Work Related Stress and Safety - Essay Example

? Work Related Stress and Safety Employees’ safety in the workplace is crucial. The employer bears the responsibility of ensuring that the safety of employees in the workplace is ensured. The idea of employee safety can be traced back to the industrial era where employees had to work in factories in dangerous conditions. This often put their life in danger wit many people dying due to the poor working conditions. Employees’ safety was one of the reasons behind the formation of the present day labor unions. However, despite the fact that a lot of progress have been in ensuring workplace safety, statistics show that there are still a relatively large number of deaths related to workplace risk. Ensuring that the workers are a safe when working not only boosts the employees’ morale but it also has serious implications on the organization. Injuries or deaths resulting from employers’ negligence come with law suits which not only damage the company reputations but affect its overall profitability as they come with huge fines. One of the factors that have been recognized to affect employees’ safety is stress and a depression which makes them more vulnerable to getting injuries (Harrington 2013). This paper looks at how stress affects the safety of employees at the workplace. Who is responsible for safety? Ensuring safety at the workplace takes the effort of the employees, supervisors and employer. The role of employer is tone sure that the workers operate in a safe working environment and that the plants and equipment they use do not pose any health hazards. It is also their duty to ensure give the employees instructions on how safety procedures to avoid improper behavior that puts the worker at the risk of sustaining injuries or putting their health at risk. They should also provide protective equipments and clothing. The employees on the other hand have the responsibility of ensuring their own safety by taking care to protect themselves and people around them from harm. They are also obligated to refrain from conducts such as operating machines when using drugs or drunk as this puts them at a greater risk if getting injured. They also need to go through health assessment to ensure that they are fit to operate certain machines or work in certain environment. Most importantly, they should report defects to the supervisors immediately so that they are corrected before causing any damage. The work of the supervisor is to constantly check the equipments and work place that the workers operate in to ensure that they are not exposed to any health or safety risk (Ashford 1976). It can thus be observed that total safety is achieved by cooperation of all stakeholders involved. Relationship between safety and Stress Researches that have been conducted on employees safety shows that most accidents that happen in the workplace are as a result of unsafe behavior with unsafe working conditions causing a small percentage of the injuries and accidents (Glicken & Robinson 2013). Unsafe behavior causes approximately 80% of the accidents. This means that employees who focus on ensuring that the workplace is safe only take care of 20% which explains why these efforts may not be bearing the expected results. Stress has been identified as the key cause of the unsafe behavior at the workplace. Understanding how stress affects the employees is important in dealing with the unsafe conduct. In today’s world, people are bombarded with a lot of work with some taking more than one job or even working for longer hours in order to take care of their increasing needs as we go through hard economic times. The same people have to deal with other factors in their lives such family or school. This has left the modern working man to be stressed and it is impossible for stress not to be displayed at the workplace. Research shows that it is possible for the employees to deal with work related stress by reducing its occurrence and managing it when it happens. Some of the strategies that can be used are effective two way communication between the employees and the employers, effective people management skills and better working conditions (Hosie, Sevastos & Cary 2006). By effectively managing work related stresses, employees can succeed in reducing other worker related problems that affect their performance such as employees turn over, absenteeism, litigation, grievances and reduced productivity. One of the reason that management need to deal with the stress in the workplace as statistics shows that it has serious cost implications. A research on aircraft employees shows that people who never enjoyed their job were the 2.5 time likely to company of back injuries compared to employees who enjoyed their work. It also showed that insurance claim from stress related injuries in the work place was double that of non-stress related accidents. Low job satisfaction was also positively correlated with multiple injuries where employees with high job satisfaction having lower cases of injuries. In America, the overall cost of health and productivity on businesses has been approximated to be about $50 to $ $150 billion every year (Ashford 2013). In terms of absenteeism, it was reported that workers who suffered form a lot of stress were likely to miss more than 5 days at work annually. Moreover, the report shows that working women who had no control of their job were more likely to develop coronary complications compared to women who had more control of their job. These are just a few illustration of how stress has a heavy cost on the organization. There are several factors that cause workplace stress. Among them is conflict among the employees and between the employees and their bosses (Weinberg et al 2010). It can also be as a result of inadequate budge or staffing, reduction on benefits, bureaucratic red tape and lack of reward for work well done. All these affect the overall job satisfaction which comes with employee stress. In order