Job Stress

Job stress should not be confused with pressure or challenges. Everyone faces pressure and challenges on the job. The National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH) defines job stress as “the harmful and emotional responses that occur when the requirements of the job do not match the capabilities, resources, or needs of the worker”. In other words, unlike pressure or challenge, job stress is marked by an absence of control and feeling of being overwhelmed at work and the effect of this phenomenon can be devastating. Job stress is as much a business issue as it is a health issue.

Stress may be good, bad or ugly depending on the level of workload. Excess mental workload leads to stress, while physical work leads to physical exhaustion which is easily reversed with rest. Good stress motivates us to achieve and be more productive while sustained bad stress does the reverse. If we allow ourselves to be continuously stressed without adequate relaxation, good stress can become bad stress leading to unpleasant symptoms in our bodies like headaches, irritability, fatigue, frequent malaria attacks and so on. If we continue driving ourselves even harder without any stress relieving strategies, stress can become ugly and lead to ill health, dysfunction and disease.

The need for rapid expansion of all professional occupations in modern societies has placed enormous pressure on them; this is coupled with the crystallization of new occupational tasks. These include many activities which are based upon the application of scientific and technical knowledge to new social needs. The emergence of new occupational tasks occasioned by information technology revolution (IT) has changed the process of work in recent times.

Stress is particularly important to human resource professionals, and senior executives as taking care of this in the work place will minimize wastage in the workplace, as employee stress could lead to accidents, injuries and other implication for human resource management. By identifying the sources of employee stress and removing organizational sources of stress, organizations would not only reduce safety-related costs, they would also increase employee performance, morale, and retention.