Reference no: EM132696687

Causes of Work Stress

Workplace stress has been skyrocketing worldwide for some years. In the 2013 Work Stress survey conducted by Harris Interactive and Everest College, 83 percent of people surveyed in the United States said they experienced stress at work, an increase of 10 percentage points from the previous year's survey. Poor compensation and unreasonable workloads were cited as the top causes of harmful workplace stress. Surveys in Canada consistently cite work as the top source of stress for people in that country. In India, growing numbers of young software professionals and call center workers are falling prey to depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses because of increasing workplace stress. And the long hours and stressful conditions that have led to suicides among contract manufacturing workers in China have prompted managers at technology firms such as Apple, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Toshiba to do some serious soul-searching. "Work conditions can cause mental illness," says psychologist Rodney L. Lowman. "If we put healthy, well-adjusted people in the right foxhole with guns blaring at them, the likelihood of them experiencing depression and anxiety is very high."

Managers can better cope with their own stress and establish ways for the organization to help employees cope if they understand the conditions that tend to produce work stress. Unethical environments and unsafe working conditions, such as those at some contract manufacturers, are major stressors, of course. In terms of more typical everyday work stressors, one approach is to think about the stress caused by the demands of job tasks and stress caused by interpersonal pressures and conflicts:

• Task demands are stressors arising from the tasks required of a person holding a particular job. Some kinds of decisions are inherently stressful: those made under time pressure, those that have serious consequences, and those that must be made with incomplete information. For example, emergency room doctors are under tremendous stress as a result of the task demands of their jobs. They regularly have to make quick decisions based on limited information that may determine whether a patient lives or dies. Jobs in which people have to deal with irate customers can also be highly stressful. Turnover among customer service employees can be as high as 300 percent a year in some industries. Almost all jobs, especially those of managers, have some level of stress associated with task demands. Task demands also sometimes cause stress because of role ambiguity, which means that people are unclear about what task behaviors are expected of them. In a survey by the American Psychological Association (APA), 35 percent of respondents cited unclear job expectations as a cause of their workplace stress.
• Interpersonal demands are stressors associated with relationships in the organization. Although interpersonal relationships can alleviate stress in some cases, they also can be a source of stress when the group puts pressure on an individual or when conflicts arise between individuals. Managers can resolve many conflicts using techniques that will be discussed in Chapter 14. Role conflict occurs when an individual perceives incompatible demands from others. Managers often feel role conflict because the demands of their superiors conflict with those of the employees in their department. They may be expected to support employees and provide them with opportunities to experiment and be creative, while at the same time top executives are demanding a consistent level of output that leaves little time for creativity and experimentation.

1) Answer the following:

a. Explain a situation where you have experienced stress in the workplace and/or with a school project (please select a workplace scenario if you are able). Please provide a detailed description of the scenario so I have enough background information.

b. What was the cause of the stress, related to section 10-7c? Explain.

c. What was done to combat the stress? Explain.

d. Was your answer in part c an example(s) of individual level response, organizational/managerial response, or both?

e. What could have been done better to combat the workplace stress? Explain.

f. Was your answer in part e an example(s) of individual level response, organizational/managerial response, or both?