How To Manage Workplace Stress
Here are several good ways to manage workplace stress - everything from on the job tactics to ideas for destressing your personal life, which also affects the workplace.
Easy Ideas For Workplace Stress Management | bulgebeater.com
The current day workplace can be an active stress trigger with multiple stress causing situations such as excessive workloads, long working hours and inevitable.
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Here's a great video to how to avoid workplace stress, by author and coach Robert Scheinfeld:
How To Avoid Workplace Stress
Stress In The Workplace – Is Your Job Performance Suffering?
On-the-job stress is a commonly occurring problem in today’s society. For most workers, job-related stress comes with the territory so it’s important to develop coping skills. Stress can be minimized if you know the things that cause it in your workplace and develop ways to keep your sanity in the midst of it all.
Stress Psychology
work related stress can be described as a pattern of emotional, cognitive, behavioral and physiological reactions that we experience whenever we perceive ourselves to be in a situation in which we are not able to cope with the demands placed upon us. Sources of workplace stress include the workplace, home and the struggle to balance our work and home.
According to a Leger Marketing survey of working Canadians, effects of workplace stress include:
• Physical Impact: 53 per cent say they experience headaches, clenched jaws, indigestion, constipation or diarrhoea, increased perspiration, and fatigue or insomnia due to workplace stress.
• Psychological Impact: 55 per cent experience anxiety, irritability with co-workers, defensiveness, anger, mood swings, and feelings of helplessness or of being trapped due to workplace stress.
• Behavioural Impact: 52 per cent say stress in the workplace makes them impatient, causes them to procrastinate, makes them quick to argue or withdraw, or causes them to isolate themselves from others, neglect responsibility or perform poorly.
Sources of workplace stress include the nature and content of work, and organizational factors that contribute to an environment of fairness, respect and justice. Moving to a global economy has made our work worlds faster paced and has created a 24/7 environment where we can continue to work, pay bills and make purchases around the clock and around the globe.
Work hours and the workweek have been extended and technologies such as cell phones, pagers, Blackberry’s and computers blur the distinction between work and home.
Why should we care about work-related stress?
Working under continued stress leads to people feeling on-edge, emotionally exhausted, and burned-out. Feeling this way for too long can lead to other serious problems such as depression, anxiety disorders, and substance abuse.
These mental health and addiction problems result in an immense burden on individuals, workplaces, health-care systems and the economy. Mental health claims are the fastest growing category of disability claims and the majority of long-term disability claims have a significant mental health component.
The economic impact of workplace depression has recently become better understood with the more precise measurement of direct and indirect costs. For those who are employed, direct costs such as absenteeism, disability and treatment costs can be well quantified based on administrative data.
Other factors, that are likely important, but more difficult to quantify include lost economic opportunity resulting from depression including underemployment, missed promotions or overtime, shifting from full-time to part-time and the burden of depression to families or society at large.
Common causes of workplace stress:
o Job satisfaction: People who report being more satisfied with their job or happier in their job also report lower levels of stress. Job satisfaction includes feeling like they make an important contribution in doing their job well.
o It also includes feeling like their job is a “good fit” and that they have the training, skills and direction necessary to do their job well.
o Fair compensation: Employees report higher job satisfaction when they feel that they are being fairly compensated so that they feel they have been dealt with in a personal and just fashion. Career development opportunities are an important part of fair compensation.
o Work stress balance: Overwork or under work (including under-use of skills) leads to stress among employees. There are optimum amounts of work that people can process well so that they are neither over-worked or becoming bored in their job.
Meaningful work in a meaningful organization: It is important for employees to feel that their contribution is valued as part of the larger picture (like being a valued member of a team). Diversity-friendly work environments are an essential part of today’s health work environment.
Physical work environment: Work stress is reduced when the physical work environment is comfortable including natural light when possible, comfortable temperatures, aesthetically pleasing, and not socially isolated.
Effective leadership: It is noted that more people leave their jobs because they have not received the proper support and leadership from their managers than for any other reason. Often top performers are promoted into management positions with little or no management training or preparation.
Good managers contribute to a healthy work environment by including staff in decision making and increasing their sense of control and direction in the organization. Staff benefit from feeling respect and recognition from managers. Repressive management style and techniques serve to increase work place stress and contribute to low staff morale.
A psychologically healthy work place engenders loyalty among staff while motivating them to rise to new heights of performance and preventing talented people from leaving.
