Worker Stress

What are some methods used to measure stress?

1. Physiological measures: blood pressures monitoring, electrocardiograms, blood tests. 2. Self report measures: reports about organizational conditions or reports about psychological/physical states. 3. Stressful life events

What are some other forms of organizational stressors?

1 Physical work conditions 2. Interpersonal stress: results from difficulties in interpersonal relationships on the job. 3. Harassment 4. Organizational change 5. Work-family conflict

What are the phases of burn out?

1. Emotional exhausation 2. Depersonalization (cynical, insensitive attitude toward others) 3. Feelings of low personal accomplishment

What are some organizational coping strategies?

1. Improve the person-job fit 2. Improve employee training & orientation programs 3. Increase employees sense of control 4. Eliminate punitive management 5. Remove hazardous or dangerous work conditions 6. Provide a supportive, team oriented work environment 7. Improve communication

What are some individual sources of work stress?

1. Type A behaviour pattern: characterized by excessive drive and competitiveness, a sense of urgency and impatience and underlying hostility. 2. Susceptibility/resistance to stress 3. Self-efficacy

What are some individual coping strategies?

1. exercise and diet plans to make the body resistant to stress related illnesses. 2. Systematic relaxation training, meditation & biofeedback 3. Time management courses 4. Removing themselves temporarily or permanently from the stressful situation. 5. Cognitive restructuring

What are some work role stressors?

1.Job ambiguity: occurs when aspects of a job are not clearly outlined. 2. Lack of control: occurs when workers sense they have little control over the work environment and over their own work behavior.

Overall definition of worker stress?

A psychological and/or physiological reaction to an event that is percieved to be threatening or taxing.

How can counterproductive work behavirous be reduced?

By alleviating sources of stress, give workers greater control over their jobs, making sure employees are treated fairly, having trained supervisors.

How would you measure person-environment fit?

By measuring some characteristics of the worker, such as skills and/or abilities and assessing the work environment and job demands. The discrepancy between these measures is calculated as an index of fit.

What are counterproductive work behaviours?

Deviant behaviours that are harmful to an employee's organization and it's members e.g stealing, vandalism, sabotage etc

What is negative stress called?

Distress

What is positive stress called

Eustress

Differentiate between individual and organizational strategies for coping with stress?

Individual strategies are those that can be used by individual employees to try to reduce or eliminate personal stress. Organizational strategies are techniques and programs that organizations can implement to try to reduce stress levels for groups of workers or the organization.

What is the relationship between negative affectivity, worker stress and undesirable work outcomes?

Individuals prone to negative emotions do indeed percieve that they have more stress on their jobs. They also tend to react more strongly to unfairness, tend to leave work early and don't respond well to feed back

Hans Selye definition of worker stress?

It is a physiological reaction to certain threatening envrionmental events

John French's definition of worker stress?

It results from a lack of 'fit' between a person's skills and abilities and the demands of the job and the workplace.

Which levels of stress are associated with better performance?

Moderate levels

Distinguish between organizational and individual sources of stress?

Organizational sources of stress come from the work environment and can be broken down into stress derived from work tasks and stress derived from work roles. Individual sources of stress include a person's history of exposure to stress as well as certain stress related personality characteristics and behaviour patterns.

What are some of the effects of worker stress?

Physical illnesses (more than half), causes longer recovery time for regular sicknesses, employee absenteeism, turnover, high health care costs, psychological problems like depression, alcoholism and drug abuse, accidents on the job, lowered self esteem.

Richard Lazarus' defintion of worker stress?

Stress results from the worker's perception that a certain environmental event is a threat or a challenge, factoring in your perception of how capable you will be at managing the threat.

What are the sources of worker stress?

The environment (situational stress) or from an individual's personal characteristics (dispositional stress)

What are some work task stressors?

Work overload: occurs when excessive work speed, output or concentration is required and Underutilization: occurs when workers have little to do or feel that the job does not use their knowledge, skills or abilities, or are too boring.

What predicts voluntary turnover rates for workers?

a combination of high level of work stress and low levels of organizational commitment

What is burn out?

a process by which workers become less committed to their jobs and begin to withdraw from work.

What are employee assistance programs?

programs that offer counseling for a variety of employee problems.

What is the person-environment fit (P-E)?

refers to the match between a worker's abilities, needs and values and organizational demands, rewards and values. It has a positive correlation with organizational commitment & well being and a negative correlation with turnover.

What are some stress induced illnesses?

ulcers, hypertension, coronary heart disease, migraines asthma attacks and colitis