Executive Summary
Stress management is one of the important factors that should be maintained within a working place. Employees make very important part of the organization. They are the driving force within an organization. Success within the organization is always dependent on the ability of the employees to work effectively. It is therefore very important to ensure that the management eliminates any form of stress among the employees. Employees should feel free working within the organization. They should feel cared for and this will act as a motivation.
Management of stress may be a complex problem within an organization because it will force the management to have a close personal relationship with the employees. This may not be very easy, especially when the employees are numerous. It is very difficult to manage stress among employees when there is no personal relationship with each of them. The management should engage employees, and allow them the freedom to share their feelings freely with the management and among themselves.
The management should create a forum where employees can share their feelings, and enhance the ability to manage their stress. The management should also eliminate all the possibilities of creating more stress to the employees while at workplace. This will enhance the efficiency of the employees.
Introduction
The United Kingdom is one of the developed nations around the world. The economy of this country is run by large firms which operate in various cities within the United Kingdom. The cost of hiring and maintaining an employee in this country is relatively high (Bak 2004, p. 48).
The rate of employee turnover is also high because an employee can easily move from one firm to another if he or she feels that his interests are not taken care of. In this society, it is very important for the management of various firms and governmental organizations to take care of the interests of the employees (Ameragi 2009, p. 79).
The employees are the wheel of an organization. They always determine how efficient an organization will move within the rough and competitive road. Stress is one of the factors that have serious negative impact in the workplace. When the employees are stressed up, they always tend to be less effective. It is therefore important to manage employees’ stress levels within the organization (Basona 2002, p. 38).
In order to manage stress levels it is important to know the source of the stress. An employee may be stressed up because of domestic matters. Another main reason of stress is the work itself (Weiss, W 2011, p. 23). An employee may also be stressed because of ill-health.
Irrespective of the reason for the stress, the management should come up with mechanism of eliminating this stress. When the management realizes that the stress is caused by domestic issues, such an employees should be subjected to counseling, and if possibly, he should be allowed some time off work to solve the domestic problem (Badenhorst 2007, p, 117). This will eliminate possibility of the problem spilling into the work. Eliminating work related problems starts with eliminating all cases where an employee is assigned a wrong task (Tanke 2000, p. 89).
Tasks should be assigned based on the skills and experience of the employee. When an employee is assigned the wrong task, he may end stressed up trying to succeed in the assigned task. This should be eliminated. When the management realizes that an employee is ill, measures should be taken to help the employee get better. This way, it will be possible to eliminate stress at work to a great percentage (Belanger 2011, p. 71). This paper is focused on managing stress and enhancing performance at workplace in the United Kingdom.
Aim and Objectives
It is always important to set clear objectives of a research before starting the process of conducting the research itself (Bell 2001, p. 37). This helps in stating the path that the research will take. The following are some of the objectives of this research.
- To determine how the management can manage stress among the employees within the workplace.
- To determine if there is a relationship between stress management and work performance within the workplace.
- To bring a clear understanding of how the management can ensure that all forms of stress among the employees are detected and eliminated early enough.
Literature Review
Stress management has attracted the attention of many scholars in various fields. Most scholars accept the fact that employees are very important assert to the organization. Success or failure of the employees always depends on their capacity. It is there important that the management comes up with a strategy to manage stress. According to Soles (2010, p. 112), employees’ performance is always dependent on their capacity to handle stress. This scholar states that stress and performance are inseparable. An employee who is working under stress will most certainly underperform.
Although Shoult (2006, p. 18) argues that some employees can work well under stress, especially some women, this scholar appreciates that such performance can be improved if the agent of stress is eliminated. Stress at workplace can be very dangerous to a firm in the United Kingdom (Biswas 2011, p. 49).
Moving from one job to another is very easy. This act of employees moving from one firm to another is always very detrimental to the firm. When an employee moves away from a firm, he or she will be moving away with all the skills and experienced gained while working within the firm. It will take a very long time to engage a new employee o reach the level of the other who left (Drake 2007, p. 38). Firms therefore have the responsibility of eliminating all forms of stress that can make employees underperform, or even think of moving from the firm to another.
When managing stress among the employees, Rugg (2007) states that it is important to have an understanding of each employee within the firm. The management should create a forum where employee can share their feelings freely with their workmates and with their seniors. The management should create a team of employees who feel responsible for the well being of every member of the organization. Solving of stress should start at the lowest level possible (Gusti 2011, p. 78). An employee should engage a fellow employee over a feeling that he or she has towards a given assignment, ill health or domestic issues. Help should come from that low level, as it moves up.
The management should always be ready to listen to cases that stress up employees and be ready to come up with remedy (Shachaf 2008, p. 135). It is important for the management to realize the fact that success of employees is directly dependent on the ability of employees to work without any form of stress.
