STRESS IN THE WORKPLACE

Stress in the Workplace

Stress in the Workplace

Work Stress

Work stress can be defined as the harmful physical and emotional reactions that occur when work requirements do not match the capabilities, resources, or needs of the worker. Work stress can lead to poor health and even injury. The concept of work stress is often confused with challenge, but these concepts are not equal. (Maravelas, 2005). Today stress is very important because it affects a large number of people and has many health implications of sufferers. The attention of experts focuses on workplace stress in the mid 1970's, among other things because it diminishes our performance and motivation and can be the source of accidents. Since stress is something we cannot entirely avoid, the best way to cope is to know what it is, recognize it when we are affecting and identify which is what causes the stress, so as to eliminate or mitigate its effects.

Causes of Stress at Work

The stress in the workplace can occur come from numerous sources. First, cause of stress can be a physical such as noise, lack of light, heat, cold, wind, air pollution, vibration and movement, shift work. Another source of stress is work overload, when we have more work than we can carry out. This situation is often worse when there is pressure, caused, for example, by a delivery deadline. Employees routinely work overtime, staying late at work, despite which take work home to "take forward the excess tasks" that have accumulated (Bower & Segerstrom, 2004).

One of the first symptoms of workplace fatigue is a decrease in performance despite increasing working hours all produced by exhaustion. Sometimes, the employee is also responsible for a work that is beyond their skills or knowledge, which would make a great impotence and insecurity, as in cases in which to reward a person is promoted without it. That a person is an excellent mechanic, does not have to imply that it is an excellent foreman, where, although the salary is greater, the duties and responsibilities are very different. Perhaps your mechanic or the want that promotion, so if that is granted may rise rather than prize will be "punished" and eventually abandoned the enterprise.

The competitiveness and dynamism required in the modern business world has led us to normal in the field of organizations the change, anticipate change of change, and so on (Bower & Segerstrom, 2004). Furthermore, these feelings occur even if the change will improve the situation of the employee. A clear example is the reluctance to show a new design of our job, although in the medium and long term which benefits our back, wrists or neck. In general, you tend to try to preserve the former situation, which also can cause friction or clashes with colleagues who try to carry out the modifications.

In other cases, the source of stress comes from not clearly know the role we have to play in the company, what our colleagues and bosses expect of us or what ...