Common causes of stress

Common causes of stress

Common causes of stress within the workplace include:

• The Drive for Success: Modern society is driven by ‘work’. Personal adequacy
equates with professional success and people crave for status and abhor failure.
The demand for monetary success / professional status is simply overwhelming.

• Working Conditions: Physical and mental health is adversely affected by
unpleasant working conditions, such as high noise levels, lighting, temperature and
unsocial or excessive hours.

• Overwork: Stress may occur through inability to cope with the technical or intellectual
demands of a particular task. Circumstances such as long hours, unrealistic
deadlines and frequent interruptions will compound this.

• Underwork: This may arise from boredom because there is not enough to do, or
because a job is dull and repetitive.

• Uncertainty: About the work - role objectives, responsibilities, and expectations,
and a lack of communication and feedback can result in confusion, helplessness,
and stress.

• Conflict: Stress can arise from work which the individual does not want to do or
that conflicts with their personal, social and family values.

• Responsibility: The greater the level of responsibility the greater the potential level
of stress

• Relationships at work: Good relationships with colleagues are crucial. Open
discussion is essential to encourage positive relationships.

• Changes at work: Changes that alter psychological, physiological and behavioural
routines such as promotion, retirement and redundancy are particularly stressful.

Through timely identification and conscious intervention, managers must try to deal
with the stressors. They should speak to themselves and seek answers to questions
such as:

• What are the sources and levels of stress?
• How is stress affecting their health?
• How is stress affecting performance in the workplace?
• How knowledgeable are they about managing stress?
• What additional support they need for mitigating the stress?