Methodology
This chapter focuses on various aspects of research development. It includes methods of data collection, its analysis and presentation procedures (Andrzej 2008, p. 117). Every research project applies a certain research method to achieve its objectives depending on its goals. In research, design deals primarily with aims, uses, purposes, intentions, and plans within the practical constraints of time, location, money, and availability of staff (Safizadeh 2003, p. 569).
In this study, respondents were briefed in advance. This was necessary to ensure that respondents were prepared psychologically for the task ahead (Andrzej & Buchaman 2007, p. 85). This would also help in ensuring that response was given in time to allow timely analysis. The study population was also amicably informed in order to get prepared for the study. Briefing was important because it could enhance reliability of the study. It is also ethical to inform people before researching on them (Roberts 2011, p. 110).
The findings were also made public to the researched as one way of ensuring morality in the study. Furthermore, the researcher observed researcher-researched ethics by keeping away from criticism. This chapter also focuses on the literature review as one of the methods used in collection of secondary sources of information. It gives the reason why literature review was used as a method to collect data.
The chapter gives an overview of the purpose of collecting and analyzing data and the basic questions used to gather the desired responses (Halel 2000, p. 58). Alternative methods of data collection are very important in research for they avail to the researcher a number of ways through which data can be collected.
Research philosophy
The process of interpreting a piece of research can always take a number of approaches (Anderson 2004, p. 27). Depending on the nature of the research, and the techniques of the researcher, the approach taken can be positivism, interpretivism, realism or pragmatism. Interpretism is always used when the subject is very complex and therefore can warrant investigation in absolute objective way. Realism always takes into consideration a mixed elementary philosophies (Poole 2009, p. 78). The researcher plans to use realism in this research.
Format for the questionnaire
There were two key methods that will be used to gather information in this dissertation. The first one will be through a questionnaire, which will be physically delivered to the respondents (Hong 1996, p. 505). The questionnaire will capture various attitudes of the respondents regarding their opinions on stress management and its relationship with employee work performance. The second source of information that will be used in the research is literature on various aspects of stress management and enhancing work performance.
The focus of the literature review will be to find information on the application of motivation techniques within the workplace and also to determine the current state of research in this field (Pietersen 2002, p. 28). The questionnaire had four parts.
The first part sought to capture the background information of respondents. The second part dealt with the demography and gender of the respondents. This was to ascertain the prevalence of views in various categories in order to ensure that if any differences came about, then they would be captured in their demographic space (Huning 2002, p. 77).
The third part dealt with academic credentials and work experience of the respondents. The motivation for this section came from the understanding that different sections of population respond differently to issues, based on age and academic credentials (Huy 2002, p. 56). The fourth part delved into the specific issues relating to stress management and employee work performance.
Sensitivity Analysis
In every research findings, the correctness is always very important because an action may be taken upon the findings and recommendations of a given research. In case the result deviates from the truth by a considerable wide margin, it can result into serious consequences, especially if the action taken is of great impact (Pielstick 1998, p. 38). However, it is worth appreciating that human being is prone to making errors in a number of occasions. This error can be in the process of input of the data or its analysis.
Whichever point it may arise from, the consequences of such errors may be adverse if action were to be taken upon its recommendation (Anderson 2009, p. 119). Sensitivity analysis is therefore important in mitigating such errors in a report. It helps in determining how robust a given research is.
In this study, the researcher appreciates the fact that such errors may occur. For this reason, there is need to develop measures that would help validate this research (Kousholt 2007, p. 79). Reliability and Validity studies below help further explain how this research ensured that it maintained correctness of the findings.
Validity
The validity of a measurement instrument can be measured by the degree to which the instrument measures accurately what it is supposed to measure In this survey, content validity was measured where the representativeness, or sampling adequacy, of the content of the measurement instrument was checked with the help of experts in the field (Murch 2004, p. 47).
In this study, the validity of the instruments was preserved ensuring the accuracy of the measurement where each variable’s indicators of existence were extracted solely from the literature of the work of previous researchers in well-established papers. The population characteristics, interaction of subject selection and research, descriptive explicitness of the independent variable, the effect of the research environment, researcher effects, data collection methodology, the effect of time have all been taken into account (Kouzes 2002, p. 20).
In this study, internal validity will be ensured through checking the representativeness of the sample. The researcher will ensure that the sample that will be used, captured all-important aspects relating to this topic. External validity will be ensured through triangulation that is, the researcher will use more than one technique in collecting data (Minja 2009, p. 73). Other than the questionnaire, the researcher will observe the two factors to assess if there was any relationship between them. External validity will also also guaranteed by asking respondents to give their views.
