Introduction
What is business stress? It is a state of mental and emotional strain experience by both employees and business owners. Work and business is felt during times of conflict, loss, boredom or anxiety. Stress is one of the frantic paces of business life. Business stress is a major problem and is becoming increasingly common due to stiff competition in the market and financial crisis ,(Bronner, R. ,2009).. People react in different ways to stress. Others find the pressure to immense and buckle under whereas others easily melt it and walk a stride. Stress is majorly due to a feeling that our lives are out of control and we feel that our lives are overloaded.
Stress is a critical thing in business and if not well managed it can have severe effect on the business. Unmanaged stress can case employee absenteeism, constant reduction in productivity and may even cause severe health problem on the employee. Stress in work may also affect the relationship between the senior officers and the junior officers which may derail the growth agenda of a business, (Brown, L. R., 2009). Few employees and managers don’t understand or appreciate the presence of stress in work; this ignorance may have critical effect on the organization. Proper legislation must be enacted by companies and organization to counter stress.
Health agencies & experts define stress as overwhelming reaction people have due to excessive demand bestowered on them. Pressure is a health thing in a business working environment since it aids in motivating people boosting the productivity and enabling the business to grow. However, when pressure is above the limit that an employee can’t cope with results to what is called stress.
Stress isn’t a doesn’t require medical condition, the remedy is you to understand what causes it and try avoid situation that results to that unusual feeling. Mangers should also take the initiative to create a stress free environment in order to increase the company productivity and safe the live of the employees.
Stress in work place
This is a matter of great importance to all the stakeholders; employees, employers and the government. Research conducted by the University of Oxford Shows that the rate of stress among individuals has increased from 940 per 200000 employees employed in 2012. It is important to know the cause of increase of stress in work place and devising mechanisms to counter it early. It is through pinning down the causes of stress that other problems such as heart attack, depression and mental problems can be avoided.
One of the most likely causes of stress among individuals is the changes in the nature of employment; this requires adequate time to cope it. However, when employees are forced to fit quickly to the changes, it might results in stress and depression with other opting to abandon the job. Huge debts and loans in work place may result in stress with the individual trying to figure out how he/she will settle the stress. Family issues transferred to work place can create conflicts between the management, clients and the individual.
Impact of stress on individual employee
Stress has several impacts on an individual employee. Some of these effects are visible while others aren’t visible but can be noticed through a keen scrutiny of the person. These impacts include:
Impact of stress on physical health: when stress isn’t handled in the primary stage might have serious implications later. Prolonged exposure to stress may cause severe health complication. These health problems include; hypertension, improper digestions, muscular tension, cardio vascular disease, back pain and headache. Other problems such as fatique have direct impact on the business since an individual can’t produce his/her best. Absenteeism also common for stress affected persons.
Impact of stress on engagement and commitment
The relationship between an employee and the employer can be affected by adverse stress; this is an impact on psychological contract. Strain in relationship is triggered by both parties that are the employee or the employee. For instance when the employees feel that the employer doesn’t treat them well, this is through managing change that touches on the employees poorly may be seen as a psychological contract leading to stress. Stress can be managed through dialogue between the employees and the management and trying to find a common ground for problems that threatens the relationship.
Impact of stress on mental health and state of the mind
Prolonged exposure of stress has a severe impact on the brain. Stress is an additive to most common mental health problems, (Wunderlich, G. S., Sloan, F. A., Davis, C. K., & Institute of Medicine (U.S.) 1996). Together with anxiety and depression yield a chronic type of mental problems which in some cases lead to death. Stress at mild state affects the health mind but the impact is small and can’t be easily noticed. However, stress at primary level can lead to chronic mental health problem, (Martin, C., 2005). It also affects the way an individual interact with others, increased moodiness and low self esteem will have serious impact on interpersonal skills.
Stress on individual level may have negative organizational impact. Stress has several organizational impact listed below;
Impact of stress on organizations
Highlighted below is how stress has serious implication on organization. This section focuses on how stress can affect employee’s attendance, staff turnover and reduction on productions. These major cause of conflict at work and impacts on relationships between all the stakeholders in the organization which at the long run taints the organization image.
Stress and sickness absence
Absenteeism is common in many organizations. Absenteeism is mainly caused by sickness; however, currently it is as a result of stress. People view stress as an obvious thing and this affects the turnover of every organization. There are a number of reasons that a person undergoing stress might take sickness absence. These include
Sickness due to stress related ill health. Chronic stress leads to mental health related problems which automatically warrant an employee to miss work. This absence will have negative effects on the business. Sickness work absence is one of the ways of dealing with stressful work situation. Individual avoid going to work with stress since they may not control their tempers and this might jeopardize their work.
