Directorate of distance education master of business administration

Concern over stress in Organizations 
 
Stress has been taking the toll of a sizeable segment of valuable 
human resources in organizations every year.  Health authorities estimate 
that stress plays a role in at least 50% of all forms of physical illness. A 
Gallup poll as early as 1994 reported that 71% of the respondents viewed 

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their jobs as the most frequent cause of negative stress.  Effects of stress 
include some of the most serious and life-threatening ailments known 
in the field of medicine. Therefore, organizations have begun concerted 
efforts to enable employees to effectively handle the inevitable stress. 
Stress management programs are systematic efforts by 
organizations designed to help employees reduce harmful stress. 
These programs include extensive in-house as well as external training 
concentrating on techniques of busting stress like transcendental and 
other forms of meditation, deep breathing, self-relaxation, physical 
exercises, developing positive attitudes, anger management, time 
management and lifestyle modification. Some organizations rely on help 
from their comprehensive Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) and 
counselors in meeting various psychosocial problems of their employees 
like drug and alcohol abuse, sickness and disability, indebtedness and 
family breakdowns. 
People vary in their relation with stress. One style of relating is 
being stress-seekers who thrive on challenge, risk and sensation. Stress-
avoiders thrive on security, familiarity and avoiding challenges and risk. 
Distress seekers thrive on misery, illness, crises and martyrdom. Distress 
avoidance is a style of thriving on health, contentment, involvement. 
Distress-provokers thrive intentionally or unintentionally on creating 
misery, disharmony, illness or upsetting others. Distress reducers tend 
to thrive on doing everything possible to promote growth in those whose 
lives they touch. 
According to Schafer (2004), good managers of individual stress 
tend to practice the following habits in their lives:
1. 
Anticipate, monitor and regulate stressors as far as possible.
2. 
Become aware of and control their interpretation of stressors
3. 
Believe that they can influence events and their own reactions 
to those events. 
4. 
Practice daily deep relaxation to balance positive and negative 
stress
5. 
Use mental and physical on-the-spot tension reducers to 
control arousal

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6. 
Maintain positive health buffers such as daily exercise, good 
eating habits, adequate sleep and healthy pleasures to build 
stress resistance and prevent stress build-up
7. 
Recognize early warning signs of mental and physical distress. 
8. 
Develop means of mobilizing and controlling stress in 
performance situations. 
Tranquility and serenity are rare in human existence. However, 
some jobs like that of office managers, sales persons, drivers and security 
officers do expose the people who hold them to high levels of stress 
than others like the jobs of college professor, trainers or copy writers .  
Similarly some industries like telecommunications, financial services and 
fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) are rated to be the most stressful 
industries. Some individuals with aggressive, ambitious personality 
types are more prone to stress than other types who are patient, tolerant 
and calm. 
In terms of organizational factors, any attempt to lower stress 
would have to begin with employee selection, during which care has to 
be taken to ensure that an employee’s abilities match the requirements 
of the job. Subsequently, improved organizational communications will 
keep ambiguity-induced stress to a minimum. Similarly a performance 
planning program such as Management by objectives will clarify job 
responsibilities, provide clear performance objectives and thus reduce 
anxiety. If stress can be traced directly to boredom or work overload, 
jobs should be redesigned to increase challenge or reduce the work load. 
Redesigns that increase opportunities for employees to participate in 
decisions and to gain social support have also been found to lessen the 
burdens arising out of stress.