Stress is the state of tension that occurs in a human or animal under the influence of strong pressures. In Chinese, the term "stress" is composed of two characters - danger and opportunity. Uncomfortable condition for a human and a negative impact on the emotional and psychological state makes it a premonition of danger (Rothmann, Steyn and Mostert, 2005). When we talk about stress at work, such an expectation is primarily related to the fear of dismissal, failure to plan, demonstrate one’s competence, conflict with management or team. Still, stress brings certain advantages to employees apart from the drawbacks it has. The causes, consequences of stress, advantages and disadvantages, as well as effective ways of stress management will be presented in the paper in the perspective of UK-based companies.
Types of Stress
Experts identify five types of stress:
- Physiological stress - the result of physical exhaustion, which is caused by lack of sleep, malnutrition of person or heavy loads. It may happen if a person has too much work, too tight deadlines, etc. As in UK there are many companies working in the same spheres, competition is high, this type of stress is very widespread among the employees.
- Psychological stress - stems from uncertainty about the future, adverse relationships with others. In large UK companies it is most often met, as there are many factors pressuring employees psychologically and they often have to deal with many tasks at once, which adds to the overall stressful picture.
- Emotional stress - occurs due to excessively strong feelings - fear, joy, etc. This kind of stress does not happen only in the case when the person is in danger of death or loss of a person dear to him/her, but also because of unexpected and great joy (Joëls et al., 2006).
- Informational stress - occurs in a person with too little or too much information. The lack of complete information forces people to speculate about the possible outcome of interest of one’s case and keep him/her in constant tension. For example, unnecessarily large amount of negative information about the real situation in the same person holds in tension.
- Managerial stress - occurs when the risk of decisions or responsibility for the actions is too large and does not meet the moral stability of a person or his/her position. In large UK companies this kind of stress is met very often.
People under stress are showing signs of confusion and anxiety, and the behavior takes either attacking character in relation to the causes of stress, or protective. For most people, stress is characterized by several signs, which are examples of stress at the workplace:
- Memory weakening;
- Frequent mistakes;
- Inability to concentrate on work;
- Constant fatigue;
- Frequent headaches, cramps in stomach without organic cause;
- Abnormally slow or rapid speech;
- Abuse addictions;
- Loss of a sense of humor;
- Constant feeling of hunger or lack thereof;
- Increased resentment and anxiety.
The appearance of these symptoms (even separately) can cause serious problems, such as a nervous breakdown, which can kick the employee off the working state for a long time (McCalister et al., 2006). To prevent undesirable consequences, the managers must be attentive to their immediate subordinates. For many types of work, presence of stress in the industrial sector is almost inevitable. At the same time, the individual characteristics of people lead to a wide range of different reactions to stress. Some task, interesting and difficult for one person can cause a high level of anxiety in the other.
Attempt of the human body to overcome stress on one’s own leads to disruption of physical health. Stress, which continues for a long period of time, leads to diseases of the blood vessels of the heart, kidneys and other organs and systems (Aziz and Cunningham, 2008). Most people are able to cope with the effects of stress, avoiding serious emotional or physical disorders, but only if the level of stress at work and outside it is still quite low.
Causes of Stress
It is more important to prevent stress, than to identify it, and the first step aimed at preventing stress is the study of the causes of stress. Stressors are the conditions or factors that cause stress. Despite the fact that for the occurrence of severe stress, only one single cause is needed, as a rule, a person is exposed to multiple stressors.
The fact that the nature of stress is determined largely by individual reactions to stressors, is explained by the fact that people have differences in experience, outlook and internal factors (Johnson et al., 2005). Nevertheless, there are a number of external factors related to labor process that are the cause of stress:
- Work overload and tight timelines - their cause, as a rule, is the poor quality of management, autocratic guidelines, insecurity in the workplace, inadequate powers of official duties.
- Role conflicts and uncertainty - occurs when an employee is not sure of the correctness of his/her actions or expectations of colleagues and managers, which are the result of vague job descriptions, the lack of a formal model of the expected action (Chandola et al., 2008).
- Different systems of values of the enterprise and employees - lead to neuropsychiatric stress, to avoid which the employee must achieve a balance of value systems.
- Organizational changes of any kind, which require the ability to quickly adapt to new conditions. Increased anxiety about the financial situation bring drastic and unusual changes.
- Frustration - blocking of motivation, which does not allow for achieving the desired goals. The most common reaction to frustration is aggression, apathy, withdrawal, regression, the appearance of obsessions.
