Chapter 9

Job Stress and Careers

Key Points in this Chapter

Job Stress: An Overview Sources and Consequences of Stress Coping, Social Support, and Stress

Job Stress and Careers

The presence of job stress in the workplace is a major concern for both employees and organizational managers.

Each year stress cause hundreds of billions of dollars in additional cost to American business due to increased absenteeism and turnover, employee burnout, lower productivity, higher medical costs, and worker compensation claims.

Excessive levels of stress can seriously impair an employee’s work performance and career success.

Job Stress: An Overview

Stress involves an interaction between a person and the environment that is perceived to be so trying or burdensome that it exceeds the person’s coping resources.

A particular situation can simultaneously represent an opportunity, a constraint, and a demand.

A situation is stressful when it exceeds or threatens to exceed the individual’s capacity to handle it.

Sources and Consequences of Stress

Environmental stressors are stimuli that evoke the stress process.

Stressors can be hindrance oriented and challenge oriented.

The presence of a stressor does not inevitably produce stress. It depends on how the situation is interpreted or appraised.

Certain personal characteristics can produce stress over and above the effects of particular environmental pressures.

Sources and Consequences of Stress

Sources and Consequences of Stress The amount of control an employee has over a work

situation can determine whether that situation produces extensive stress.

Perceived stress can produce a number of different strain symptoms. These strains may become manifest in a variety of physical, psychological, and behavioral outcomes. Not everyone develops these strain symptoms.

Extensive work stress may also produce dysfunctional consequences for the organization.

Excessive stress may lead to burnout, harassment, and violence.

Optimal levels of stress can be challenging and produce eustress (positive feelings and high involvement).

Sources and Consequences of Stress

Type A Behavior as Source of Stress The Type A behavior pattern is characterized by a hard

driving competitiveness, a sense of extreme impatience and time-urgency, the desire to live a fast paced lifestyle, a preference for performing many activities simultaneously, and a constant striving for achievement and perfection.

The Type B behavior pattern is characterized as having low or moderate levels of competitiveness, a higher degree of patience, and a less intense need for accomplishment and perfection.

Type A’s experience higher levels of job stress and health related problems.

Sources and Consequences of Stress

Career Transitions as a Source of Stress All career transitions involve changes and contrasts

between old and new settings. Job loss can be a very stressful career transition. Career transitions produce high levels of stress when the

career transitions are: Undesirable Involve extensive change Sudden Accompanied by other life transitions Forced on an individual

Sources and Consequences of Stress

Employment Bias as a Source of Stress Employees can experience stress if they face bias and

discrimination in their organization. Women in male dominated fields are exposed to four

unique stressors: Employment discrimination Sex role stereotyping Social isolation Work family conflicts

Many minority employees are subject to Race stereotyping Restricted advancement opportunities Social Isolation

Sources and Consequences of Stress

Burnout Burnout is a psychological strain in response to

chronic work stress. Burnout consists of three interrelated components

or psychological reactions: Emotional exhaustion Depersonalized relationships Low personal accomplishment

Positive and negative affectivity may influence one’s perception of stress.

Sources and Consequences of Stress Burnout

Signs of burnout include Negative emotions Interpersonal friction and withdrawal Health suffers Declining performance Substance abuse Feelings of meaningless

Burnout can have harmful effects on employees, their families, and theory work organizations.

Organizations can attempt to change the environment that is responsible for the burnout.

Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) may also help employees cope with burnout.

Sources and Consequences of Stress

Technology-Induced Stress and the Potential for Workaholism The increasing use of computer and communication

technologies has increased pressure on employees to be accessible to their employers 24 hours per day, seven days a week.

Tethering to the workplace has the potential to produce significant amounts of stress. Electronic tethering has also been linked to workaholism.

A workaholic is a person who is highly work involved, experiences low work enjoyment, and is compelled to work because of inner pressures. It is estimated that 25% of U.S. employees meet this definition.

Signs of workaholism are failure to use vacation time, refusal to stay home when ill, an inability to delegate work, and the tendency to seek control of group projects.

Coping, Social Support, and Stress No one can, or should, go through life free of stress. People who have survived life’s trials are resourceful and have

learned how to cope. Coping behaviors enable individuals to avoid the harmful effects of

stressful situations. Three broad categories of coping responses:

One can attempt to change the situation that produces the stress.

Change the meaning of the stressful environment without necessarily changing the stressors themselves (cognitive restructuring or self talk).

Attempt to manage the strain symptoms themselves. Edgar Schein developed a four step approach that is consistent

with this contingency approach to coping. Researchers distinguish four classes of supportive behaviors:

emotional, instrumental, informational, and appraisal.

Coping, Social Support, and Stress

Organizational Actions Organizations have developed a variety of programs to

reduce the level of employee stress. Organizations must properly diagnose the extent and

roots of employee stress.

Coping, Social Support, and

Stress