workplace stress and how it afects employee performance

Chapter2

1.1 Introduction

This chapter discusses relevant published study of two concepts to gain more understanding of the relationship between workplace stress and how it affects employee performance. It also explains the consequences of stress and the five basis models of stress. Additionally, discuss related published study of the second concept, employee performance, common standards and the relationship between the two concepts as noted above.

1.2 Workplace stress

How we react to certain situations can be defined as stress. Stress affects our emotions, psychology, and behaviors towards an event that has happened to us or anticipated to occur. This body interference includes feelings of anxiety and restlessness (Meyer 2013). People mostly speak of how stressful yet they know very little about stress. Stress occurs in different stages and when experienced over a period of time it can become chronic and lead to very bad side effects in the normal functioning of an individual. Stress can result in serious health issues that might take time to reverse. Stress factors can be from a person`s environment (external) or within an individual psychological reaction (internal).

1.2.1 definition & introduction

Stress has a lot of definition to a lot of people. Depending on the angle which you look at it, one can define stress in their own way, but all agree that it affects people. The original conception of stress was that it came as an environmental pressure, afterwards it was agreed that it was as a strain from within a human being. Stress is not a health defect. It should not be put into the same category as health conditions. Although, it is a sign of very harmful emotional and physical strains. Stress can therefore be defined as harmful physical and emotional response which is caused by imbalances between perceived demands and perceived resources and individuals abilities to cope with the said demands.(reference) A further definition of stress will be; a psychological and physical state which will result when the resources of a particular individual are not sufficient to cope with the individuals demands and pressures. Stress thus differs in situations and individuals. (reference)

There are acute responses to stress and this fall in different areas. In feelings the responses may be such as depression, anxiety, fatigue and irritation. In the behaviour responses would be like, withdrawal, extra aggressiveness, being unmotivated and tearful. When thinking the responses of stress includes difficulties in problem solving and lack of concentration. The physical symptoms of stress include feeling of nausea and headache

1.2.2 Models of stress

Person – environment fit model

There are many theories that explain the person – fit model but all of them carry one main assumption. That people will seek out and will create environments that will allow them to behaviourally manifest their characters. An example is dominant people will definitely seek leadership especially politically. It also explains further that the extent to which people fit their environments at work has very significant consequences with far better results.

This theory is very important in career development as it makes great interventions in career planning, making decisions and adjustments. It helps people to understand and solve career related issues. By theoretically assessing relevant constraints relating to individuals and the environment this theory forms a key part in career counselling. The results are incorporated into counselling to help clients in developing their careers.

The arguments of person environment fit theories are that people have fundamental needs to fit in their environments and that the degree of fit between these people and the environment in which they work in is positively related to important individual results.

There are many challenges of the personal- fit environment. The first challenge is the dimensionality of the theory. In the past the theory was termed as ‘elusive’. This means that researchers were unclear of the theory. The main argument about the fit was that studying it alone as a single dimension was inconsistent with how individuals experienced it. This is because people have many dimensions of the environment.it has been argued that many researchers had covered limited number of content dimensions. This creates problems which include issues with content validity and criteria incomplete determinants.

The other challenge is how to integrate all the theories of personal environment model. There have been recent developments on the theory from the single dimension to multiple theories on fit. The integration of these theories would allow researchers to give a clear picture of the person environment fit phenomena and investigate the unique effects of each theory.

The third challenge will involve the simultaneous assessing of contributions of various types of the theory to the theoretically related outcome constructs. The last challenge is linked with assessments of the function of the multi-dimensional construct of the fit theory. A construct is usually described as a superordinate when the relationship is flowing from the constructs to its dimensions. It is described as aggregate when the relationships are flowing from the dimensions to the constructs.

Job characteristic model

This describes the relationship between the job and the characteristics and the responses of the individual to work. It specifies the condition of the task in which the individual is predicted to prosper in their work. This theory is characterized by five dimensions that prompt three psychological states that lead to various beneficial personal and work outcomes. The five job characteristics are as follows.

· Skill variety – refers to the degree to which a job requires different variety of activities in carrying out the work by involving the use of different number of skills and talents of the individual.

· Task identity – refers to the degree to which the job requires completion of a whole, identifiable piece of work,

· Task significance- refers to the degree that the job will impact substantially on other people’s lives, directly or indirectly.

· Autonomy – refers to the degree in which the job provides substantial freedom and independence to the worker.

· Job feedback – providing the individual with direct and clear information about the effectiveness of their performance.

This theory suggests that positive feelings flow from good performances and negative feelings emanate from poor performances. If a certain job is low in how it motivates the workers then the performances will be low. If the job is high in motivating employees then the outcomes will be high. Personal growth and development are very crucial in determining response in high motivating potential. This personal growth needs strength.

