, habitually fast completion of physical and mental functions, high levels of mental and physical alertness. The motivational basis for all this is the need for control so lack of it causes frustration and therefore stress. In extreme cases, type A behaviour involves tense facial and body muscle tone, rapid body movements, hand- or teeth-clenching, excessive gesturing and explosive speech characteristics. Type B individuals display less striving, aggression, hostility and competitiveness and is in general more relaxed. The risk factor in the type A group for CHD is some six times larger than that for type B (Rosenman et al. 1975).

Bibliography

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