Introduction
Stress refers to “a condition or a feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources that he or she can mobilize.” Thus, stress is essentially a strain that can be emotional, physical, or mental. Occupational stress normally occurs when an employee is not able to manage the demands of his or her workplace. Stress has severe health effects and can even cause death.
Occupational stress is one of the major causes of low productivity among employees. In the context of occupational behavior, stress affects employees’ relationships, motivation, and attitude towards work.
It is against this backdrop that most organizations have put in place elaborate measures to prevent and to manage stress. However, research reveals that not all measures taken to manage stress are effective. Thus, the objective of this paper is to analyze the approaches used by individuals and organizations to manage stress.
Approaches used by Organizations
The following strategies are commonly used by organizations to prevent and to manage stress. First, most organizations focus on establishing effective management structures and strengthening their leadership. This involves defining the chain of commands, as well as, the relationships among employees.
A clear chain of command helps employees to avoid the stress that can result from uncertainty about the reporting system and sources of authority in the organization. Most managers believe that access to supervisors can help employees to manage stress. This premise is based on the assumption that supervisors have solutions to work-related causes of stress.
Lack of adequate tools and materials that are necessary for the execution of a given task is one of the major causes of occupational stress. In the context of organizational behavior, employees will not be willing to perform certain tasks if they lack the necessary tools and materials.
For example, lack of protective equipment is a major cause of stress and low productivity in factories. Consequently, most organizations focus on providing adequate tools and materials to prevent stress.
It is apparent that effective management cannot be used on its own to manage stress. Whereas a clear chain of command can help in preventing the stress that might occur due to uncertainty about the reporting structure, it cannot address other causes of stress such as workload.
Access to supervisors might not help to manage or prevent stress. This is because some supervisors might lack solutions to the causes of stress. In some cases, the supervisors might be victims of stress who are not ready to offer emotional support to others.
Second, stress can be prevented by defining a clear purpose and goals at the organization level. This involves setting achievable goals and defining stress management interventions that are appropriate for each assignment. The purpose and goals of organizational stress management strategies must be reviewed periodically.
Some organizations provide counseling services to their employees in order to manage work-related stress. In addition, staff training and development programs often encourage employees to define limits and seek assistance or make referrals whenever they face difficulties. The main strength of this strategy is that setting achievable goals helps employees to avoid stress that can occur due to excessive workload.
Furthermore, periodic assessment of stress management strategies provides opportunities for improvements. Concisely, it enables organizations to identify the weaknesses of their interventions in order to make timely corrections. One factor that limits the application of this strategy is that it over depends on the organizational structure.
In a democratic organization, achievable goals can be set through consultations between the management and the employees. However, unrealistic goals are often set in autocratic organizations due to inadequate consultations, thereby perpetuating stress. Furthermore, lack of adequate funds can limit the ability of the organization to review existing stress management strategies and to make the necessary improvements.
Third, stress can be managed through functionally defined roles. In this case, staff orientation and training programs are based on written role descriptions in order to avoid uncertainty among employees. Some managers focus on redesigning jobs in order to entrust employees with more responsibilities and meaningful work.
Similarly, jobs can be redesigned in order to increase employees’ autonomy and ability to give feedback concerning their work. This helps in reducing stress by improving employees’ control over their work and reducing their reliance on others. However, giving employees more responsibilities can cause stress rather than reducing it.
Concisely, an increase in responsibilities leads to high workload, which eventually causes more stress. Similarly, high autonomy can be a cause of stress if employees are not sure of how to play their roles in the organization. Self-confidence is one of the factors that determine organizational behavior.
Employees who lack confidence are prone to stress because they will not be able to use their autonomy to play their roles effectively. Research indicates that some employees are not interested in enriched jobs. In this regard, stress management involves giving employees less responsibilities and improving their specialization.
The problem with this approach is that reducing the responsibilities of an employee might not be possible due to the nature of the task to be completed and human resource constraints.
For example, it is not practical to reduce the responsibilities of employees in organizations that are understaffed. Similarly, improving employees’ specialization might not be possible if the task to be completed requires multitasking.
