CHAPTER SIX

STRESS MANAGEMENT
What is Stress?
• The excitement, feeling of anxiety, and/or physical tension that occurs when the demands or
stressors placed on an individual are thought to exceed the person’s ability to cope.
• Stress is the experience of opportunities or threats that people perceive as important and also
perceive they might not be able to handle or deal with effectively.
 Stress can be experienced because of both opportunities and threats.
 The threat or opportunity experienced is important to a person.
 Stress is uncertainty
 Stress is rooted in perception
The importance of studying stress
• Stress can have damaging psychological and physiological effects on employees’ health and
on their contributions to organizational effectiveness.
– It can cause heart disease, and it can prevent employees from concentrating or making
decisions.
– Increased levels of stress have also been associated with adverse effects on family
relationships, decreased productivity in the workplace, and increased psychiatric
symptoms.
• Stress is a major cause of employee absenteeism and turnover.
– Certainly, such factors severely limit the potential success of an organization.
• A stressed employee can affect the safety of other workers or even the public.
• Stress represents a significant cost to organizations.
– Many modern organizations spend a great deal of money treating stress-related
employee problems through medical programs, and they must absorb expensive legal
fees when handling stress-related lawsuits.
Sources of stress
• Stress can be caused by personal factors and by job-related factors called stressors.
1. Organizational stressors:
– Task demands
– Role demands
– Interpersonal demands
– Organization structure, and
– Organizational leadership.
a. Task demands:
– Are factors related to an employee’s job
– They include the design of a person’s job (autonomy, task variety, degree of
automation), working conditions, and the physical work layout.
– The more interdependence between an employee’s tasks and the tasks of others is, the
greater the potential for stress.

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 – Autonomy, on the other hand, tends to lessen stress.
– Jobs in which temperatures, noise, or other working conditions are dangerous or
undesirable can increase anxiety.
– So, too, can working in an overcrowded room or in a visible location where
interruptions are constant.
b. Role demands:
– Relate to pressures placed on an employee as a function of the particular role he or
she plays in the organization.
c. Role conflicts:
– Create expectations that may be hard to reconcile or satisfy.
– Occurs when an individual’s compliance with one set of expectations conflicts with
compliance with another set of expectations.
– Role overload is experienced when the employee is expected to do more than time
permits.
– Role ambiguity is created when role expectations are not clearly understood and the
employee is not sure what he or she is to do.
d. Interpersonal demands:
– Are pressures created by other employees
– Lack of social support from colleagues and poor interpersonal relationships can cause
considerable stress, especially among employees with a high social need.
e. Organization structure
– Can increase stress.
– Excessive rules and an employee’s lack of opportunity to participate in decisions that
affect him or her are examples of structural variables that might be potential sources of
stress.
f. Organizational leadership
– Represents the supervisory style of the organization’s managers.
– Some managers create a culture characterized by tension, fear, and anxiety.
– They establish unrealistic pressures to perform in the short run, impose excessively
tight controls, and routinely fire employees who don’t measure up.
– This style of leadership filters down through the organization and affects all
employees.
2. Personal factors
• Include;
– Family issues,
– Personal economic problems, and
– Inherent personality characteristics.

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SYMPTOMS OF STRESS
• Physical
– Changes in metabolism, increased heart and breathing rates, raised blood pressure,
headaches, and potential of heart attacks.
• Psychological
– Job-related dissatisfaction, tension, anxiety, irritability, boredom, and procrastination.
• Behavioral-
Changes in productivity, absenteeism, job turnover, changes in eating habits, increased smoking
or consumption of alcohol, rapid speech, fidgeting, and sleep disorders.
HOW CAN STRESS BE REDUCED?
Individual Level Strategies
– Define objective for self
– Plan your life
– Social Support
– Physical Fitness
– Biofeedback
– Yoga: is a methodology to integrate body and mind and achieve a required level of
harmony with the God.
– Meditation: Meditation involves sitting at quite place, closing eyes and concentrating on
some symbol with uttering of simple world like ‘OM’. It is aimed at total concentration
thus forgetting routine situations.is combination of body, concentration of mind on a
particular symbol, utterance of words, regulating of breathing thereby achieving a total
concentration of body and mind to achieve a super natural personal power.
– Time Management
– Live a simple Life
Organizational Level Strategies
• Organizational goals must be in realms of achievement.
• Too much high goals not only put the employees under undue stress but also creates
unhealthy work environment.
• Organizational polices should be clearly defined with particular reference to training and
development, promotion, leave, wages and salary administration, discipline, incentives,
etc.
• Authority and responsibility must be clearly defined by setting up reporting channels.
Principle of unity of command should be adhered to.
• Organizational structure, redesigning of jobs and improved communication reduces
stress.
• Corporate policies, physical work environment should be suitable for higher productivity.
• An updated systems and processes increase efficiency.
• Management must create a healthy working environment.
• Career plan for mangers must be developed and implemented in letter and spirit.

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 • Nothing discourages employees as bad developmental programs.
• Employees must be empowered.
They should be provided with suitable time to time counseling by way of advice, reassurance,
good communication, release of emotional tension and clarified thinking. Re-orientation is
important to keep employees free of stress for increased productivity.