Stress<\/span><\/strong> is defined by psychologists as the body\u2019s reaction to a change that requires a physical, mental, or emotional adjustment or response (Dyer, 2006). Stress is an inevitable feature of life. It is the force that gets us out of bed in the morning, motivates us at the gym, and inspires us to work.<\/p>\r\n As you will see in the sections below, stress is a given factor in our lives. We may not be able to avoid stress completely, but we can change how we respond to stress, which is a major benefit. Our ability to recognize, manage, and maximize our response to stress can turn an emotional or physical problem into a resource.<\/p>\r\n Researchers use polling to measure the effects of stress at work. The results have been eye-opening. According to an Ipsos poll in 2019 almost 65% of Americans report they feel stressed at work and over 30% of the participants felt the employer should provide tools and resources to mitigate stress at work (2019).\u00a0In Canada, 58% of employees who work in an office report that they experience work-related stress daily (Benefits Canada, 2017).\u00a0It is clear that many individuals are stressed at work.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Our basic human functions, breathing, blinking, heartbeat, digestion, and other unconscious actions are controlled by our lower brains. Just outside this portion of the brain is the semiconscious limbic system, which plays a large part in human emotions. Within this system is an area known as the amygdala. The amygdala<\/a><\/span> is responsible for, among other things, stimulating fear responses. Unfortunately, the amygdala cannot distinguish between meeting a 10:00 a.m. marketing deadline and escaping a burning building.<\/p>\r\n Human brains respond to outside threats to our safety with a message to our bodies to engage in a \u201cfight-or-flight\u201d response (Cannon, 1915). Our bodies prepare for these scenarios with an increased heart rate, shallow breathing, and wide-eyed focus. Even digestion and other functions are stopped in preparation for the fight-or-flight response. While these traits allowed our ancestors to flee the scene of their impending doom or engage in a physical battle for survival, most crises at work are not as dramatic as this.<\/p>\r\n Hans Selye, one of the founders of the American Institute of Stress, spent his life examining the human body\u2019s response to stress. As an endocrinologist who studied the effects of adrenaline and other hormones on the body, Selye believed that unmanaged stress could create physical diseases such as ulcers and high blood pressure, and psychological illnesses such as depression. He hypothesized that stress played a general role in disease by exhausting the body\u2019s immune system and termed this the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)<\/a><\/span> (Selye, 1956; Selye, 1976).<\/p>\r\n\r\n Figure 9.1<\/span><\/p>\r\n In Selye\u2019s GAS model, stress affects an individual in three steps: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n In the alarm phase<\/a><\/span> of stress, an outside stressor jolts the individual, insisting that something must be done. It may help to think of this as the fight-or-flight moment in the individual\u2019s experience. If the response is sufficient, the body will return to its resting state after having successfully dealt with the source of stress.<\/p>\r\n In the resistance phase<\/a><\/span>, the body begins to release cortisol and draws on reserves of fats and sugars to find a way to adjust to the demands of stress. This reaction works well for short periods of time, but it is only a temporary fix. Individuals forced to endure the stress of cold and hunger may find a way to adjust to lower temperatures and less food. While it is possible for the body to \u201cadapt\u201d to such stresses, the situation cannot continue. The body is drawing on its reserves, like a hospital using backup generators after a power failure. It can continue to function by shutting down unnecessary items like large overhead lights, elevators, televisions, and most computers, but it cannot proceed in that state forever.<\/p>\r\n In the exhaustion phase<\/a><\/span>, the body has depleted its stores of sugars and fats, and the prolonged release of cortisol has caused the stressor to significantly weaken the individual. Disease results from the body\u2019s weakened state, leading to death in the most extreme cases. This eventual depletion is why we\u2019re more likely to reach for foods rich in fat or sugar, caffeine, or other quick fixes that give us energy when we are stressed. Selye referred to stress that led to disease as distress<\/em> and stress that was enjoyable or healing as eustress<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n Stressors<\/a><\/span> are events or contexts that cause a stress reaction by elevating levels of adrenaline and forcing a physical or mental response. The key to remember about stressors is that they aren\u2019t necessarily a bad thing. The saying \u201cthe straw that broke the camel\u2019s back\u201d applies to stressors. Having a few stressors in our lives may not be a problem, but because stress is cumulative, having many stressors day after day can cause a buildup that becomes a problem. The American Psychological Association surveys American adults about their stresses annually. Topping the list of stressful issues are money, work, and housing (American Psychological Association, 2007). But in essence, we could say that all three issues come back to the workplace. How much we earn determines the kind of housing we can afford, and when job security is questionable, home life is generally affected as well.<\/p>\r\n Understanding what can potentially cause stress can help avoid negative consequences. Now we will examine the major stressors in the workplace.<\/p>\r\n A major category of workplace stressors are role demands. In other words, some jobs and some work contexts are more potentially stressful than others.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Figure 9.2<\/span><\/p>\r\n George Lucas, one of the most successful filmmakers of all time, found making The Empire Strikes Back<\/em> stressful both personally and financially. Those who worked with him on those early Star Wars<\/em> films describe him as fully engrossed in the process, which led to role overload and work-family conflict. Following the making of that film, Lucas said he was \u201cburnt out\u201d and didn\u2019t want to make any more Star Wars<\/em> films.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Wikimedia Commons<\/a> - CC BY-SA 2.0.