Work and Stress - Page 2 of 5

INTERACTIVE QUESTION AND DISCUSSION: Based on your own experiences in occupational health, what do you believe are the factors resulting in work-related stress?

Answer:

A number of different factors have been implicated in the causation of work related stress, some of which are listed below (WHO documentation, 2002):

Improper design of tasks, which implies heavy workload, infrequent rest breaks, long working hours and shift work, hectic and routine tasks that have no inherent meaning, not utilizing workers’ skills and there being little sense of control.
Management style that is not transparent precludes participation of workers in decisionmaking and results in poor organization of work and lack of family-friendly policies in the company.
Career-related anxieties that include, among other factors, job insecurity, lack of opportunity for advancement or promotion, little recognition, as well as rapid changes for which workers are unprepared.
Strained interpersonal relations that are usually a sign of a poor social environment, lack of support, communication and help from supervisors and co-workers.
Conflicting and uncertain work roles: too much responsibility, "too many hats to wear" - whereby individuals’ need for role clarity varies.
Unpleasant or dangerous work environment such as overcrowding, excessive noise and air pollution, or ergonomically inferior designed work places resulting in health problems.

The presence of one or more of these factors need not imply the automatic result in stress - individual workers will vary in their response, and for this reason, individual assessments are important.

Workplace factors are instrumental in the causation of stress, and ongoing research has identified a number of organizational and managerial characteristics associated with both healthy (adequate stress level) working environments and high levels of productivity and job satisfaction. These include:

A number of researchers have looked at psychosocial risk factors and disease outcomes. Karasek and colleagues (1979) were among some of the earliest to do so, when they began looking at workplace psychosocial factors in the development of cardiovascular disease and subsequently its implication in job design. They postulated that psychological strain and subsequent physiological illness result from the interaction of two types of job characteristics. Strain results from demands of the work situation and environmental moderators of stress, particularly the range of decision-making freedom (control) that the worker has (other moderators which were not included in the model was social support). Karasek and colleagues proposed the following model, which suggests the stress category that a worker is likely to be in depending on his ability to influence his work activity and the demands of that work. The model clearly suggests that someone with greater job demands, but a high latitude to make decisions is in the most productive, least negative stressful position, as compared to one who has limited ability to make decisions, but has high job demands.

1: CAUSES OF WORK RELATED STRESS:

Answer: