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Discussion on: Workplace Stress and How Organization can Manage them

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Angel Paudel

Stress is an emotional, imaginary state of mind where an individual wants to flee or fight against the problem. Whereas workplace stress is the similar condition as stress but the resultant of the condition of the workplace itself (van Dixhoorn, 1997). It is considered as one of the constant source of stress for many working individuals (Armstrong, 2012). Evaluating the situation with an example:

John is a marketing manager of Google. He’s working on a marketing plan of whose deadline got prepended by two weeks. And, on top of that his boss shouted at him for not being aware of the deadline change. John would have had a good week had it not been for the following situation. But, the change in deadline and the boss shouting at him both caused stress.

Stress at work reduces the ability of employee to give their best for certain things or reduce the output quality so it’s important for the company to help their employees manage stress at work. Managing stress also helps to improve mental and physiological health of an employee. Here are some of the ways based on what organization can manage stress considering a situation of an employee:

  • Job Redesign: Considering that James is an assistant manager at KFC (restaurant) and is facing stress as he’s undermined by another assistant manager on things like planning worker schedules and providing orders. The organization can reduce James’s stress by redesigning the individual’s job role by proving him with more authority and to plan subordinates work schedules without interference from the other assistant manager or anyone. In addition to that, providing training program to develop certain skills of his for further growth within the organization in the future helps reduce the stress. The stress caused due to job conflict is resolved with proper job redesign.

  • Goal setting: Setting a fixed goal helps improve the motivational level and job performance of an individual. If the manager decides to add incentives for meeting the goals, it helps relieve the stress of the employees as they’ll be receiving certain rewards for meeting the goal and most importantly, they’re aware of what they have to accomplish with their role.

  • Role Negotiation: Considering that Marry is a marketing manager for Yahoo, who is very stressed with her job as she thinks her expectations aren’t met at the job. She thinks that her time will be best spent doing creative works but she’s often covered with numbers and research based works. The organization can resolve the situation by entering role negotiation with Marry to get her out from this stressful situation. In this negotiation, her expectations and role for the job is compared to cooperate expectation and roles; if any differences are found negotiation happens. If the management realizes the creative side of her and provide such role as well the stress level of the employee (Marry, here) is resolved.

References

Armstrong, M. (2012). Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice (12 Ed ed.). Kogan Page.

van Dixhoorn, J. (1997). Stress at the Workplace: Health and Productivity—ISMA-5. International Journal of Stress Management , 4(4), p.233.