Diathesis model

Diathesis stress model suggest that the combination of the preexisting diatheses and the stressors will together predict depression development. Kit goes further ahead and states that any individual who think negatively about the world will most certainly show symptoms of depression when faced with real life stress.

There are different theories that concur with the diathesis stress model. The first example is the Beck’s cognitive Triad Model which suggests that all negative thoughts about the world, future and of the people themselves contribute to stress development. These views affect one’s process of information and make the individuals susceptible to mental health issue when negative situations arise.

The other theory is the Learned Helplessness Model which simply suggests that feeling helpless leads to depression.

These two models depend on a stressful event occurring on the individual; therefore an individual with a negative cognitive style may never encounter depression. This is because that person never encountered a stressful event. This theory is therefore not satisfactory I explaining stress in individuals. Both stress and cognitive lifestyle are known to contribute to depression. Stress in itself is a depression predictor.

Job demand resource model

This one relates the demand of a specific job to the outcome of the job and it divides the work environments characteristics to two; job demands and job resources. These job demands are the physical, social, or organizational job aspects requiring sustained physical and/or psychological effort and are, therefore, associated with physiological and/or psychological costs. Job resources on the other hand are divided into three. These are the physical, social or organizational elements of the job that;

a) Achieve work-related goals.

b) Reduce the demands of jobs and its associated physiological and psychological costs.

c) Stimulate personal growth and development.

These two categories of work characteristics evoke two relatively independent psychological processes. According to the health impairment process, high job demands, which require sustained effort, may exhaust employees’ resources and lead to energy depletion and health problems the conservation of resources theory defines resources as entities that are either centrally valise or they act as a means to obtain centrally valued means. There are four types of resources; objects, conditions, personal traits and energies.

The recent studies of this theory focusses on two main assumptions of the conservation of theory . the first assumption states that individuals invest their resources in order to deal with threatening conditions and to help prevent themselves from encountering negative outcomes. The second assumption is that individuals strive to accumulate the resources they want to protect.

These two theories share some few things. The first is that both assume a moderating role of resources in the relationship between demands and negative outcomes. They also assume that the availability of job resources would lead to an accumulation of job resources and therefore more positive outcomes in the workplace.

Personal resources are the aspects of the individual that are linked to resilience and these refer to the individual’s sense to impact and control the environment successfully.

Effort reward imbalance model

This is one of the most popular work stress models and considers the role of situational, personal and social factors in workplace trouble. It has its origin in medical sociology and emphasizes both the effort and reward structure of work. It is based on the assumption that benefits of work depend on a reciprocal relationship between efforts and the rewards offered. The efforts would represent job demands that are imposed by the employee. This model sttes that work characterized by both high efforts and low rewards represents a deficit that is reciprocal between costs and gains.

This model emphasizes the imbalance between efforts spent at work and the rewards received after. This model was formulated to answer questions that the person environment could not answer.

This theory has some loopholes and need strengthening. This is because the model provides support that is inconsistent for the theoretically proposed moderating role of the environment. The previous work has also rarely assessed additional personality traits or coping mechanisms that are relate to the model. This has further limited our knowledge of the individual differences involved in moderating employees’ response to the stimuli of effort reward imbalances

The other area needed to be strengthened is the relation to the measurement of the reward component. The model conceptualizes reward according to a multi-dimensional definition but the bulk of the research tends to utilize a composite reward indicator. There have been emerging evidence to suggest that the rewards in the model may have differing effects depending on the outcome.

The third area of contention involves the research designs that are being used to investigate this model. The research has grown over the past decade and most of the study only tends to focus on physical and physiological health. These are the common factors that cause stress in workplace environment. (discuss the impact of these factors on productivity)

1.2.3 Common causes of workplace stress

The first source of stress is the working conditions. These will definitely fall under poor working conditions. Many research findings have shown that work performance is proportional to working conditions, if the working conditions are good then work performance increases. If the working conditions are poor then work performance reduces. These poor working conditions that led to increase in stress would include bad lighting, noise in the work place bad temperatures, lack of or insufficient oxygen and lack of proper air conditioning. All these create negative environmental stressors and their effects over a long period of time will increase stress. The other characteristic of working conditions that increases stress would be timelines; these include time pressure and tasks with deadlines. These deadlines within organizations cause unnecessary negative pressure and tension in employees. They increase mental over load especially in jobs that need creative thinking. They also affect emotions by making employees restless; add a lot of tension and raises conflicts in the work place.

The workplace is also another source of stress. Stress differs according to the type of work someone does. There are seven types of stress sources in the different workplaces. These include;

I. The profession’s inner factors – like working conditions

II. The professional’s role in the organization – for example if an employee is assigned a different role from what they are used to then it will increase stress. The higher the individual is in an organization also increases the level of stress.

III. Work relationships between employees – good relationships between workers create a feel-good atmosphere in the workplace and reduce stress of many employees.

