A few years back, I wrote an article on workplace stress and offered some tips on how to deal with it. It was a short, interesting, ”filler” piece. After all, we’ve all had those fight or flight moments where our tables in Microsoft Word just don’t seem to be doing what we want it to do or the phone keeps ringing off the hook and we can’t seem to get our work done.
I knew about stress – studied it in psychology – and of course experience stress in my personal life and work. However, until I delved deep into the research on the subject recently, I didn’t fully understand how serious a problem it has become in the working environment – particularly the negative, far reaching effects on both workers and an organization.
Stress is in our nature - it serves a purpose and can not be eliminated. Unfortunately, too much of it isn’t a good thing. Stress is the result of any outside forces that puts pressure or strain on us, affecting our emotional and physical state and thus requiring change. Stress can be positive – let’s say for instance when it provides motivation to change for the better or creates a desire to surge forward and come up with an award winning proposal. It becomes negative when it’s overwhelming, and constant, with little opportunity for a break.
To illustrate, that pile of paperwork that just keeps getting bigger as demands for more production increases due to cut backs, only to go home to utility bills that keep increasing, and household duties or family commitments that never end. Guilt for not contributing enough at work and at home and fear of job loss add to the boiling pot and there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
Reading this, is your heart pounding? Palms sweaty? That’s stress – if you’re still feeling it three days from now, it will cause insomnia, poor coping habits, angry outbursts, apathy, job dissatisfaction, illness - yes, even contribute to musculoskeletal disorders and can be fatal. For employers, this can mean poor decision making, absenteeism, poor concentration and accidents on the job, low production rates and high employee turnover. In actuality – it will hit a company’s bottom line…hard.
Now you know what stress is and a little about the impact on all parties involved. It’s a rising issue but it isn’t new. Workplace stress has been around for a long time but it gets overlooked on the priority list of safety issues. Why? Because it’s been accepted as part of working life – which is unfortunate.
Stay tuned and I’ll get into further details of how it impacts an organization (from the small to the violent extremes), the causes and solutions to this workplace hazard on the rise.