10 Causes of Workplace Stress10 Causes of Workplace Stress: Workplace stress is on the rise and costing employers. Prolonged chronic stress affects your health and wellbeing. 1. Time: The concept of time always seems to put pressure on us. “There’s not enough time”. “Time is money”. The need to achieve and do more in a day puts pressure on us. From early on in our childhood we’ve watched our parents commit to time constraints as they head out to work exactly at 7.10am or say to us “hurry up, we’re running out of time”. We’ve learned attitudes to time that makes us feel rushed and stressed out. During our busy we lives we forget to balance our lifestyle. Our work, career, family responsibilities, household duties or studies have a higher percentage of our time compared to a social life, hobbies, relaxation or down time. 2. Deadlines: One of the causes of workplace stress can be the pressure of a deadline. You’ve got only so much ‘time’ to complete your tasks and present the final copy to your boss. Tension and stress build as the deadline nears. Some people prefer to work with deadlines because it motivates them. It all depends on how you perceive “deadlines”, how much ‘time’ you have and how large your work load is to complete before the deadline. 3. Workload: Too much or too little of a workload can increase your stress levels. We feel motivated when we feel competent with an optimal level of challenge to satisfy our needs. Being over challenged in the workplace puts pressure on us and produces frustration and stress. Being under challenged makes us feel unworthy, unneeded and, begin to, not care about our work. 4. Control: We loose motivation and suffer from stress when we feel as though we have no control over our actions. We desire choice and decision-making options in our workplace. When we perceive as though we have a choice about decisions we feel good. When this freedom is taken away from us by a controlling boss or upper management then we start to become frustrated and ‘stressed out’ in the workplace. 5. Responsibilities: How do you delegate responsibilities and workload in your workplace? Stress levels increase if your workload is too much and there is no one to help. Also, you must be willing to ask for help if you have too many jobs to complete. You have the responsibility to balance out your responsibilities! 6. Communication: When considering causes of workplace stress it’s important to mention the levels of communication that causes stress. If management is unsure of, or doesn’t uphold, clear policies and employer/employee responsibilities it can cause disagreements and confusion. Lack of communication between employees can also cause strife when completing jobs and working towards deadlines. 7. Job Insecurity: If you are uncertain whether your job is secure it causes a lot of stress both in the workplace and in your home environment. Job ambiguity brings a feeling of being out of control, unworthiness and helplessness. Worries and anxiety can build if you are also pressured by upholding financial responsibilities. 8. Ambition: Being ambitious is considered to be a good thing. But too much ambition and not enough time for relaxation can cause detrimental effects on your health and body. Don’t set your ambitions too high. Take small, repetitious steps towards your goals. Be more specific about your goals and set easy to reach targets that will eventually lead to your success. Keep in mind, if you burn yourself out – you may never get there! 9. Feedback: Feedback is a positive type of extrinsic motivation. It gives us guidelines and positive incentives to perform goal-directed behaviours. Feedback, as positive criticism, motivates us to correct our actions in order to improve in our work environment. Lack of feedback and direction can make us feel lost and confused and increase our levels of stress at work. Some people require more direct feedback than others. Some people particularly seek out feedback to find out their levels of progress. 10. Employee Conflict: A clash of personalities at work is definitely one of the causes of workplace stress. Bad attitudes, mistrust, unfairness, bullying and harassment are a definite stressors that should be dealt with. Build trust with your employer and fellow employees. Learn effective communication to build trust and avoid a mis-understanding.
|
