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Module Project: Occupational Stress and Work Attitudes
Situation
There is a fast-food restaurant that opened in a small town, and they have hired many
young people who have never held a job before. The median age of employees is 24 but the busy
shifts are mostly comprised of 16–18-year-olds. The restaurant is getting quite a bit of business
because it is one of the few places to eat within 20 miles. The employees must interact with
customers who are sometimes irritated by the wait during the lunch and dinner rush. In addition
to the emotional stressors, employees are expected to work in a fast-paced environment and
perform repetitive tasks for up to 10 hours a day for the 18 and older crew. The shift manager is
suffering from headaches, exhaustion, and stomach problems. I have been hired to assess the
occupational stress and work attitudes of the restaurant’s employees to understand how to
mediate some of these effects.
The restaurant’s largest challenge is maintaining staff as many young people are
overwhelmed by the occupational stressors and quickly decide that this job is not worth the
energy they are required to provide. The employees that remain maintain the attitude that they
aren’t paid enough to care about speed or quality of service and so customer complaints are high.
I sat down individually with several of the restaurant’s young employees and this attitude was
confirmed. This has led to increased callouts and no-shows, which puts the staff in an even worse
position. Many of the complaints involved boring and repetitive work, a hot environment, angry
customers, and low wages. The general manager has requested a research-based intervention to
improve work attitudes and decrease occupational stress.
Research
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Research on occupational stress indicates that the physical and mental health of
employees can be negatively impacted by prolonged exposure (Jex & Britt, 2014). This can also
decrease organizational effectiveness and increase claims for worker’s compensation. The
demand-control model states that employees with high demands placed on them who are given
little control over their environment, experience the most occupational stress (Tsutsumi &
Kawakami, 2004). This model has been extended to include social support at work. Using this
model, the demands and the control components of the employee’s job can be manipulated at the
task level while social support can be used to protect against job strain.
At the organizational level, interventions to reduce occupational stress can include
decreasing job demands, increasing job control, improving workplace social support, and
improving role clarity (Giga et al., 2018). At the individual level, self-management techniques
can be taught to employees in order to reduce the level of perceived stress among workers (Singh
& Jain, 2017). These interventions, when utilized together, can help create an efficient work
environment with reduced occupational stress.
Practical Application
Since the restaurant’s staff consists of mainly teenage and first-time employees,
expectation management and self-management techniques would be the most beneficial
interventions. I would implement four, 30-minute sessions during non-peak hours. Session one
would entail explaining the concept and causes of organizational stress. This would let the
employees know what my purpose is and how I intend to help. In session two, we would discuss
the physiological, behavioral, and emotional responses to stress and go over relaxation training
techniques. These would include deep breathing and muscular exercises. I would provide
additional printed material for the employees to take home for practice. Session three would
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involve setting personal goals for self-management. Employees would be taught how to
recognize demotivating work situations and we would discuss the burnout potential of their jobs
so that expectations can be managed by reframing the way they view stressful situations. The
fourth and final session would focus on teaching time management skills and encouraging social
connections between coworkers to establish a foundation of social support.
Organizational interventions that can be used to decrease employee occupational stress
include decreasing job demands by rotating employees through different positions throughout the
shift. This would reduce negative interactions with customers, reduce the repetitive behaviors
required for that position to 30-minute intervals a day, and decrease time spent in hot positions
like the fryer or the grill. Perceived job control can be increased by allowing employees to
choose which area they begin their shift. Workplace social support can be improved by coaching
the shift manager on supportive supervisory tactics. Role clarity can be improved by providing
each station with a written list of expectations and clear descriptions of how to accomplish them.
Discussion
Between the implementation of organizational and individual interventions, occupational
stress among employees at the restaurant should decrease. When the employees understand their
role clearly and feel supported by staff and supervisors while maintaining perceived control of
the station they work in, they will all be better equipped to handle the stresses of the job. This
will lead to a decrease in callouts and no-shows which will benefit the employees, supervisors,
and customers. A weakness of this strategy is that the average age of the employees is quite
young, and they may not yet understand the realities of stress so they may not take the training as
seriously as they should. A weakness associated with supervisor training is that the shift manager
is already experiencing physical symptoms associated with occupational stress so he would need
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to be provided with additional support during training. The overall culture of the work
environment would also need to shift towards a more teamwork-oriented mindset. When one
station is not pulling their weight, all other stations suffer, and customer satisfaction decreases
which increases the probability of a negative interaction. Finally, worker compensation may be a
driving factor for the careless attitudes of some of the staff. It would be under the discretion of
the owner to weigh whether increasing pay would also increase productivity or if previous
interventions would mitigate that attitude.
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References
Jex, S. M., & Britt, T. W. (2014).<Industrial/organizational psychology. (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ:
John Wiley & Sons. ISBN: 9781118724071.
Giga, S., Fletcher, I., Sgourakis, G., Mulvaney, C., & Vrkljan, B. (2018). Organisational level
interventions for reducing occupational stress in healthcare workers. The Cochrane
Library. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.cd013014
Singh, R. K., & Jain, M. (2017). Efficacy of Self-Management Techniques in Reducing
Perceived Occupational Stress among Nursing Staff. Indian Journal of Positive
Psychology, 8(3), 360–365. https://doi.org/10.15614/ijpp/2017/v8i3/161982
Tsutsumi, A., & Kawakami, N. (2004). A review of empirical studies on the model of effort–
reward imbalance at work: reducing occupational stress by implementing a new theory.
Social Science & Medicine, 59(11), 2335–2359.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2004.03.030
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