Signs of stress
?Irritability and impatience
?Inability to stay focused
?Staying out of sight, keeping the world at a distance, being grouchy about casual interruptions such as the phone ringing and avoiding eye contact
?Calling in sick a lot, being persistently late for meetings
?Avoiding the office atmosphere and “working at home” a lot
?Finding it painful to smile openly
?Finding small talk hateful and tuning out what others say
?Missing deadlines
?Losing faith in yourself and others
?Resenting and even alienating clients
Overall, exposure to chronic work stress appears to amplify the negative effects of psychiatric and physical disorders and is associated with higher rates of disability. Conversely, increasing decision latitude and support from coworker or supervisors can buffer the negative effects of job strain.
It is important to note that when considering a variety of direct and indirect measures of costs of depression in the workplace, the cost of treatment is always a small fraction and provides an excellent return on investment for employers, private insurers and public health-care systems through increased productivity and higher rates of sustained employment.
About the Author:
Alvaro Castillo has been writing reports for 10 years on healthy sleep habits and stress with positive results. For more information check out his website at http://www.mynighttimehealth.com
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Stress in the Workplace
Stress Management Institute
Taking a five-minute vacation throughout your working in a high stress environment, can be just the thing to maintain your sanity.
Employees in today's high stress workplace, where longer hours and fewer vacations have become the norm, should get up and get out of the office for at least five minutes every few hours. Because I am a veteran business consultant, an author and time management expert I speak from both education and experience.
If the boss won't let you take a five-minute vacation from your desk, then take a five-minute vacation in your mind. Even a few minutes focusing on anything that is not work related can help you reduce stress, refresh and refocus.
In my book, Time Management Secrets for Working Women, I describe employees increasingly turning to go-to help from books and Web sites in order to obtain help through a 40-hour work week that is approaching 50 hours for many full-time workers. The success of this book to both a male and female audience pushed it ahead of it's own marketing schedule by two years and resulted in a second printing.
Are you addicted to your cell phone, your email or other technologies like Instant Messenger? They streamline work, and they also sabotage and stress you if you are hooked in to them 24/7. I'm always surprised by clients who check their email immediately upon waking up and answer every cell phone call at any time of the day.
Unless you're a doctor or in another profession requiring 24/7 attention, turn off your cell phone and resolve to answer it only at two scheduled times of the day. Lack of control is a huge factor in workplace stress. You will always have an enormous incoming workload, but you will also always be able to control how you respond to it.
I advise my coaching clients to not check email immediately upon waking up, but rather after making a to-do list for the day and then circling two, and only two tasks to accomplish first. You will absolutely feel overwhelmed if you write down a list of 10 or 20 assignments. Deliberately choosing to focus on completing only two tasks (and not the rest of the huge list) will keep you stabilized throughout the day. Don't get addicted to the sound of the Pavlov's dog bell of incoming email. Only check it at pre-scheduled times. Constantly checking your email can rob you of time and distract you from the tasks in front of you.
Two recent studies confirm my campaign to persuade employers to become more proactive in recognizing workplace stress and allowing employees an adequate number of breaks, fewer all-employee meetings and other practices that often serve to only exacerbate daily stress levels.
A recent study from the University of California-Irvine reports a direct link between overwork and high blood pressure, and another study from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health reports that workplace stress can be contagious.
Employers concerned about the high cost of health care should take note that workplace stress can take a huge physical toll on their workers. Workforce productivity affects the bottom line, but the stress that generates it can be both contagious and threaten that very bottom line. Employers and managers who lose control can, in turn, face the same major ingredient for high stress.
Employers should encourage more defined work breaks to create an atmosphere that will allow employees to step back from their desks a few times each day, and to earn a day off with no strings attached. Is every meeting productive? Consider shortening the length and numbers of meetings to allow employees to focus on immediate tasks without distractions that can add to their stress.
About the Author:
Always appreciate fresh new marketing and branding tips to drive your business several steps forward? Tap Ruth Klein's expertise at her upcoming Brand and Pitch Boot Camp. http://www.ruthklein.com/bpbc
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - A Five Minute Time Management Break
Workplace Stress
workplace stress
workplace stress?
what is workplace stress? causes?
workplace stress is just stress (physical, mental, or emotional strain or tension) as a result of your work environment
for causes: http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2002/10/14/biz_stress14.html
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