IV. A worker’s personality and stress coping mechanism – for example by taking a case of two types of personalities, extrovert and introvert. An introvert would not feel comfortable working with others while an extrovert would really find it difficult working alone.

V. The culture and general atmosphere of the firm – this deals with the values from top management in an organization. If values are ones to demoralize workers and degrade them then it will increase stress to the employees.

VI. Mechanisms to develop career – factors to increase stress would include desire for job promotion, the feeling of job insecurity and the lack of opportunities for developing career like further studies and training.

VII. The employee’s connection between their home and workplace – the relationship between a worker’s family and the work greatly influences how they operate at work and the levels of stress. (references)

1.2.4 Consequences of workplace stress

There are different areas in which effects of work related stress, very many various disorders. It can cause three types of strains, behavioral, physical and psychological. Physiological disorders include blood pressure changes, breathing and gastronomical disorders. Emotional disorders will include depression, anxiety and low self-esteem.

There are psychological disorders, for example when a person is very anxious about public speaking. They would tend to feel nauseated or find it very difficult to speak in front of a group of people. Some physical stress that would occur because of stress include fatigue, headache, muscular aches, weight problems

Occupational stress is one major hazard in the workplace. It can induce less productivity in the workplace, cause absenteeism, displacement of labour force, and bringing about work-related conflicts. Stress is associated with human life and it is an integral part of human life.

Workplace stress causes a lot of damage and loss to both employees and the organizations they work in. From studies carried out in the United Kingdom, stress related diseases is responsible for removal of 180 million workers annually.

Stress can also bring about negative impact on physical health. The issues include backaches, stroke, heart diseases and peptic ulcers. Longer exposure to stress may even cause stroke.

Variable to measure stress

Measuring of stress may be placed in six categories;

I. Cognitive – the load of information processing placed on a person while they undertake specific duties.

II. Occupational – brought about due to demands of work.

III. Physical – brought about by physical pressure of the environment.

IV. Emotional - brought about by psychological and physiological triggers from emotions while working.

V. Social – brought about by inability to meet social demands in a society

VI. Personal – this is personal and it comes from within an employee in the workplace,

Stress can be measured in a stress measurement scale. The variables in the scale will be five, in all places of work. This can be done in questionnaires where people are interviewed against different questions and the results recorded. These five variables include;

· Extremely stressful (80%-100%)

· Very stressful (60% -80%)

· Stressful (40%-60%)

· Least stressful (20% -40%)

· Not stressful (0% -20%)

Stress can also be measured by how people cope with it. The method is called coping strategy, it measures an individual’s coping resources. A set of questions are written and for each item the interviewee has to pick one option from the following; never, sometimes, often, and/or always.

The altruism test is used to measure altruistic behaviours. The test has twenty-five items. Of these twenty are positively scored, the remaining five are negatively scored. Each item is provided with three alternate responses. The responses range from agree, cannot and disagree.

If for example a person is to be measured to find out how depressed they are, the Beck Depression Inventory may be used. This is a 21 item self- report where the interviewer rates the extent to which they feel sad, energy loss or experienced other systems of depression in a period of two weeks. The sum of the ratings derived is the patient’s current level of depression. The main point to note is that the measurements do not require any instruments or procedures

The variable used to measure is usually straightforward and very simple for measurement. These include age, sex, height, weight and birth order. There are other variables which are not simple like self-esteem, intelligence, personality traits and emotional states. These are normally called constructs and pronounced as CON- structs. They cannot be observed directly. This is because they often represent tendencies to think, feel, and act in certain ways. They also often involve internal processes. For example fear, it involves activation of the central nervous system along with certain kind of thoughts and feelings that are not visible physically.

1.2.5 Management of workplace stress

There are two ways to manage stress in the workplace. These include individual and organizational stress management. Individual stress management involves training oneself to avoid stressors. Organizational stress management involves setting up of structures or interventions to reduce stressors. Some of these interventions are creating flexible work schedules, proper working conditions and proper physical environment for workers. Organizational management may also include psychological measures like offering support to employees, control over work and active participation between employees.

1.3 Employee performance

1.3.1 employee performance definition

1.3.2 common standards of employee performance

1.4 Relationship between workplace stress & employee performance

1.5 Conclusion

Work related stress is a major problem worldwide. It affects both the health of an employee and the productivity of an organization. This stress may lead to absenteeism from work, lost time and therefore organizations incur losses. There are many places an individual can get help from; the doctor, psychologist, the manager or even a friend. Stress can hit anyone at any time. There is however a difference between pressure and stress. While pressure can be positive and push people to work stress on the other hand occurs when this pressure becomes excessive and prevents one for working properly to bring out positive outcomes. It is therefore important to manage stress early to reduce or prevent depression and other major life issues.