seminar on stress management at work place

7/30/2019 seminar on stress management at work place

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Abolish Your Costly Epidemic: An Art of Subduing

Workplace Stress

V Anusha

Assistant Professor, Department of MBANova College of Engineering and Technology

Jupudi, Ibrahimpatnam(M),

Krishna Dist - 521105, India

[email protected]

M Tulasinadh

Assistant Professor, Department of MBANova College of Engineering and Technology

Jupudi, Ibrahimpatnam(M),

Krishna Dist - 521105, India

[email protected]

AbstractAbolish your costly epidemic:

emphasizes on various challenges faced by an

employee in a day to day work environment

and how to overcome them in a best possible

way. Since mid 20th century, a growing

number of studies have evaluated the virtues of

prescriptive, relaxation-based stress control

methods as applied attributes to work settings

labeled as Stress-management. Experts and

Physiologists had come up with various

strategies for implementing the stress-

management; such strategies have focused

exclusively on providing an individual with skill

for recognizing and coping with stress in the

health-promotion context. A Comprehensive

approach to figure-out stress promoters along

with preventive and best possible solutions to

over-come them.

KeywordsStress-management; Work-

Pressure; Job-Satisfaction; Employee-

motivation; Stree-preventions;

I. INTRODUCTION

Overwhelmed due to workplace-stress?

Youre not the first. The word stress grabs

peoples attention pretty quickly because it

affects everyoneit is universal. Stress cuts

through every economic, social and cultural

boundary, so learning to understand, cope with

stress is important for everyone. There are many

sources of stress. Not only are they different for

everyone, but also depend on an individuals

current situation. If stress is not managed

properly in a timely manner, it can have severe

negative health repercussionsboth physically

and mentally. Though the employee stress level

varies from role to role in a workplace, if not

managed properly, its not only individuals

health thats jeopardized. Consistent high levels

of employee stress could also jeopardize an

organizations bottom line. To avoid any imperil

effect most of the Organizations has undertaken

the responsibility to create awareness on

importance of stress-management amongemployees by introducing group and individual

stress-management interventions to improve

coping ability, self-confidence and to minimize

vulnerabilities to the stress. Apart from helping

individuals some organization went a step ahead

and mandated the Stress-management as an

integral component of health-promotion at

workplaces.

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II. STRESS , CAUSESAND CURVES

A. Stress

Stress is an identifiable response that occurs

when an individual is excited, fearful,

challenged, or anxious. When it occurs the brain

prepares the body to meet the challenges by

stimulating the autonomic nervous system. This

in turn controls many bodily functions which

include breathing, pulse rate, muscle tension,

blood pressure and body temperature.

B. Causes and Curves

When its time to discuss assessment,

National Institute for Occupational Safety and

Health (NIOSH) who has made a phenomenal

contribution in developing a paradigm to

examining the relationship between working

conditions and health consequences. As per

them a broad classification of stressors are Job

demands, Organizational Factors, Physical and

Personal Factors.

i) Job demands:

Workload is an aspect of occupation that can

easily be recognized as stressful and has

therefore received substantial empirical

attention. Spending excessive hours at work

place or holding down excessive responsibilities,

plays a major role in effecting and imposes a

huge amount of stress on an individual.

Additionally, it has been observed that shift

based work is another job that has impact on

health. There exists substantial convergence

indication that night shift and rotary shiftschedules will lead to sleep disorders. This

indicates that disruption of bio-cycle or bio-

rhythms is the primary mechanism responsible

for the workload stress.

ii) Organizational Factors:

Numerous studies have examined the effect

of roles within a work organization; these

studies observed men with role ambiguity (an

individual was unsure of work role scope and

responsibilities) in terms of low-confidence

levels, high job pressure, lack in job satisfaction

etc. In some situations role conflict relatedtensions as well. Apart from role and

responsibilities, career development,

relationship with colleagues, uncertainty about

job, over promotions has contributed an

enormous amount of stress at work locations.

When put together its various management

styles, such as the little allowance or no

participation on decision making, lack of

effective consultation, restriction on behavior,

etc are viewed as potential stressors.

iii) Physical and Personal Factors:

Adverse environmental circumstances appear

to be allied with health disorder in a synergistic

way by aggravating the overall job demandsplaced on employees, thus lowering work

tolerance to other stressors and diminishing

worker motivation. Surroundings like undue

noise, hot or cold, inadequate lighting, poor

ventilation, and inappropriate ergonomic design

have been associated with employee attitudinal

and behavioral problems. Its not a coincidence

when a physical discomfort leads to a mass

ii


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Fig C.3 48%

31%

35%

54%

26%

30%

Negativ e impac on p rofess ional life

Difficulty managing work and family

Interfering with their family life.

Fought with people

Complain form a friend or family

Always or often under stress at work

Unlike most advanced countries, Indians

too are facing the occupational stress issues,

this trend has been observed in recent time. Thishas become most predominant in individuals

who work in lonely places who handles shift

based and time based work (E.g. Army-

personnel, multinational organizations) etc. To

avoid any significant impact on the society,

collaborative efforts has initiated a government

and university partnership*, and a considerable

number of counseling centers were

established.