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n Role ambiguity<\/a><\/span><\/strong> refers to vagueness in relation to what our responsibilities are. If you have started a new job and felt unclear about what you were expected to do, you have experienced role ambiguity. Having high role ambiguity is related to higher emotional exhaustion, more thoughts of leaving an organization, and lowered job attitudes and performance (Fisher & Gittelson, 1983; Jackson & Shuler, 1985; \u00d6rtqvist & Wincent, 2006). Role conflict<\/a><\/span><\/strong> refers to facing contradictory demands at work. For example, your manager may want you to increase customer satisfaction and cut costs, while you feel that satisfying customers inevitably increases costs. In this case, you are experiencing role conflict because satisfying one demand makes it unlikely to satisfy the other. Role overload<\/a><\/span><\/strong> is defined as having insufficient time and resources to complete a job. When an organization downsizes, the remaining employees will have to complete the tasks that were previously performed by the laid-off workers, which often leads to role overload. Like role ambiguity, both role conflict and role overload have been shown to hurt performance and lower job attitudes; however, research shows that role ambiguity is the strongest predictor of poor performance (Gilboa et al., 2008; Tubre & Collins, 2000). Research on new employees also shows that role ambiguity is a key aspect of their adjustment, and that when role ambiguity is high, new employees struggle to fit into the new organization (Bauer et al., 2007).<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n Messages reach us in countless ways every day. Some are societal\u2014advertisements that we may hear or see in the course of our day. Others are professional\u2014emails, memos, voice mails, and conversations from our colleagues. Others are personal\u2014messages and conversations from our loved ones and friends. Add these together and it\u2019s easy to see how we may be receiving more information than we can take in. This state of imbalance is known as information overload<\/a><\/span>, which can be defined as \u201coccurring when the information processing demands on an individual\u2019s time to perform interactions and internal calculations exceed the supply or capacity of time available for such processing\u201d (Schick, Gordon, & Haka, 1990). Role overload has been made much more salient because of the ease at which we can get abundant information from Web search engines and the numerous email and text messages we receive each day (Dawley & Anthony, 2003).\u00a0Other research shows that working in such a fragmented fashion significantly impacts efficiency, creativity, and mental acuity (Overholt, 2001).<\/p>\r\n\r\n As you can see, some of these jobs are stressful due to high emotional labour (public relations executive), physical demands (firefighter), time pressures (newspaper reporter), or all three (police officer).<\/p>\r\n\r\n Work-family conflict<\/a><\/span><\/strong> occurs when the demands from work and family are negatively affecting one another (Netemeyer, Boles, & McMurrian, 1996). Specifically, work and family demands on a person may be incompatible with each other such that work interferes with family life and family demands interfere with work life. One of the main contributions to dissatisfaction with work-life balance for Canadians is not having enough time to spend with family (Statistics Canada, 2016).\u00a0This stressor has steadily increased in prevalence, as work has become more demanding and technology has allowed employees to work from home and be connected to the job around the clock. In fact, a recent poll showed that the average American works from 44 to more than 60 hours per week depending on their industry\u00a0creating an unavoidable spillover from work to family life (Ward, 2017). Moreover, the fact that more households have dual-earning families in which both adults work means household and childcare duties are no longer the sole responsibility of a stay-at-home parent. This trend only compounds stress from the workplace by leading to the spillover of family responsibilities (such as a sick child or elderly parent) to work life. Research shows that individuals who have stress in one area of their life tend to have greater stress in other parts of their lives, which can create a situation of escalating stressors (Allen et al., 2000; Ford, Heinen, & Langkamer, 2007; Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1992; Hammer, Bauer, & Grandey, 2003).<\/p>\r\n Work-family conflict has been shown to be related to lower job and life satisfaction. It seems that work-family conflict is slightly more problematic for women than men (Kossek & Ozeki, 1998). In Canada, men with children are slightly more satisfied with their work-life balance (78%) than women with children (72%) (Statistics Canada, 2016). Organizations that are able to help their employees achieve greater work-life balance are seen as more attractive than those that do not (Barnett & Hall, 2001; Greenhaus & Powell, 2006). Organizations can help employees maintain work-life balance by using organizational practices such as flexibility in scheduling as well as individual practices such as having supervisors who are supportive and considerate of employees\u2019 family life (Thomas & Ganster, 1995).<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n Stress can result from positive and negative life changes. The Holmes-Rahe scale ascribes different stress values to life events ranging from the death of one\u2019s spouse to receiving a ticket for a minor traffic violation. The values are based on incidences of illness and death in the 12 months after each event. On the Holmes-Rahe scale, the death of a spouse receives a stress rating of 100, getting married is seen as a midway stressful event, with a rating of 50, and losing one\u2019s job is rated as 47. These numbers are relative values that allow us to understand the impact of different life events on our stress levels and their ability to impact our health and well-being (Fontana, 1989). Again, because stressors are cumulative, higher scores on the stress inventory mean you are more prone to suffering negative consequences of stress than someone with a lower score.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Read each of the events listed below. Give yourself the number of points next to any event that has occurred in your life in the last 2 years<\/em>. There are no right or wrong answers. The aim is just to identify which of these events you have experienced.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Table 9.1<\/span> Sample Items: Life Events Stress Inventory<\/p>\r\n\r\nThe Stress Process<\/h2>\r\n
![\"Resistance](\"\/app\/uploads\/sites\/197\/2016\/11\/02c7578e4c68693576501dc01c319971.jpg\")
<\/a>\r\nWorkplace Stressors<\/h2>\r\n
Role Demands<\/h2>\r\n
<\/a>\r\nInformation Overload<\/h2>\r\n
Top 10 Stressful Jobs<\/h4>\r\n
\r\n \t
Work-Family Conflict<\/h2>\r\n
Life Changes<\/h2>\r\n
How Stressed Are You?<\/h4>\r\n