Sociological Approach To Work Stress essay

We all know about negative consequences of stress at work and risk it causes. Stresses at work can lead to health problems, decrease of the productivity level, etc. The list can be prolonged with such results, as higher benefit payouts, higher absenteeism, lower effectiveness of work, lower productivity, less creativity, less competitiveness, less consumer’ satisfaction, higher injure rates and higher damage rates. So, it’s necessary to centre on the sociological aspect of stress, study its reasons, forms and consequences, same as possible means to prevent or overcome stressful situation.

Stress can be defined as a negative reaction to exogenous irritants, accompanied by fear. It can also bring a feeling of loss, lack of control, confusion and aggression. Stress is manifested on both – physical and emotional levels. It can also touch mental abilities – stressed people can’t concentrate on anything, lose ability to ratiocinate. Stress is often, though not always is accompanied by health problems. Very often people don’t even know that they go through stress and it makes helping them more complicated. Stress is rather state of being than an illness and it also can have different symptoms, which makes it difficult to diagnose.

In general, those, who are in the state of stress can feel panic, suspicions, tensed and burdened to the extant they can not cope. The range of feelings expressed during stress is also very broad. It can be feelings such as aggression, anger and hostility or feelings of depression, fatigue and suppression.

Sociological Approach To Work Stress

There are many reasons, which can cause stress. In general, for most of the people any changes in life can be stressful. Same as a long-lasting negative impact of any kind can also become a reason of stress.

I would like to centre on the social aspect of stress, reasons, which cause it, the role of the society in causing and preventing stresses.

I will centre on working surrounding as a source of stress and social aspect of this phenomenon.

It becomes more and more evident, that for many people the place of their work or other social institutions became the main source of stress, which they later spread to other spheres of life, leisure and family. “Two people may be affected quite differently by the same stimulus. This identifies differences in the physiological and psychological responses resulting from perceiving a situation as threatening or noxious…. As a result of viewing people as cognitive creatures, a sociological approach sees human needs as shaping perceptions of situations and therefore as an important factor in understanding stress. Needs are learned and sustained through social encounters. Those who are unable to meet demands involving important needs experience stress.” ( Masters, p. 50).

Unfortunately, nowadays work structure of the enterprises, work places, employers’ schedules and work hours and not friendly for employees and cause stresses, overwork, depressions and even some forms of mental diseases. “The stress response must be regarded, at one level, as psychophysiological: a psychological response that has a corresponding physiological response. We cannot carry out adequate model building, however, without understanding the interaction of these processes with broader socio-cultural and political processes.” (Masters, p. 24)

It’s an obligation of employers to take care about their employees, their health. Unfortunately organisation, which spend much money paying medical insurance and treatment expenditures, they very often pay no or very little attention to the organisation of working places, normal working conditions of their employees.

This saving turns out with big problems and serious damage in the future.

Certainly everybody has different life conditions and principles, but most of the people have some in a way standard problems and concerns in their lives: most of them are directly connected with family, work, and with balancing between these two spheres of life. People are usually overwhelmed by family and work expectations, they are trying to build a good career and have nice relations in their families. All people have of course their own private priorities. For somebody his work would be the most important part of his life, somebody would risk his career development for the same of some family values, but as it was already mentioned above the ideal variant for most people would be the combination of successful development in both spheres.

The researches prove that most of physical illnesses and psychological problems have to do with stress. When a person experiences stress his most living functions fall to lower levels, he tends to start using alcohol or drugs, suffers from insomnia and decreased concentration of memory and logical thinking, could even become constant headaches and nervous tic, some cases lead even to suicide attempts.

Stresses usually are the results of personal and job problems, as these are usually most important and most nervous parts of our lives.

As it has been said enough about the results of stresses for the people themselves, we should also remember that all this causes problems for companies, corporations and firms as well. The experts state that about 150 $ billion a year is the cost for diminished productivity and absenteeism at the work places. The recent researches show that for example in America about 14 % of occupational disease worker’ compensation claims had to do with stress and about 15 states decided to make additional payments in the cases of anxiety, depression and other problems caused by work places (Clark).

20 % of parents, who work, state that their stresses are connected with constant conflicts between their children and their work. About 80 % of people say that they mostly have stress because of lack of balance between work and family and about 32 % of working mothers are “highly-time stressed”, which is of course a substantial number (Clark). And it is quite natural when a person is constantly in a hurry, when he constantly feels he doesn’t’ have enough time for everything that in some time this may lead to stress and depression. Besides not all families can afford some high-quality childcare. In the year 1995 there was a survey done, which proved that full-time working women in average have to spend seven days on personal and family issues, for men the number was only one day.
Stress and changes in the public management

Unfortunately, there is no legislative protection for the employees, who suffer stress at worked and have to go through negative experiences cased by this stress. There is no specific law, which would defend them in court in this case. At the same time employers have not right to pay no attention to the factors causing stress for their employees. In the cases when employees let their employers about the factors, which cause stressed on their work places, the latest have not right to ignore such calls. Both – employers and employees should work together as a one team in order to find remedy for stress-causing situation. Accepting the fact that stress-causing factors on the work place are the concern of both – the owners of the enterprises and their workers is the first step toward the solution of this problem.

Before describing the concrete steps for the companies for creating the healthy work atmosphere, several general steps would be mentioned.

The company should start with culture and values. Some companies do not pay so much attention to creating some corporate culture and a set of values supporting their employees. The culture, we are talking now about, is usually presented through the behavior of the management of the company and through organization. If somebody wanted to check these issues by some company – he would have to find the answer for such simple questions as for example: what are the notions about the best worker at this company, whether working a lot of additional hours and never taking the vacation means to work well, whether the main managers of the company themselves can find their balance between work and family, whether the workers are made to work with unreasonable deadlines and so on. For this small research the employees of all levels should be invited.

As soon as the first steps in learning about the culture of the company are done, the facts concerning the obstacles for the employees to find to manage stress become clearer. As the next step the development of special vision of the support at the company is advised. Very important is that this vision is the same realistic for all employee levels. It can become a very pleasant discovery for the employers, that creation of such vision leads already to some better results in productivity and work organization, as the workers become more motivated and interested.

The hardest stage is the third one. This stage assumes implementing of this vision. Let’s imagine a company that had been working for years with some certain organization norms and habits. Probably, there is no need to mention that changing them can become a painful and long process. Some of such habits are really negative – like, for example, counting the time the worker spends on completing some tasks instead of concentrating upon the results of his work, thus such habits are to change for the sake not only of the workers but for the sake of the company itself.

Really important is that workers not only rely upon the helpful programs provided by their firm, but also do their best to find the possible sources of stress at the work place, opportunities to escape it or the help of the managers, if necessary.

The implementing of these programs should be on the basis of open relationships between working and managing staff and lead to reduce of the stress risks. Nobody should be afraid or feel uncomfortable about talking of his family difficulties, if they are really serious enough to interfere with their work life, with his chef.

Conclusion

Nowadays more and more employers pay attention to the factors, which cause stresses in the work place. Managers, who organize the work process usually have limited choices about the organizing of the work process, but even this limited choices give the opportunity to make a step forward, trying to meet the needs of the employees and create less stressful working conditions for them. Stressful surrounding results not only health problems.

Latest researches of sociologists, psychologists and even economists prove that stresses and bad work balance have a negative impact not only on the employees, but at the profit of organizations also and, accordingly, to the employers.
New public management, aiming to reduce the stressful factors on the work places should take into account two most important factors of the stress management – demand-control and effort-reward factors of the working process

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