SOURCES OF STRESS IN AN ORGANISATION

 Stress can be defined as any type of change that causes physical, emotional, or physiological strain. Stress is your body response to anything that requires attention or action.

Everyone experiences stress to some degree. The way you respond to stress, however makes a big difference to your overall well being. Sometime, the best way to manage your stress involves changing your situation.

All other times, the best strategy involves changing the way you respond to the situation.

Developing a clear understanding of how stress impacts your physical and mental health is important. It is also important to recognize how your mental and physical health affects your stress level.

There are several types of stress including acute stress, episodic stress, and chronic stress.

An organisation or organisation is an entity such as a company, an institution or association comprising one or more people and having a particular purpose. The word is derived from the Greek word organon, which means tool or instrument, musical instrument and organ.

The following are the sources of stress in an organisation.

Interpersonal demands, these are stressors created by co-workers. Perhaps an employee is experiencing ongoing conflict with a co-worker he/ she is expected to collaborate closely with or maybe employees are experiencing lack of social support in their roles for example a worker may be in a bad terms with the colleague at work place over certain issues they know better.

Task or role demands. These are factors related to the person’s role at work including the design of the persons job or working conditions. A stressful task demand might be a detailed, weekly presentation to the company’s senior team. A stressful role demand might be where a person is expected to achieve more in asset amount of time than possible.

Organisation structure, this refers to the level of differentiation within an organisation the degree of rules and regulations and where decisions are made. If employees are unable to participate in decisions that affect them, they may experience stress.

Organisation leadership, this refers to the organisation style of leadership, particularly the managerial style of its senior executives. Leaders can create nan environment of tensions, fear and anxiety and can exert unrealistic pressure and control. If employees are afraid they will be fired for not living up to leadership standards, this can definitely be a source of stress.

Organizational life stages, an organisation goes through cycle of stages( birth, growth, maturity, decline). For employees the birth and decline of an organisation can be particularly stressful as those stages tend to be filled with heavy workloads and a level of uncertainty about the future.

There are environmental sources of stress. The economy may be in a downtown, creating uncertainty for job futures and bank accounts. There may be political unrest or change creating stress,. For example, a person may not be to favored by the environment he/ she works in and therefore giving a person a stress in organisation.

Technology can also cause stress, as new developments are constantly making employees skills obsolete and workers fear they will be replaced by machine that can do the same. Employees are often expected to stay connected to the workplace 24/7 because of technology slows it.

As a side note, it’s important to understand that these stress are addictive. In other words, stress builds up and new elements add to a person’s stress level. So a single element of stress might not seem important in itself, but when added to other stress the worker is experiencing, it can as the old adages says, be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Individual’s differences, those are the sources of stress, but differences within an individual determine whether that stress will be positive or negative and those individuals differences include; 

Perception. This is what moderates the individual relationship to the stressors. For instance one person might see potential lay off as a stressful situation while another person might see that same lay off as an opportunity for a nice severance packages and the opportunity to start a business.

Job experiences- because stress is associated with turnover, it would stand to reason that those employees with a long tenure are the most stress resistant of the bunch.

Social support. Co-workers, especially those who are caring are considered to be friends, can help protect a fellow employee against the effect of stress.

Belief in locus of control. Those who have a high internal locus of control(those that believe they are in control of their own fate) are unsurprisingly, not as affected by stress as those who feel they are not in control.

Self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is an individual belief that he/ she can complete a task. Research shows that employees who have strong levels of self –efficacy are more resistant to the effects of stress.

Hostility. Some employees carry around a high level of hostility as a part of their personalities and they are often suspicious and distrustful of their co-workers. These personality traits make a person more susceptible to stress.

If those potential sources of stress sneak through the individual differences filters and manifest themselves as stress, they will appear in variety of physiological, psychological and behavioral systems when we talked about the definitions of stress

Add to that psychological system, like tension and anxiety but also job dissatisfaction and boredom and behavioral symptoms like turnover and absenteeism and you can see how stress can become an organisation problem.

How much of an organisation problem is stress? Well, stress can cost an organisation a lot more than money.

Not having enough time. Frequently you can be running around all day trying to balance all your tasks at work and at home, yet still not manage to tick everything of your list. Sometimes this can be due to the demand that are placed upon you being unrealistic, but often simply comes down to poor time management and not.

Unhealthy lifestyle at organisation while some people might adopt to un unhealthy lifestyle due to lack of time. For example by turning to fast foods because they have no time to eat properly, others may have an unhealthy lifestyle because they are already stressed.

Taking on too much. You may have a tendency to take on too much at the organisation perhaps because you don’t want to let people down. If you do this, however it will frequently lead to you stressing about having too much to do and not managing to achieve everything you have taken on.

Conflicts in the organisation. If relationships are strained at work place, then its more than likely that you will be stressed about them. Conflicts might occur due to disagreements about how things should be done and so you might feel that you have to stand your ground to make progress but ultimately a lot of hot air will only contribute to your stress level.

Inability to accept things as they are in an organisation the source of stress. Some people don’t have the ability to accept things as they are or realize that certain situations are out of their control.

If you try to change something that you really can’t change, then you will just be creating unnecessary stress that Can do without. Plus all that time spent stressing about it means you will be unable to concentrate on other things.

Failure to take time out and relax. Being constantly on the go means that you will be in a heightened state of tension all the time and your body never have the chance to get rid of your stress. Failing to take time out will also reduce your effectiveness in the long run.

Non-work related issues. Stress may be caused by   a non- work related issue  such as serious illness in the family, having to care for dependents, a bereavement, moving house or debt problems often these issues are unavoidable and not something that you can readily deal with but its worth trying to deal with them rather putting them off or trying to ignore them.

Failure to see the humor in situations. Some people are often able to laugh in the face of adversity and seem to be able to brush aside problems and deal with them effectively.

They essentially don’t allow themselves to become over stressed. However other people may not see the humor in some situation and this may cause them to become more stressed.

Challenge in work. Employee likes challenging work in their job, not over worked, not under worked, but the right balance where they feel comfortable. For example if a lower role is given to a more educated and qualified employee-he will get bored or feel like he is going through the motions and stressed.

Conflict with manager or colleagues. Conflicts or difficulties in getting along with co-workers and colleagues at work. Such as ones boss is a common cause of stress in the workplace.

No feedback. Good or bad. If regular feedback are not provided to the employee about their performance. They feel stressed about how well they are performing whether they are meeting expectations or not.

In conclusion, identifying the cause of stress in the organisation is not difficult. It takes some effort. Understanding the causes of stress in the workplace or organisation lets you identify them before they become problems. As you can see the organisation is a great source of stress. It up to us to identify our stress and find healthy ways to cope and remove these stresses.