Workplace stress refers to stress that one endures due to higher work demands and pressures that do not be matched with his or her abilities and knowledge, causing him or her to be unable to cope with the work situation (Beswick, et al. 2007; Healthy Workplaces 2014). Statistics shows that the problem of stressful work and occupation is becoming quite prevalent in many workplaces. For the Health and Safety Executive survey taken in Great Britain on stress and depression, it was revealed that about 39% of the total employee workforce was suffering from stress related illness. In the construction industry, basing on the Chartered Institute of Building survey of 2006, the majority of respondents, as 69%, indicated that they suffered from anxiety, stress or depression (Brown 2006). In this regard, too, the numbers of absent days at work have increased due to anxiety, stress or depression. Most studies have indicated that stress, anxiety and therefore depression can result majorly due to the poor management of the work environment. If the management has poorly defined the culture or characteristics of an organisation, it will obviously result in stress-related poor health, increased sickness and therefore lower productivity (Ibem et al. 2011). In construction industry, people normally regard the construction occupations as demanding with very ambitious deadlines that one has to beat. Moreover, they involve multiple skills for a manager to coordinate. Although the industry provides challenging opportunities in its professions, there is need to reduce increasing levels of anxiety, stress and depression so that employees can comfortably complete large pieces of work despite pressures and demands to complete them (Gyllensten 2005).
Main Types of Factors that Cause Stress in Building and Construction Industry
Physical Factors Causing Occupational Stress
It was noted that physical factors such as lack of privacy and inadequate temperature controls are the main physical causes of stress in the construction industry. Further, in case the working environment lacks adequate ventilation, sufficient office accommodation, higher noise level, poor lighting, and poor working environments in general, employees will endure the stress (Brown 2006).
Organisational Factors Causing Stress
Organisational factors have also been mentioned as causing stress. Notable as the most prevalent, if there are no feedbacks, effective communication and adequate staffing the organisation will experience stress. Moreover, poor organisational factors that allow bullying to thrive will result in some members of staff being stressed. In this regard, the bullied person will experience excess work, isolation, threat to his professional and personal statuses and destabilisation (being given meaningless tasks that lack credit) (Wong, Melissa, Cheung 2010). Interpersonal conflicts in the workplace will also cause tress (Gyllensten 2005). Frequently conflicts among employees or between employees and managers will indicate how individuals are being harassed at the workplace. The conflicts could be resulting from factors such as role ambiguity, role conflicts, and inappropriate distributions of workloads. Some analysts have noted that they could also be related to depression, anxiety, and low level of job satisfaction (Wong, Melissa, Cheung 2010). In such an organisation too, one should expect poor crisis management when dispute between the management and employees or employees arise. Organisational cause to stress can also include sexual harassment that is more prevalent on women than on men. Since the construction industry is considered at a large extent as a masculine industry, women are likely to experience more cases of sexual harassment (Gyllensten 2005). Various psychological studies have indicated that sexual harassments at work lead to worst job outcomes (Brown 2006).
Job Demand Factors Causing Occupation Stress
Under this rubric, those who work in construction industry mention too much work as one of the major causes of stress. It is then followed by ambitious deadlines and pressures to complete huge work at the shortest time as early as possible. The other causes can be working in isolation, being insufficiently skilled on job and lack of participation in decision-making processes. On job-related stresses, most analysts have noted that there can be three aspects of the job to cause stress: quantitative workload, qualitative workload and under-load. Heavy workloads in construction sites have been linked to many strains that include fatigue, anxiety, backache, headache, physiological reactions like cortisol and gastrointestinal problems (Henry and Evans 2008). Qualitative aspect of the job will cause stresses on the doer by demanding him to undertake difficult tasks that he does not understand. However, under-load aspect of the job is whereby one has skills and abilities in building and construction but he cannot use them. Some employees have mentioned that they work day and night and even during weekends (Ibem et al. 2011). Others travel or commute from one station to another. A job that requires people to work long hours with hassles of commuting to beat an ambitious deadline can be stressful. If an employee lacks a say on how his work should be done, he will encounter stressful conditions in his workplace. Things may become the worst if the organisational systems are not designed to respond to individual concerns (Brown 2006).
Job Role Factors Causing Occupation Stress
Under this rubric, most employees face stressful situations such as employee conflicting demands, job insecurity, poor remuneration, lack of career progression, conflicting demand, inadequate managerial support and lack of clarity about one’s responsibility (Henry and Evans 2008). When bosses issue conflicting demands or responsibilities, with no collaborative planning with his employee, it is eminent that the latter would undergo stress. Despite the reduction in wages, it is important to note that currently, with the revolution of Information Communication Technology, employers are laying off workers at their will (Health and Safety Executive 2014). It becomes worse taking into account there may be no professional employee union in the construction industry. If the construction company is owned by shareholders, the management will be under pressure to avoid the threats of shareholders taking away their share portfolios (Ibem et al. 2011). If the organisation does not have policies that support employee career development and progression, any attempt to increase their level of education can jeopardise job opportunities and promotion (Brown 2006).
Other Factors Causing Occupational Stress in Building Industry
Other factors include public misconception about the industry. The industry is being portrayed as strenuous, hard, and dirty, among others. Further, the safety of the site will also account for the wellbeing of employees. A rugged and injurious site will induce stress to employees that are working there. Another problem can arise when employees lack the necessary equipment to perform a certain task (Health and Safety Executive 2014). Other stresses may emanate from professional unions threatening to shut down employees’ services to the company due to the likely low salary or poor working conditions. Individual status in the organisation can also cause stress. Although workplace stress can partially affect all employees, regardless of their categories, it is more intense to managerial staffs that make major decisions for the company (Ibem, et al. 2011). Managers, like other employees, may be prone to work overloads. If the management has poor management practises, it should be expected that powerless employees in the organisation are likely to suffer more (Brown 2006; Love, Edwards and Irani 2007).
