Ways of Managing Workplace Stress

Employers should provide a stress-free work environment, recognise where stress is becoming a problem for staff, and take action to reduce stress. Stress in the workplace reduces productivity, increases management pressures, and makes people ill in many ways, evidence of which is still increasing.

There are four main reasons why organizations should take account of stress and do something about it. First, They have the social responsibility to provide a good quality life; second, because excessive stress causes illness; third, because it can result in inability to cope with the demands of the job which, of course, creates more stress, and finally because excessive stress can reduce employee effectiveness and therefore organizational performance.

Ways of managing Stress

The ways in which stress can be managed by organiations include the following

• Job design: Clarifying roles, reducing the danger of role ambiguity and conflict and giving people more autonomy within a defined structre to manage their responsibilities.
• Target and performance standards: Setting resonable and achievable targets that may strectch people but do not place impossible burden on them.
• Job placement: Taking care to place people in jobs that are within their capabilities.
• Career develpoment: Planning careers and promoting staff in accordance with their capabilities, taking care to over- or under-promote.
• Performance management processes, which allows dialogue to take place between managers nd individuals about the latter's work problems and ambitions.
• Counselling: Giving individuals the opportunity to talk about their problems with memeber of the HR department, or through an employee assistance programme.
• Anti-bullying campaigns: Bullying at work is a major cause of stress.
• Management training in what managers can do to alleviate their own stress and reduce it in others.