Workplace stress

With the downturn in the economy, it is only natural that workplace stress is rising. It is becomming harder to cope with the challenges of your job and the added challenges of your home life.

When you get to work, does it seem like you are overwhelmed? Not feeling confident about your abilities at work? Finding your work less rewarding? Is it taking longer to complete tasks or are tasks not being completed at all? Are you irritable with your fellow co-workers or your boss? If you answered yes to any of these then you may be suffering from workplace stress.

There are two kinds of stress in the workplace, good and bad. The good kind of stress comes from pressure of deadlines. If you enjoy your job, then often you will have the good kind of stress that energizes and motivates you – some people even feed off of this. The bad kind of stress is a destructive type that causes disability, staff turnover, low productivity and absenteeism. In our current economic times, more and more employers are seeing the bad kind of workplace stress within their employees.

Work, whether paid or voluntary contributes to our sense of community connection and it is a source of needed routine and structure. Even though work offers these needed benefits, it can also be a big source of anxietry for many people. Studies in the United Kingdom have shown that many people attribute their cause of their health problems to their job. During the last recession, almost 25% of workers stated that their bigges fear and cause of workplace stress was the loss of their job. Employees roles in the organization were a major factor in the amount of workplace stress they felt. Manager and professionals reported the highest amount of workplace stress compared to workers in other industries. The amount of workplace stress also differs between men and women.

Women are stressed about working long hours or having too many demands on them, while men were stressed about workplace injury.

Top Ten sources of workplace stress are as follows:

1. Too much to do in too little time, getting nothing accomplished
2. Too many interruptions
3. Uncertainty – not sure of their employment security
4. Mistrust. Vicious office politics disrupt positive behaviour
5. Random company directions and policies
6. Ambiguity. Things are happening without the employee knowing why
7. Inconsistent perferomance reviews. Employees get raises but no reviews or get positive evaluation, but laid off
8. Employee feeling unappreciated
9. Lack of communication in the management chain
10. Too much or too little to do. The feeling of not contributing and having a lack of control

Workplace stress is a harmful physical and emotional response that occurs when there is a poor match between job demands and the capabilities of the employee. Now more than ever, employers need to be on the look out for workplace stress and try to help employees cope with it. Those that make the effort to deal with it rather than ignore it will be rewarded with a better functioning company, which should in turn translate in a more profitable company. With the downturn in the economy, workplace stress can have a very negative effect on a companies bottom line.