Dealing with Stress in the Workplace
Stress is decidedly a personalized occurrence and varies widely even in identical situations for various reasons. One survey reveals that majority of policemen become stressed simply by completing necessary paper work than facing the dangers related to pursuing and catching criminals.
Downsizing, mergers and bankruptcies have cost hundreds of thousands of employees their jobs while millions have been transferred to unfamiliar tasks within their companies with no assurance of tenure. Employees at all levels of the corporate ladder are increasingly experiencing tension and insecurity.
A study done by National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) reveals that:
þ 40% of employees say their job is very or extremely stressful;
þ 25% view their jobs as the number one cause of stress in their lives;
þ 75% of today’s employees believe they have more on-the-job stress than a generation ago;
þ 29% of employees feel quite a bit or extremely stressed at work;
þ 26% of employees said they are “often or very often burned out or stressed by their work”;
þ Job stress is more strongly associated with health complaints than financial or family problems.
One of the common causes of stress in the workplace is the perceived inability of an individual to do something to correct his situation. When this happens, anxiety increases and hopelessness sets in and begins to put a strain not only in interpersonal relationships in the workplace but also on marital and family relations.
Nonetheless, occupational stress however is not limited to those affected by the global business upheavals. Some occupations are inherently more hazardous or can become dangerous like police officers, firemen, ambulance drivers, military personnel and disaster rescue teams. People who perform these jobs often experience traumatic incidents in the performance of their duties resulting to memory flashbacks and nightmares, sleep disturbance, guilt and frightfulness a condition or sickness called post-traumatic stress disorder.
Some of the effective methods to resolve work-related stressful situations are:
- Know your primary responsibility by identifying the key objectives and priorities of your job.
- Understand the company’s strategy and culture so you do not become the odd man out!
- Focus on the things that are important for success and reduce time spent on low priority tasks.
- Identify the company’s achievers and learn from them.
- Make sure you have the necessary skills and resources to perform your job. If you don’t, make sure you get them by learning on your own.
- Do not set your own priorities; always confirm them with your superiors.
- There’s only one way to do things, do it right the first time!
- Understand to how to achieve your personal peak performance in doing your job.
- Make certain that you and your superiors agree on the areas you should concentrate on during crunch time.
- Make sure that you have the proper resources, training and staff necessary to do a good job.
Knowing your job and responsibilities helps you to manage stress. You are able to work more effectively, assist in constructively improving your function and become more self-assured. These are very important to enable any individual to keep job stress under control, to improve the quality of you work and to achieve success.
It is how you fit into the work environment that matters more. Levels of stress are as varied as the individuals who experience stress, even in identical situations.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Share to the world