Stress and productivity (presenteeism)
Mental stress according to research reduces job productivity in comparison to absenteeism. Earlier people believed that absenteeism was the main contributor of reduction in productivity however, research has proven this wrong. In the year 2009 the university of York centre of mental health at work conducted a research which indicated this drastic twist of events. According to this research absenteeism affects 45 percent of productivity in comparison with stress which affects 75 percent. The research was conducted in five states in the United States of America.
Presenteesm is defined as a situation when a person goes to work and functions less than normal due to ill-health related to stress. The cost of absenteeism can be measured but preseentism can’t be measured. Fatigue may lead to low, poor performance this resulting in reduced concentration. The organization can come up with mechanism to try and reduce the rate of preseentism in order to increase the turnover and maximize profits.
Stress and staff turnover
Stress affects is one of the causes for employees leaving an organization. Workers who server from stress don’t complete their normal working hours but instead leave earlier in abide to reduce the stress. The working conditions of an organization may also be associated with stress. The change in career may result to stress due the job demands. One way of determining the staff turnover is by calculating the proportion of turnover that is stress related, multiplied by number of employees leaving the cost per departure. Absence can’t reduce staff related turnover but can reduce in to some extent. The workers who depart present a challenging situation those who are present and in the long term affect the output.
Stress and other costs
Stress is a source of many costly problems. Other than other factors such as staff turnover and absenteeism, stress has a lot of financial implication on the company. Stress can have the following implications;
Stress can lead to lead to accidents and injury
Accidents occurring in organization are always as results of individuals experiencing high level stress. This results to poor judgment, lack of concentration, phobia and fatigue. For example in the sea ports, stress by one individual may risk the lives of others. Death is real especially in situation where more than a third of workers in the organization.
Stress can lead to workplace conflict
Many employees don’t know how to manage stress and end up transferring to other. Automatically conflict must ensue which may lead to fighting causing injury. This may also taint the image of the organization through the spread of propaganda. Conflict at work requires considerable management and the HR must consider bringing in external mediation and conflict resolution.
Stress can lead to poor employee relation and disputes
Stress can affect the smooth running of an organization because the employees aren’t in unison and can’t agree to each other’s views and opinions. Whenever an employee feels that he/she is bullied or harassed he/she might revolt being ignorant.
Stress and external stakeholders
Stress should be considered on decision making and the implication that has on the external environment. Key external stakeholders must be incorporated in addressing stress. For example organization that fails to address stress related problems risk tainting the image of the organization. For example when employees suffer some degree of stress they may respond rudely to the clients which may damage the public relation with the customers.
Moral case for addressing stress
Stress management is a collective responsibility, all the stakeholders must pull together to address it. Stress is something which evitable and proper mechanism has to be adhered to in order to correct it. Stress in an organization is manageable; the educational curriculum must have a topic on stress to address the menace (Gordon, J. S., 2011).
Job stress affects both male and female, although there are some gender differences in certain aspects. According to research women are prone to stress than men. Women experience physical symptoms of stress such as fatigue though most are invisible. Men experience milt stress however, they seldom handle this stress than women. Men have poor eating habits which make them susceptible to stress.
For working women balancing work life and care giving is a significant stressor. Caring for children with chronic diseases such as asthma is by itself stressful, this has made women hardened by such situation. Overall, working women who are also caregivers often face work.
Adjustments, including reduced hours, taking leaves of absence and even quitting their jobs, Not surprisingly, women are more than twice as likely as their male counterparts to report the
Benefits of having employer-provided support systems that offer counseling or support groups
Strategies have to be applied to reduce the level of stress among workers. The strategy must be a dual approach of organizational changes and encouraging employees on how to handle and manage stress no matter the source. The strategies needn’t be elaborate or expensive. Simple planning ways to improve communication on an organization is very important and isn’t expensive. An organization or company must institute a program to recognize workers’ accomplishments and promote leadership training. As a result of these efforts, the company might have no major layoffs and an annual attrition rate of just four percent.
Evaluation tools such as online questionnaire must be adopted by managers and company directors in order for them to know issues that stress their employees. This isn’t only beneficial to the company but also for the welfare of the employee. Workers to learn about their individual risks and can be an effective motivator towards making healthy lifestyle changes to reduce those risks, (Gordon, J. S., 2011).
Stress can be classified into the following categories: primary intervention. This is defined to curb stress at initial level. This category tends to identify the root cause of stress and address it. Stress not well managed transfers to secondary interventions whereby it aims to reduce stressful situation and prevent potential harm and suicide. Finally is the tertiary intervention whereby it acts as a correction center to those critically affected by stress.
References
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