Finally, organizations manage stress by providing team support. This involves using baddy systems to provide emotional support to victims of stress and to monitor their response to coping strategies. Teamwork also provides opportunities for informal consultations, as well as, sharing of resources and ideas. This helps in preventing stress because it improves employees’ ability to solve problems and to perform their duties.
Additionally, improved communication within a team helps to reduce stress by eliminating role ambiguity and conflicts. The success of this strategy heavily depends on the ability of the organization to build effective teams. Team building is often a serious challenge in most organizations due to the behavior of employees.
Teams are likely to be ineffective if organizational behavior encourages individualism, high competition, and mistrust among employees. In this case, team support will not be an effective way of providing stress management support.
Managing Stress at the Individual Level
First, stress can be avoided through effective workload management strategies. Employees can avoid stress by setting priorities for their jobs using realistic work plans. These plans define the goals that must be achieved and the tasks that must be completed within the set timeline. In addition, employees can delegate existing workload in order to avoid straining themselves.
One of the strengths of effective workload management is that it prevents the stress that might occur due to physical and mental fatigue. However, employees’ ability to manage their workload depends on the work environment. In most cases, managers and supervisors assign duties to their juniors. Thus, junior employees have little say on the amount of workload that they must manage on a daily basis.
Besides, most junior employees have little or no authority to delegate tasks to their colleagues. In this case, stress will still be a problem in the organization even if the employees have effective workload management skills.
Second, maintaining a balanced lifestyle can help employees to manage stress. Employees can maintain a balanced lifestyle by changing their behaviors. The strategies for maintaining a balanced lifestyle include engaging in regular physical exercise, getting enough sleep, and eating nutritious foods. Additionally, a balanced lifestyle can be achieved by maintaining contact with primary social support groups.
These groups are important sources of information concerning the strategies for maintaining a balanced lifestyle and managing stress. Recent research findings indicate that physical exercise and eating nutritious foods is an effective way of managing stress. However, the application of this strategy is often limited by resource constrains and inadequate information.
Concisely, most employees do not have access to facilities such as gymnasiums and sports grounds due to inadequate income or lack of these facilities. In addition, high workload limits the amount of time that employees can dedicate to physical exercise. Similarly, most people eat junk foods rather than nutritious foodstuffs due to inadequate income.
In some cases, employees eat junk foods because they lack information concerning the health implications of consuming such foodstuffs. These factors limit individuals’ ability to manage stress by maintaining a balanced lifestyle.
Third, conventional measures can help individuals to reduce stress. One of the conventional measures involves altering situations that cannot be avoided. This involves expressing one’s feelings in an open and respectful manner in order to address problems that cause stress. Additionally, individuals should be assertive and willing to compromise. Another conventional strategy involves adapting to the stressor.
Being able to adapt to the stressor is a useful skill in situations in which eliminating the cause of stress is not possible. Adapting to stressors involves reframing problems, adjusting one’s standards or expectations and being optimistic. The application of conventional approaches to stress management depends on organizational behavior.
For instance, employees are likely to adapt to stressful situations if they have a positive attitude towards their work, and they are willing to take risks to adjust to the prevailing conditions at the workplace. In this regard, failure to reinforce supportive organizational behavior can limit employees’ ability to adapt to stressors.
Finally, practicing self-awareness can help employees to reduce or prevent stress. In this case, individuals should be able to identify early warning signs and take timely precautionary actions. Thus, the individual must be aware of stress symptoms and how to respond to them. Additionally, individuals must be ready and willing to seek help from others in order to manage stress.
The main strength of this strategy is that it can help in managing stress at an early stage, thereby preventing complications that might arise if stress persists for long. However, lack of information concerning stress symptoms and how to access immediate intervention limits individuals’ ability to practice self-awareness.
Conclusion
Stress occurs when individuals are not able to manage the demands in their workplaces and private lives. Stress is a major concern in most organizations because it lowers productivity and negatively affects the health of employees. Stress also influences organizational behavior through its negative effects on employees’ motivation and attitude towards work.
The approaches used by organizations to manage stress include establishing effective management structures, and providing team support. The approaches used at the individual level include managing workload, maintaining a balanced lifestyle and adapting to stressors. Effective stress management calls for elimination of the weaknesses that are associated with these strategies.
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