Extreme Reactions to Stress
The effects of stress on the worker in the first place depend on the duration of stress factors, the degree of exposure and recovery capabilities of the employee. Exhaustion is a condition, which occurs at a constant confrontation of stressful situations, which weakens people both mentally and physically (Stansfeld and Candy, 2006). The human body affected by stresses gradually loses its ability to recover. When exhausted, emotionally devastated employees feel helpless and gradually move away from performing their professional duties.
In Japan, the concept of "exhaustion" corresponds to the term "karoshi," or "sudden death" at work, which is caused by congestion in the labor process, and as a consequence - a heart attack or stroke. This disease kills executives, bus and taxi drivers, sellers, nurses. When the number of such deaths exceeded 10,000 per year, Japanese corporations have gone on serious application of preventive measures - workers were forced to go into well-deserved vacation, there was promoted dietary nutrition, exercise and stress level management (Byron, 2005). Businesses need to anticipate jobs, leading to early exhaustion and employees subject to such a state.
Moral injury is a result of stress, the source of which is a direct threat to the safety of workers (the crisis in organization, disaster, abuse by management or loss of a job). In modern times, there are widespread three types of moral injury:
- Moral injury in the workplace is the destruction of self-esteem of employees, lack of confidence in their abilities, resulting in discrimination or prejudice, unjust dismissal. Signs of mental trauma in the workplace are difficulty in concentrating, alienation, tardiness, absenteeism, the propensity for accidents.
- Disease of staff, who experienced reduction wave, which is characterized by a feeling of irritation, uncertainty, guilt and mistrust. The staff at the same time feels guilt for the dismissed employees, and at the same time the feeling of joy because they have a job, the volume of which has increased significantly, and the anxiety related to whether they would be fired the next (Schaufeli, Bakker and Van Rhenen, 2009).
- Workplace violence happens when in a state of stress employee takes actions that cause damage to the property of the company or doing harm to the physical health of colleagues and managers (Hakanen, Bakker and Schaufeli, 2006). Such acts of violence may include destruction of property and the use of weapons. Violence in production is the reason that murder in the United States occupied the third place among the causes of work-related death. The shock caused by violence immediately leads to the manifestation of stress syndromes requiring long-term treatment.
Any of the extreme manifestations of stress and moral injury and exhaustion have very serious consequences, including death, and to reduce the negative effects, there are needed comprehensive preventive measures (Greenhaus and Powell, 2006).
Advantages and Disadvantages of Stress at Work
The direct disadvantages of stress at work are primarily the health and productivity and efficiency threats listed above. The more severe and longer the stress is, the more disadvantages and risky situations are formed, and the harder it is to find a way out of them. Although it may seem that the situation of stress has no advantages for the workers and the company, it is not true. In fact, it can mobilize the efforts and make the person do his/her best to work for the company effectively and diligently. However, it is necessary to understand that it can only be achieved in case a person know how to handle stress effectively and not become its victim.
Ways to Handle Stress
Both organizations and individual experts are concerned about the stress problems and their consequences. It is possible to solve the problem of stress management by one of the following methods - prevention and control of the level of stress, avoiding stress and overcoming it (Ford, Heinen and Langkamer, 2007). On the reduction or elimination of stress factors, there are directed such arrangements as employee participation in management, improving communication skills of managers.
For individual workers evasion from stress is training on resistance to stress factors, the transition to another job or transfer within the organization, early retirement. To overcome the stress, it is necessary to unite efforts of managers and employees, and send them to social support, provide them with the possibility of relaxation, biofeedback and personal wellness programs.
Social support is a system of support activities, interactions and relationships that provide the basic needs of workers (Zedeck, 2011). There are four types of such support - instrumental (task support), informational, appraisal and emotional. Social support may be from colleagues, direct superior, friends and family, and it can only be based on work tasks or social communication in various forms. Stress levels are significantly reduced by support even from one person, and many feel more comfortable providing such support to others. Development of the ability to support employees should be dome above all by managers, and can be used as an alternative to the creation of opportunities for social support.
Relaxation are calm, directed into the inner world human thoughts, which promote physical and emotional rest of the body, which allows one to disconnect from the problems of the outside world and helps to reduce stress levels. Biofeedback is one of the most effective means to counter stress. First, it is necessary to explore the person’s response to stressors (headaches, or heart palpitations). The next step is to teach a person special techniques to control the reflex nervous system, which controls the internal processes such as blood oxygen saturation, heart rate, brain waves.
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