The Human Resource Departments Roles in Helping Employees Cope with Stress - Assignment Example

1. Introduction Stress should not be taken as a disease. It is rather a reaction towards situations in life. Reactions vary depending on the individual and the situations involved. Stress brings along anxiety. It is at this point that counseling is required. However the victims of powerful stress in many cases do not realize it. Stress is a common situation that all people experience at particular moments of their lives. It comes from the pressure we feel in life. This pressure may be caused by work and the other tasks that one engages in from day to day. When pressure is put on the body and mind, adrenaline is released. In due time, this causes depression, a rise in blood pressure and other negative effects, one of them being anxiety (Spiers 8). Having defined stress this paper also undertakes to cover the causes of stress at workplace. Both external and internal factors shall be examined. Within the working quarters there are two factors that contribute to stress namely; the task demands and the role demands. The factors exerting pressure to an individual without the working quarters include personal factors especially family issues. Various family demands affect an individual’s productivity at work place due to the pressures they can put on an individual if not taken care of appropriately. The paper in addition briefly describes the symptoms of stress together with personal tactics of coping with stress. 2. Causes of stress 2.1 Organizational factors As part of organizational factors, task demands and role demands shall be considered in detail as shown in the table below; Task demands Role demands Change Role conflict Lack of control Inter role Career progress Intra role New technologies Person-role Time pressure Role ambiguity 2.11Task demands Task demands include change, lack of control, career progress, new technologies and time pressure. These demands become stressful when there is a mismatch between the skills and resources of the workers. Technological information is considered a change to employees. This is because new technology always comes with additional training on the part of employees. This sudden change causes stress on the employees who must get acquainted to the new technology. For example an innovation of a new machine to be used at various work places has implications including training of individuals on how the machine is used and also brings uncertainty for employees because of the possibility of being replaced by the machines, hence layoffs. Therefore these new innovations, though improving productivity at the workplace, are a cause for alarm on the side of employees. Career progress is also another major cause of stress at the work place. Fear of job loss and the threat of being rendered redundant by new employees with new skills are common issues experienced by individuals in modern working environments. Pay and job status inequality, lack of job security and limited potential for future career developments are sources of stress. The human resource office should provide career development appraisal by use of self-assessment tools and providing retraining opportunities. This way the fear of job loss is reduced. Individuals realize that their termination would require major adjustments in the organization and therefore not an immediate option for the employers. Information technology interferes with private life. This is because the worker can access work information even when at home and experiences a dilemma on whether to reply late evening emails from work or not. 2.12 Role demands These are both social and psychological work expectations that an individual is required to meet. They consist of role conflict and role ambiguity. Role conflict involves a state where an individual experiences conflicting job demands. These conflicts may be interole whereby, for example, one is faced with a dilemma of playing the role of a parent and an employee at a given time. Intrarole is a word used to refer to conflicting expectations within the same role. In person role conflict, workers are expected to do things contrary to their beliefs. Because of this, these employees experience conflict leading to stress. Good human resource managers help their employees succeed in their current role. The managers should understand each of the employees’ talents and create a perfect role for each person. Role ambiguity refers to employees not understanding what they are expected to do. There are no defined work objectives, coworkers’ expectations and the scope and responsibility of one’s job. The human resource office should lay out exactly what each employee in an organization should do. Human resource managers should have a strategy of putting employees with low tolerance for ambiguity in well-defined and regulated tasks. Time pressure is a cause of stress that cannot be undermined either. In difficult work environments and those that are psychologically demanding, individuals must be able to plan their time, select tools and methods for accomplishing the work, make decisions and direct action as failure to do this will lead to stress (Nelson 107-108).The human resource department should organize training for employees so that they acquire the right skills for proper planning. 