Work Stress Model

Sometimes it may be difficult to cope with workplace stress, but the skills of handling stress changes from person to person. The cause of your stress and your approach to handle it may be way different from that of your friend.

Generally, we think that stress is related to something negative, but we don’t have to look at it that way. Some stress is helpful, actually to drive people towards job completion. As you may observe, stress in itself can be used for positive purposes. This type of stress is known as Eustress. In simple words, Eustress is the stress that leaves a positive effect, or is motivating in nature. It results in a positive outcome. Such stresses help people in getting good performances.

You can relate to this type of stress if you are familiar with the following scenarios:

• Running and winning a close race.
• Riding a big roller coaster ride.
• Watching a scary movie.

All these situations cause physical, emotional and mental strain, but these pressure scenarios release positive emotions and makes us happy. This is a form of stress too. So, stress is not always negative; we have positive stress too which makes our life dynamic, unlike the lives that people without any tension or stress live- dull, monotonous, and boring.

These kinds of stress are completely different from the stress disorders that people get exposed to in their professional lives. Workplace Stress is created from working in unsuitable and improper conditions and from working in an ill-suited job.

Job stress is heavily associated with workplace environment. Places like New York, Los Angeles, and London among many other municipalities acknowledge the strong relationship between job stress and heart attacks. Because workplace stress is the result of many complex interactions between an individual and a large systematically-operating organization, there are numerous theories propagated to explain the relation between both.

According to experts, there are five models that explain workplace stress, which are:

• Person Environment Fit Model
• Job Characteristics Model
• Diathesis-Stress Model
• Jobs-Demand Resources Model
• Effort-Reward Imbalance Model

Let us now discuss each of these models in detail.

Person Environment Fit Model

According to this model, a person starts to feel stress in a job where his aptitude, skills, abilities and resources are in-line with the necessities of their job. The job profile he is operating in should be in accordance to his needs, knowledge and skills-sets.

If these needs are not addressed, then it makes these employees “misfits” in that domain, which results in lagging behind in performances and not meeting management expectations. These employees end up with lower productivity, face isolation and resort to denial, as a defense mechanism.

Job Characteristics Model

This model proposes that for an employee to be successful in any job, he needs to have some degree of autonomy and he should be able to give a feedback which is heard. Such conditions result in job enrichment and employee loyalty. The absence of these factors can cause work disassociation and drops in productivity.

This model also specifies that numerous talented professionals lose their aptitude towards the same work that they had once been very interested in, and were good at. The main reason behind this was the attitude of the management.

Diathesis-Stress Model

This model makes a distinction between stressful job conditions and individual strains. Strains can be mental, physical or emotional and most of the times, these strains change from person to person.

The significant strains among them are:

• Excessive Workload
• Disagreeable Workplace Environments
• Lack of Autonomy
• Difficult Relationships with Coworkers
• Lack of Career Growth
• Low Chances of Personal Growth while Working and
• Harassment from Management.

Jobs-Demand Resources Model

This model posits that workplace stress can be associated to the difference of job demands and resources. Experienced at managerial levels, it is caused when a bully management expects managers to deliver high results with low resources.

In other words, there is a severely skewed ration between job demands and job resources. Even good managers cannot deal with this stress and end up stressed.

Effort-Reward Imbalance Model

This model focuses on the relation between efforts and rewards. When employees put in hard work, they expect management to reward their efforts. In absence of any such reward program, the employees get demotivated and underperform.

It is not enough in today’s world to expect good output from employees as a “part of the job”. Companies that think they are entitled to get good output from employees just because they pay them, need to realize that it is not paying, but compensating them for their time, i.e. the employees could have done something way more productive with the time they spend in the company.

Problems Caused by Stress Factors

Stress factors have the ability to induce a range of disorders, including psychological issues like depression, anxiety, etc. They also are the cause of emotional instability like irritation, dissatisfaction, tension and fatigue. In addition to that, workplace stress can cause changes in behavior and cognitive functioning like increased levels of aggression and concentration-lapses.

In situations where stress doesn’t cause any psychological or physical damage, it still accounts of big drops in productivity. Stressed-out employees yield poor performances, are less receptive, and engage in higher absenteeism. These conditions lead to deviant behavior, health-related expenses and increased chances of workplace injury.

The ability of an employee to cope with the number of hours expected of him to work, rate of production, performance standards, volume of work, and the deadlines that he is expected to deliver his output, all play a major role in creating stress. Doctors have observed a deeply negative impact on mental health of people who work in night shifts.