Emotional Stress

Job Stress And It's Causes

In the modern world today, to support our families and ourselves and to achieve a lot of our ambitions, we all have to go out to work and when there’s any kind of conflict in the work place, this can cause a lot of job stress. Stress can be caused by a lot of factors. These factors fall into several categories.

The first category is stressful work practices. Workers get frustrated if they are not given control over the responsibilities that are entrusted to them. This means, they cannot exercise what they want to do on a given project. Discouraging work practices such as the lack of a clear job description, no recognition or reward of a good performance and the absence of opportunities to use personal talents add a lot to stress. Dissatisfaction and anxiety also occurs when workers are not given an opportunity to air out their problems and concerns. The frustration of keeping these problems and concerns concealed will strain their stress coping mechanism.

Some Categories Of Job Stress

The next category of factors that causes job stress is too much pressure at work. Too often, employers give too much responsibility to their workers and give them unrealistic time frames. In an effort to appease their employers, workers try their hardest to accomplish their boss’s demands. The need to impress or to accomplish these demands puts tremendous pressure on them. This causes a lot of job stress. The stress is further amplified if there is confusion due to a conflict of demands from different superiors.

Job stress can also be caused by harassment or bullying. Some fellow employees may tease, insult or even threaten others due to their sex, religion or race. Some insensitive employees may even spread malicious gossip in order to destroy another’s good name. Abusive bosses may harass employees to show them his superiority. Acts like these produce immense stress for employees who are simultaneously trying to protect themselves and do their jobs. Aside from stress, harassment and bullying can cause the victim to lose his self confidence, his esteem and his respect towards himself.

Job stress can also be caused because by the work place atmosphere, for instance, noisy, dirty, messy areas can all contribute towards job stress. It is therefore a good idea to keep the work areas clean and tidy to have a healthy, relaxed and stress free careers.