Stress At Work - How To Reduce Work Place Stress

Information About Dealing With Stress At Work:

Stress at work may be one of the hardest forms of stress to avoid. After all, you need to go to work and there are plenty of things to worry about once you get there. However, just like other kinds of stress, there are ways to manage stress in the workplace and there are steps you can take to avoid it almost entirely.

A certain amount of stress is almost inevitable and some would say desirable, because it can 'fire you up' to meet deadlines but when it becomes intolerable or you're being harassed in one way or another and it raises the level too much, you must do something.

Recently talks have focused on what is being called a 'hostile work environment' and if you are subject to harassment, bullying or inappropriate sexual advances, then you know what that term can mean.

What Is A Hostile Work Environment?

A hostile work environment is commonly one of two forms of sexual harassment.

1. where a manager or supervisor threatens to sack or impair the career of an employee if he or she will not have sex with that person.
2. where speech or conduct is "severe or pervasive" enough to create a hostile, threatening or abusive work environment.

Some examples of such conduct include sexually orientated jokes, explicit e-mail, visuals such as screen savers, wall posters, calendars, and graffiti; as well as verbal and physical contact which is not wanted.

As with most work place legal issues, the attitude adopted by the courts in determining whether a hostile work environment exists is to ask whether a reasonable person, in the same or similar circumstances, would find the conduct offensive.

Problem people on your job may be the source of workplace tress and include your co-workers, supervisors, managers, or your boss.

A hostile work environment may also be defined as when a boss or manager begins to engage in a manner designed to make you quit in retaliation for your actions. Suppose you report safety violations at work, get injured at work, attempt to join a union, complain to upper level management about a problem at work, or act as a whistle-blower in any respect. Then, the company’s response is to do all manner of things to make you quit, like writing you up for work rules you didn’t break, reducing your hours, scheduling you for hours that are in total conflict with what you can do, or reducing your salary. The company’s reaction can be viewed as creating a hostile work environment, one that makes it impossible to work and is an attempt to make you quit so that the employer does not have to pay unemployment benefits.

Maybe you cannot avoid workplace stress altogether, but there is no good reason not to reduce it as much as possible. So what can you do about stress at work?

What Would It Take To Make Your Workplace Stress-Free?

Many Human Resources managers see stress as an too difficult or too costly a problem to tackle properly, or perhaps something that only affects the work-shy without whom their organisations would be better off. Although many provide employee assistance programmes, health club memberships and flexible hours, these are seen as expensive and not necessarily very effective. Many organisations seem to do the bare minimum to comply with their duty of care towards employees.

Perhaps you can try to consider job stress at work in a different way since it affects your productivity, morale and commitment. When you find ways to remove the causes of stress in your workplace, not only will you feel better about coming to work, your sense of well being will also improve.

Where Is The Stress Coming From?

People are affected differently by stress at work or elsewhere so it can only be described as a subjective experience that may impact on your morale and performance. The information you need to determine what is causing your stress can be found by examining a number of factors that are commonly known to affect people and cause stress levels to rise in those who are most susceptible.

1. Your Work Place:

Could the actual place where you work be causing you stress?

• Is your office or workshop safe, clean, and tidy?

• Are the things you use most often easy to find and get to?

• Is it noisier than is comfortable, and is there somewhere quiet for thinking?

• Do you practice effective time management in the workplace?

• Can you take a break every 90 minutes or so (more often if doing intense computer work, or physical labour)?

• Are your working hours reasonable - around 8 hours a day?

2. Do you have what you need to do the job properly in terms of equipment and knowledge?

• Do you have the tools or office equipment you need to do the job?

• Do you know what is expected of you?

• Do you have the skills and the necessary training to do the job?

• Does your job allow you to do what you are best at?

3. Do you know when you are doing a good job by receiving feedback?

If your answer is that you don't need feedback because you just know you are doing a good job, you'll still feel better with some feedback from someone else as a sort of confirmation of your value.

When you receive regular positive feedback you generally feel better about your job, but if all you get is an annual appraisal, you may find yourself becoming increasingly nervous as it approaches.

4. Do you feel that your job is important?

Most people need some meaning and recognition in their lives. If your job is meaningful to you and you see it as being worthwhile to the community, you are more likely to feel more motivated and more positive about overcoming any setbacks or difficulties.

5. Do you feel recognised as an individual?

People also need to feel valued for themselves and their contribution. If you feel that you are just a small or unimportant part of the organisation with no intrinsic value, your sense of self-worth will be undermined and you will probably become nervous about being made redundant or otherwise losing your income.

6. Are you learning or developing more skills?

To a point stress at work can boost your performance such as when you're under pressure, your performance rises to meet the challenge in the short term. However, beyond a certain point, such as if the pressure is sustained for too long, you acn get 'burnout' as you become exhausted. The other side of this coin is that if there is too little to challenge you, you become become bored and fed-up which can itself be just as stressful. If you are ambitious but are not learning and developing new skills, you will begin to worry about getting left behind. When you find yourself under-utilised, your worries about having done something wrong take over and you may fall into the trap of 'presenteeism', that is to say, being at work and appearing to be busy but without actually doing anything.

Your responses to the factors described will tell you whether you need to make or seek changes in your working environment. You can take these up with your personnel manager where appropriate and take the steps to minimise stress at work for yourself. Although many of the corporate initiatives are intended to be a 'broad brush' approach to minimise organisational stress levels, it is at the individual level that small changes can be most cost-effective.

Dealing With Problem People

At the workplace, an employee must not only deal with the workload but also with the environment, particularly the people you work with. Here, several factors come into play and contribute at producing job stress. Problem people on your job may include your co-workers, managers, or your boss. You need to learn how to properly deal with them so you can prevent stress from devastating your working experience.

Manage Stress At Work And Problem People

Problem people are not just confined to the workplace but in other aspects of everyday life that require you to work together. However, it is more pressing to address this issue at work since the company's productivity is in the line. If you are leading a group of co-employees wherein you need to work at a given task, you have to know what to do in order to manage them properly. Or else, you'd fail to meet the task deadline and end up suffering from high levels of stress. Here are some strategies you can employ:

• Be tough. If you find that some of your co-workers or employees are not pulling their weight, you need to impose authority in order for them to realize the need to provide quality workforce. You can do this by setting standards and work boundaries for employees to live up to.

• Communicate assertively. Openly discuss with the people you are working with about each of your responsibilities to a given project or task. If possible, try to approach the matter objectively and free of any emotional leverage. Emphasize your aim to produce an efficient working relationship that results to higher productivity.

Now, for some really effective ways to deal with stress at work and anywhere else, Click Here!

Finally, do something for yourself, try to take control of your surroundings, whether they are just a corner of a room or a desk at work. You can even use these steps to help you unwind and remove much of the stress at work. By creating your own personal haven, you will be better able to relax and calm yourself. A few small changes may be all that you need.

Learn how to avoid Panic because it is one of the most insidious emotions that only prevents you from doing what you can, meaning even more unnecessary stress at work.

You are here: Stress At Work now continue to read about how to attain Work Life Balance.

Do you know what a difference positive thinking can make to how you feel?

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