2.2 Personal factors 2.21 Family issues These include family anticipations, child rearing/daycare arrangements and parental care. Conflicting demands of work and family may cause stress on an individual. A case in point is when there is a sick child at home and an individual is still required to be at work. Women are the most affected by this kind of stress since they play a bigger role in domestic responsibility. Working away from home or taking work home exert pressure on an individual who is left thinking about the family chores not attended to as one has to work. Bereavement, financial constraints and housing problems spillover to the workplace and lower productivity of an individual. The human resource managers should develop a culture that encourages staff to be more supportive of each other even on home problems. They should implement flexible working hours to help employees attend better to their family demands. 3. Symptoms of stress Physical symptoms may include escalation in pulse rate. A normal pulse cannot on the other hand suggest that one is stress free. Constant aches and pains, anxiety, chronic fatigue crying, over and under eating, frequent infections, a decrease in sexual desire are common indications of an individual under stress. Behavioral symptoms of stress cause behavior dysfunction in which individuals tend to be irritable and have difficulty in concentration. They are indecisive and often irrational in their thinking. People who suffer from stress also lack commitment for their work and they are often absent from work and when they are present they are often withdrawn. They keep to themselves and do not want to associate with other employees. The mental signs of stress involve memory problems, seeing things negatively, poor judgment and worried conflicting thoughts. Individuals can also experience constant anxiety. Emotionally they become short-tempered; unable to relax, feel overcome and often have rapid mood swings. These stress symptoms come in phases; there are always early warning signs like feeling vague and anxious. If this continues, individuals enter the second phase where they become irritable and withdrawn. The next phase is deep-seated accumulative stress. In this stage, individuals experience physical and emotional fatigue. At this stage those that are involved crying cry without reason and intense anxiety. The last phase is even more severe as there is uncontrolled anger, withdrawal and chronic fatigue. At workplace the human resource managers should be able to identify behavior changes. 4. PERSONAL STRATEGIES OF COPING WITH STRESS. Ways of coping with stress vary from one individual to another. In dealing with stress it is important to identify the symptoms of stress together with the source of stress, assessing personal ability to manage the problem and initiating change by taking appropriate action. (Cartwright & Cooper25). Admitting that there is stress is sometimes difficult therefore as a starting point there is acceptance of existence of stress by studying and noting its signs. Consequently identifying the source of the stressor is important in dealing with stress since one is able to change the situation that is causing stress. This however is not easy as it requires avoiding obsessive negativity, which is a tendency to feel negative about people, places, and situations in one’s life. Avoiding obsessive perfectionism is also another change in trying to change the situation that is causing stress. This involves trying to do everything to the highest standards that one has set hence getting into an anxious state of being. Another strategy of coping with stress mentioned above is that of assessing personal ability to manage the problem. It is sometimes very difficult to deal with stress on your own. If the stress persists, professional help becomes a better option. Lastly initiating change by taking an appropriate action when one is stressed is an important strategy of dealing with stress. For example if the stressor is work overload, one may choose to plan and adapt ways of being in control of work. Conclusion In summary the report covers the definition of stress, causes, symptoms and personal ways of coping with stress. The paper examines the causes of increase in work related stress with particular emphasis on organizational factors and personal factors. The human resource department’s role in helping employees cope with this stress has been suggested. It is recommended that the human resource managers should treat employees fairly, understand their attitude and be proactive by looking for signs of stress among employees. Training staff and allowing for a balance of workload, will create a great impact on the life of individuals at workplace. Stress is inevitable, it is important for an individual to learn how to deal with it. The paper has highlighted some of the ways of coping with it especially at workplace. Allowing employees to relax from time to time and encouraging them to take charge of the situation, is a step that the human resource department should take, in order to help easy pressure on individuals. Lastly stress is a broad issue that can never be exhaustively covered, nevertheless, the paper has tackled its key areas .The human resource department should asses the behavior of the employees regularly as what goes on in the lives of the employees directly impact on their. A stressed workforce spells doom to an organization. Designing work and jobs so as to minimize stress and in the long run achieving productivity at the work place is important to every human resource department that expects positive results. Work cited 1. Cartwright Susan & Cary Cooper. Managing workplace stress. California. Thousand Oaks, 1997, print. 2. Carole Spiers. Tolley’s managing stress in the workplace.UK. Reed Elsevier ltd, 2003, print. 3. Nelson Debra et al. ORGB a new approach to learning organizational behavior. Nelson educations, 2011, print. Read More