Job Stress example essay topic

Job stress poses a significant threat to employee health and consequently to the health of an organization. Therefore, it is important for both employees and employers to recognize and understand stress and its causes. Often employers confuse job challenges and job stressor's. Most employees view a job challenge as a motivating factor, which enables them to grow within their positions. This motivation has the potential to produce positive results for both employees and employers. However, when challenges become demands, employees often resort to the fight or flight response of our primal ancestors.

In most cases, the employee does not have the opportunity to fight or flee, and as a result the increased energy is internalized and over time manifests itself as stress. According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety job stress can be defined as the harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when the requirements of the job do not match the capabilities, resources, or needs of the employee. For instance, management style, interpersonal relationships, work roles, career concerns, work-life issues, socio-cultural atmosphere, and environmental conditions may all be considered stressor's. Most people experience stress on a daily basis however, occupational stress is one issue that is rarely discussed. Many people may not want to admit that their job is causing them stress or their work environment is a somewhat nerve wrecking experience for them. Although rarely admitted or talked about workplace stress is an issue that must be addressed avidly by HR Personnel and Managers.

What is Stress? "Stress - The confusion created when one's mind overrides the body's basic desire to choke the hell out of someone who so desperately deserves it" (Author unknown). In order to have stress there must be a stressor, or a physical or physiological stimulus to encourage the onset of stress response. A physical stressor in a manufacturing setting may be noise, heat, dust, mist, fumes, poor lighting etc (Evans, Cohen 1987, Environmental Stress Handbook of Environmental Psychology, p. 574).

Psychological stressor's could be items such as conflicting views with a manager or, seemingly unattainable deadlines. Many employees suffer from stress caused by managers who expect results without establishing clear goals. An example would be an office head that is responsible for increasing profitability and decreasing overhead, without receiving a budget from the home office. At the end of the year, the office head's performance cannot be considered objectively. Consequently, his or her incentive compensation becomes subjective.

At work, some stress factors may be; the possibility or reality of losing your job, poor supervision, lack of goals, rotating shifts and the inability to keep up with technology. The rate of change in technology may be one of the heaviest burdens to bare for employees who have worked for 15 or 20 years. This stressor may not exist for a young graduate because he or she is a product of a computer driven society. (Strunk Jr., W. & White, E.B. 1979, The Elements of Style 3rd Ed, p. 352) However, to a fifty-year-old person, the rate of technology advancement over this period may be too much change compared to their experience. In some cases, failure to understand such technology in the work environment may mean the loss of possible advancement opportunities. One stressor may cause another to create a domino effect of stressor's.

These stressor's may build up and cause job as well as social stress (Hendrix, 1987, Stress and Life Stress Journal of Social Behavior & Personality, p. 295). Are some individuals more prone to occupational stress than others are? By use of the Person / Environment Fit Model (Kahn, 1992, Stress in Organizations Handbook of Organizational Psychology) it can be hypothesized that certain individuals may be at a higher risk for work related stress then others.