Blog Title: Stress Management at Workplace
For the people around the globe, stress in life can be challenging. There can be certain levels of the stress in our lives outside of the work and then we encounter even more stress arising from the pressures we face on the job. In times of a poor economy, these stress levels tend to rise even higher. As layoffs and cutbacks impact our employment, salary, or benefits, all of us will experience additional stress. How we manage it can be difference between succeeding or failing at our jobs.
While too much stress is detrimental to our health, some stress is motivational also. Without effective stress management, the result can be absenteeism, disability, injury on the job, poor communication, and poor work relationships.
Stress is a natural response (may be physical) to our perception of a stimulus. It has as evolutionary purpose, the need to protect ourselves from losing a job or being embarrassed in the workplace. Some sources of stress can be actually happy events. For example- getting promoted into a new position. There are three main things that cause stress in your lives: Lack of needs, organizational, life. When your basic needs are not met, you are bound to experience stress. The important thing is how to handle the stress that you experience.
The job stress can be handled, so that it does not become a serious problem. There are plenty of tools to deal with methods for learning stress management. Some tools include:
- Taking responsibility for how you experience stress
- Taking steps to limit the impacts of stress on your health
- Identifying your ‘stress points’ or areas in which you are vulnerable to stress
Causes of Stress:
There is positive as well as negative stress. Positive stress, also called as eustress, motivates us and drives us to improve ourselves, our relationships, and our lives.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:
In 1943, Abraham Maslow published a theory on what motivates people in his paper A Theory of Human Motivation. He posited that people have five levels of needs that they seek to meet. The more basic the need, the more motivated a person will be to fulfill it, and the more stress they will experience if they are unable to fulfill it. Figure 1 shows Maslow’s hierarchy.
Figure 1: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
The bottom four layers of the pyramid Maslow called d-need or deficiency needs. Failure to meet these needs could result in physical harm. Or if the next three layers of needs are not met, such as lack of security, friendship or love, and self-esteem, the body won’t necessarily give physical signs of the deficiency, but the person will be upset, disconnected, anxious, or tense.
Self-Care Methods for Reducing Stress:
Stress causes fatigue and other symptoms which may make you just want to curl up in bed and hide when you get out of work. You may not feel that you have the time or energy to take good care of yourself. However, taking care of yourself is imperative if you want to combat stress in your life. Not only does it feel good when you are doing good things for yourself, but it is also a way to take responsibility for yourself and your actions. Plus, the better you feel, the better prepared you are to deal with the next stressor that comes your way.
Positive Change:
When you are looking for ways to improve your self-care, you don’t have to make an entire lifestyle overhaul. There may be many things you want to change, but even small changes can make you feel a bit better. Positive changes also tend to lead into each other. For example, if you start exercising, you are likely to want to eat better as well.
Exercise:
Besides improving your physical fitness level, exercise can help to reduce your stress level. First, exercise can lead to a release of endorphins,, or ‘feel-good’ chemicals into the bloodstream. These chemicals have effect of relaxing the body and are associated with feeling of pleasure. Second, research shows that exercise may help the brain to better deal with stress.
Healthy Eating:
Providing your body with proper nutrition helps it respond more efficiently, including to stress.
Reducing stress through Time Management:
Successful time management will help you to become more effective in completing the tasks that you have to complete so there is more time available for you to spend on the things that are important to you. Time management helps you have a greater sense of control over your life- both at work and at home.
Creating a schedule:
For you to be able to fit in the things that are important to you, a schedule is an important tool. It allows you to block out segments of time and assign them to a specific activity. AT work, a schedule offers additional benefits because it allows you to:
- Ensure you have allotted time for all of your necessary tasks and functions
- Cut off unproductive interruptions by referring to it.
If you are intentional with your time scheduling, you can have a purpose for your time- aa purpose that is important to you. When you are making time for what is important to you, you will be happier overall. You will then a better spouse, parent, employee and friend.
Managing Tasks at Work:
Scheduling activities will also help you with your work, of course, particularly if there are certain items that you never seem to find the time to do or items that you seem to put off doing time and again.
The difference between urgent and important:
In order to have the greatest job satisfaction and the least amount of stress, wewould ideally spend the majority of our time in quadrant III.
Prioritize Tasks:
When you have a number of tasks that need to be completed, one way of categorizing them is to determine whether they are urgent or important or both. Another way is prioritize the tasks you need to get done based on what you believe to be the most important first and then work your way down to the least important.
References:
- Ebook: Stress Management from Bookboon.com
- http://fitness.suite101.com/article.cfm/stress_reduction_and_exercise
- http://workplaceculture.suite101.com/article.cfm/stress_management_in_the_workplace
- http://fie-conference.org/fie98/papers/1105.pdf
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