Reliability
Reliability means appropriateness, applicability and truthfulness of a study. It refers to the ability of research instruments to produce results that are in agreement with theoretical and conceptual values (Mellina 2002, p. 68). The consistency of the measure, the probability of obtaining the same results again if the measure was to be replicated is referred as reliability (Lewis 2006, p. 56). It is the relationship between the true underlying score and the observable score. Internal consistency is also important for the survey since it indicates the extent to which the items in the measurement are related to each other.
Conclusions
Stress management is very important within a firm. It is not easy for a firm to succeed if there is no clear means through which stress can be managed. Stress management will always affect the capacity of employees. This therefore means that there is a direct relationship between employees’ work performance, and stress management.
When stress is eliminated, employees will find it easy to perform their duties much easily. This will eliminate all forms of stress that employees might have (Manza 2009, p. 34). Basing on the arguments of a number of scholars whose works have been reviewed in the literature review, the researcher expects to confirm that stress management has direct relationship with work performance of the employees.
Action plan / Gantt chart
In every project, there must be a clear schedule that should be followed to ensure that it achieves its objectives (Kumer 2002, p. 56). This project should be completed within four months. The dissertation will be ready within four months. The Gantt chart below specifies the activities that will be carried out in this project.
The above Gantt chart demonstrates all the activities that should be accomplished within a specified duration. The activities should be accomplished within a time span of three months. The activities will start from January 2013, to April the same year.
List of References
Ameragi, B 2009, Stress management at workplace, Juta, Cape Town.
Anderson, J 2009, Assignment and thesis writing, Juta, Cape Town.
Anderson, P 2004, Research Methods in Human Resource Management, Chattered Institute of Personell Management London.
Andrzej, A 2008, Employee Work Performance, Prentice Hall, London.
Andrzej, A & Buchaman, A 2007, Organizational Behavior, Prentice Hall, London.
Badenhorst, C 2007, Research writing: breaking barriers, Van Schaik Publishers, Pretoria.
Bak, N 2004, Completing your thesis: a practical guide, Van Schaik, Pretoria.
Basona, H 2002, Improving work performance, Cengage, New York.
Belanger, C 2011, Our World: United Kingdom, Cangage, Riyadh.
Bell, P 2001, Evaluating, doing and writing research in psychology: a step-by-step guide for students, Sage, London.
Biswas, S 2011, Commitment, involvement, and satisfaction as predictors of employee performance, South Asian Journal of Management, 18(2), 92-107.
Drake, A 2007, Empowerment, motivation, and performance: examining the impact of feedback and incentives on non management employees, Behavioral Research in Accounting, 2(3), 1971-1989.
Gusti, N 2011, Cross Section and Experimental Data Analysis Using Eviews, John Wiley and Sons, New York.
Halel, W 2000, Facing freedom, Executive Excellence, 17(3), 13-42.
Hong, S 1996, Refinement of the Hong psychological reactance scale, Journal of Applied Psychology, 71(1), 500-507.
Huning, B 2002, Stress Management and therapy, Academy of Management Proceedings, 5(1), 53-78.
Huy, Q 2002, Emotional filtering in strategic change. Academy of Management Proceedings, 6(1), 43-78.
Kousholt, B 2007, Project management: theory and practice, Cengage, New York.
Kouzes, J 2002, The Leadership Challenge, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Kumer, H 2002, The Leadership Challenge, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Lewis, J 2006, Fundamentals of project management, American Management Association, New York.
Mellina, E 2002, Six principles of change execution. Executive Excellence, 19(1), 13-14.
Minja, D 2009, Ethical leadership practices, KCA Journal of Business Management, 2(1): 1-14.
Manza, K 2009, Employee management, Wiley, New York.
Murch, R 2004, Project management: best practices for IT professionals, Prentice Hall PTR, Upper Saddle River.
Pielstick, D 1998, The Transforming Leader, a Meta-Ethnographic Analysis, The Community College Review, 4(3).
Pietersen, W 2002, The Mark Twain dilemma: The theory and practice of change leadership, Journal of Business Strategy, 23(1), 32-37.
Poole, M 2009, Assignment and Thesis Writing, Juta Cape, Town.
Roberts, P 2011, Effective project management, Kogan Page, London.
Rugg, G 2007, Using statistics: a gentle introduction, McGraw, Hill New York.
Safizadeh, M 2003, An Empirical Analysis of Financial Services Processes with a Front Office or Back-Office Orientation, Journal of Operations Management, 21(5), 557-576.
Shachaf, P 2008, Cultural Diversity and Information and Communication Technology Impacts on Global Virtual Teams: An Exploratory Study. Information Technology Journal, 45(2), 131-142.
Shoult, A 2006, Doing Business in the World Market, GMB Publishing Ltd, London.
Soles, D 2010, The essentials of academic writing, Cengage Learning, Melbourne.
Tanke, M 2000, Human Resources Management for the Hospitality Industry, Cengage Learning, Albany.
Weiss, W 2011, Building morale, motivating, and empowering employees, Supervision, 72(9), 23.