to effectively deal with work related stress, managers need to understand how it affect the worker and how it related to accidents or behavior. Psychological studies have shown that stress affects the brain function on how a person thinks, behaves and even acts. Stress thus causes an intellectual downshift that reduces a person’s capability in problems solving, creativity and the ability to process information. Stress has psychological effects such as making the person more irritable and irrational. People who are stressed out are likely to act out and this may be the cause of conflict between them and their colleagues and it increases their dissatisfaction with work. Stress also affects the behavior making the person inflexible when dealing with problems and challenges (Clarke, Sharon, & Cary 2004). They become clumsy and frantic and repeat the same behavior even when it does not yield the desired results. As such, people tend to be more careless and can break equipment by using too much force and end up hurting themselves. These are just some of the effect stress have on people as their brain downshift causes to function less effectively behaviorally, psychologically and intellectually. Dealing with Work Related stress The managers need to be able to identify the stress symptoms so that they can help their employees. Then the employee can conduct a research to know the source of the stress. Reducing the workload may not always deal with the problem. The employer should seek to create a working environment where the employees are excited about their job and feel motivated to work. Studies have shown that the strategy that the management uses to reduce to the work place should be based on the principle of ensuring work life balance. The employee should not be burned out at work to the extent that they feel that they are missing out on important things in their personal life. The job should be flexible enough so that the employee is able to contribute to the company efficiently but at the same time not miss out on important life events. Another key area in dealing with the stress is having supervisor who are not condescending to the workers. Having patronizing supervisor who talk down on their subordinate or are abusive make the employees feel that their efforts are unappreciated. Today employees need to be treated as a valued asset of a company and this gives them some sense of belonging and pride in working at the organization (Aftab & Anam 2013). Employees who are satisfied with their work will translate this to good performance. Work related stress can be managed by giving the workers control over their work. Supervision is important but the employees need to know that the management trusts them to perform their function without a lot of supervision. They should also be given the power to make decision on duties that directly relate to them. As such, they are able to own to the result and success of their work. The management however has the obligation of giving the employees on-job training and giving them all the necessary instructions to help them in making decision without being patronizing. This goes hand in hand with the employer ensuring that the work is as rewarding as it could be. The employee should be able to achieve personal growth as they contribute to the growth of the other organization. This can be achieved by the management offering incentives such as promotions or company shares that gives the employees ownership (Sonnetag 2009). This means that their performance has a bearing on the returns that they get on shares and this motivates better performance and at the same time giving job satisfaction. Matching employees with the right jobs is also crucial in ensuring job satisfaction. Most workers are dissatisfied with their work because they are placed in jobs where they have little skill or interest in. In cases of a lack of skill, it is the work of the organization to train the employees so that they are able to do their work effectively or hire employees who already have the skills. In case of interest, managers should ensure that they place the employees in areas that fit their interest or motivation. People are motivated to work hard by the intrinsic need to achieve something which could be personal advancement, having authority or being affiliated to a certain class of people. Most people have been reported to have achievement needs and it is the role of management to ensure that they understand these needs in placement where the people motivated by personal achievement should be given tasks that need to be done by individuals where they can measure personal success (Barling, Kelloway, & Michael, 2005). People who are motivated by the need for affiliation work best when they are in a team with other people and should be given tasks that require teamwork. Good communication between the employer and the employees is also a key determinant of job satisfaction. The employer should communicate their objectives to the employees clearly and be available for any clarification (Rossie 2009). Open communication between the management and the employer ensure that there are no bad feelings between the two parties. In conclusion, it has been observed that work related stress has major implications on the profitability of an organization. Dealing with work related stresses would not only reduce the behavior related accidents and the cost implications that come with it but it help in achieving overall job satisfaction. This would help solve other work related problems such as employees turn over and absenteeism. This means that a company is able to benefit more from the work force. It has also been observed that a single strategy would not be effective in dealing with the problem but it should be dealt with from all perspectives. The goal is to ensure that the employees find their job as rewarding, exciting and satisfying. References Aftab, Hira, and Anam Javeed. 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