III. ACTORACCEPT

(HOWTOOVERCOMESTRESS)

In spite of complexity in job stress research,

the intrinsic worth of both individual-oriented

and to an extent organization-orientedapproach

to reduce stress has been explored. Given an

emphasis on subjective element of stress, it is

not surprising to find that most stress

reduction techniques are focused on the

individual rather than the organization and

uses individual-orientated outcome measuresto assess of organization. Studies of

individual-oriented stress-management

approaches has attained lot of recognition

because strategies are simple to implement,

can be assessed in short term, do not require

interruption in organization schedules and

fits nicely into managements view as an

individuals difficulty.

At the same time organizational change

approaches necessitate an accurate, valid

evaluation of work factors which can

generate undue stress and an extensive

knowledge of the dynamics of change

process in an organization so as to minimize

the potentially undesirable outcomes.

Organizational change strategies which have

potential for preventing or reducing the stress

include quality circles which bring bench

level works into decision-making, worker

representation on health and safety

committees, more extensive training

programmers for workers whose work being

altered, creation of more psychologically

compassionate evaluation systems. Its

imperative to set and publicize a

comprehensive policy on stress and work-life

balance, process to track constant employee

feedback, craft a workplace that can afford

time exchange, support and encourage

employees, devise a healthy physical work

environment, encourage effective, official

communication processes among various

groups with in the organization.

As an individual perspective eliminating

self-defeating behavior, avoiding pitfalls,

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time and task prioritizing, making good and

healthy food choices, most importantly

seeking professional help when needed,

comes handy in minimizing or reducing the

stress at workplace.

While its is evident that some simple

stress reduction techniques may provide the

broad benefits, stress-management

techniques ideally should be aligned with the

requirements of the organization and the

population it has to address. For maximum

effectiveness, all levels or workers need to

play a vital role in program selection, design

and evaluation. Course of action is more apt

to be made by beginning with small focus of

intervention on a specific target group for

better evaluation. This can be enlarged in

stepwise fashion to comprehend the needs

and demands of specific group area.

IV. SUMMARYAND CONCLUSION

Conducting the stress-management

programs with employees and management

has shown substantial amount of positive

results in turns of employee dedication,

employee motivation, job satisfaction and

performance. A large-scale study has also

proven that worksite stress-management

programs are cost effectual as there was a

considerable drop in terms of medical

utilization and reduced absenteeism.

Nevertheless, the great variety of stress-

management techniques evolved over the

time, multidisciplinary interventions,

primary, secondary and tertiary preclusion

programs and interventions for specific

population proved an ample and effective

approach to stress-management. Further

more interventions should respond to culture,

gender and work type-specific issues that

may moderate workplace-stress. Providing

the most efficacious stress-management

interventions ultimately allows employee and

employer to work cooperatively to achieve

the common ultimate goals.

V. REFERENCES

1.Burke, W. (1982). Organization Development:Principles and practices. New York: Little, Brown

& Co.

2. Burton S., & Steane, P. (Eds.). (2004). Surviving

your thesis. London: Routedge.

3.Hackman, John Richard and Oldham, Greg R.

(1980). Work Redesign, MA: Addison-Wesley.Lawler, E. E., III. 1986. High Involvement

Management. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

4. Alderfer, C.P. (1969).An Empirical Test of a New

Theory of Human Needs: Organizational Behaviorand Human Performance. Vol. 14, pp.142-175.

5. Lawler, E.E. (1994),Motivation in WorkOrganizations, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA,.

6. Maslow A.H. (1943).A Theory of HumanMotivation: Psychological Review, vol. 1, pp.370-

396.

7. Mowday, RT., Steers, R.M. and Porter, L.W.(1979). The Measure of Organization Commitment.Journal of Vocational Behavior, 14:224-247.

Electronic Resources:

1. Times of India:

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2003-06-25/lucknow/27177848_1_pac-jawans-stress-

management-workshop

2. http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-

03-04/news/37436270_1_chandrashekhar-sahu-agricultural-research-crop

v
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2003-06-25/lucknow/27177848_1_pac-jawans-stress-management-workshophttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2003-06-25/lucknow/27177848_1_pac-jawans-stress-management-workshophttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2003-06-25/lucknow/27177848_1_pac-jawans-stress-management-workshophttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-03-04/news/37436270_1_chandrashekhar-sahu-agricultural-research-crophttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-03-04/news/37436270_1_chandrashekhar-sahu-agricultural-research-crophttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-03-04/news/37436270_1_chandrashekhar-sahu-agricultural-research-crophttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2003-06-25/lucknow/27177848_1_pac-jawans-stress-management-workshophttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2003-06-25/lucknow/27177848_1_pac-jawans-stress-management-workshophttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2003-06-25/lucknow/27177848_1_pac-jawans-stress-management-workshophttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-03-04/news/37436270_1_chandrashekhar-sahu-agricultural-research-crophttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-03-04/news/37436270_1_chandrashekhar-sahu-agricultural-research-crophttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-03-04/news/37436270_1_chandrashekhar-sahu-agricultural-research-crop


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3. http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2012/12/26/5-daily-rituals-to-manage-

work-stress/

4. http://www.statisticbrain.com/stress-statistics/

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8. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/workpl

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9.American Psychological Association

http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/work-stress.aspx

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seminar on stress management at work place