However, most studies agree that having a huge quantity of work to do at an ambitious time are the major sources of stress. Secondly, irresponsible management that does not care about safety of others has been noted as particularly stressful. Thirdly, as already noted, there is widespread fearful perception that the construction job is always strenuous, whether you are just job clerk or not. The other worry on both sides is the ever-evolving ICT. While employees are conditioned to be apt with new technology, employers are pondering about the new needs of re-investment and maintenance of their ICT departments (Henry and Evans 2008).
Solutions To the Eliminate Factors That Cause Stress in Construction Industry
First, the management should start analysing the levels and kinds of work stress at the company. It can be done as a survey to lead to a general conclusion whether the organisation is apt with policies that enhance health and safety at the workplace or not (Healthy Workplaces 2014). Obviously it can be done by employing the recognised authority that deals with Organisation Health and Safety (OHS). Such organisations have objective benchmarks that will remove the biases or fear that may be caused by powerful managers in the organisation (Brown 2006).Secondly, the organisation will note down the expected challenges to the implementation of the recommendations derived from the Organisation Safety Health authority. As already noted, currently, as employers worry about the survival of their firms, employees are worrying about the security of their jobs (Healthy Workplaces 2014). Indeed, employers should be advised that when the problem of stress is well managed the actual problem that they worry about may clearly be avoided (Healthy Workplaces 2014). By doing this, the employers would want to cooperate a lot with such an authority to ensure that there are no psychosocial risks that could lead to adverse effects in their company. Consequently, the employers will put it a priority to solve both work-related issues and employees’ psychological problems at ago (Health and Safety Executive 2014; Love, Edwards and Irani 2007).
In this way, the employer will encourage the employees to keep records about their health, to help in the monitoring their effects on the organisation (Healthy Workplaces 2014). However, for it to be successful, there should be clear employee-management engagement that puts safety priorities ahead of the organisation’s welfare (Healthy Workplaces 2014). In this way, workers will be encouraged to seek consultation on such areas that they suspect to be not safe. Since some of the workers are normally experts, they should be engaged in setting up the company’s health and safety standards (Healthy Workplaces 2014; Liu, Spector, and Shi 2007).
All building and construction organisations should always be considering smart ways to manage workloads so that they can earn more money. It can happen through employee training and time management (Bowen 2014). If employees are trained on various skills that a certain task requires, it is evident that they will accomplish it within the shortest time.
For those working long hours from their own volitions, there should be provisions of elongated vacations so that there are proper compensations of the rest times lost while working (Health and Safety Executive 2014). Regarding the stress that relates to travelling and commuting, the company should provide dedicated bus services. Managers of the organisation should ensure that there is a greater sense of communication and open process evaluation of employees’ grievances. For some organisations, there are effective ‘suggestion boxes’ that collect suggestions from all stakeholders to be acted upon (Health and Safety Executive 2014). Nonetheless, since the construction industry involves contracting and sub-contracting, the main contractor should ensure that all subcontractors adhere to the organisational health and safety standards set by necessary independent authorities at state, county or national level (Healthy Workplaces 2014). In all cases, the employers should ensure that employees are supported when it comes to receiving the right materials for their work. This culture should go ahead to involve everybody so that managers and employees and employees and their colleagues can have good relationship (Bowen 2014; Love, Edwards and Irani 2007; Liu, Spector and Shi 2007).
List of References
Beswick, J, et al. 2007, An Analysis of The Prevalence and Distribution of Stress In The Construction Industry, Buxton: Health and Safety Executive.
Bowen, P 2014, Workplace stress, stress effects, and coping mechanisms in the construction industry, American Society of Civil Engineers, viewed on 20 November 2014, <http://cedb.asce.org/cgi/WWWdisplay.cgi?314865>.
Brown, MA 2006, Occupational Stress in the Construction Industry, London: Chartered Institute of Building.
Gyllensten, K 2005, The role of gender in workplace stress: A critical literature review, Health Education Journal (64 (3)): 271–288.
Health and Safety Executive, 2014, Work Related Stress- together we can tackle it, viewed on 20 November 2014, <http://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/index.htm>
Healthy Workplaces, 2014, Healthy workplaces manage stress, European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, viewed on 20 November 2014, <https://www.healthy-workplaces.eu/en/news#2>
Henry, O and Evans, A J 2008, Occupational Stress in Organizations, Journal of Management Research 8 (3), pp. 123–135.
Ibem, E O, et al. 2011, Work stress among professionals in the building construction industry in Nigeria, Australasian Journal of Construction Economics and Building, 11 (3)45-57.
Love, PED, Edwards, D J and Irani, Z 2007, Work Stress, Support, and Mental Health in Construction, Journal of Construction Engineering and Management.
Liu, C, Spector, P E, & Shi, L 2007, Cross-national job stress: a quantitative and qualitative study, Journal of Organizational Behaviours, 28(2), 209-239.
Wong, J, Melissa, T, Cheung, Y K F 2010, Cultural Determinants of Stress in the Construction Industry, In: Proceedings of 2010 International Conference on Construction & Real Estate Management, 1-3 December 2010, Royal on the Park Hotel, Brisbane.
