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STRESS MANAGEMENT IN ORGANISATIONS
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14420/en.2015.52
Galina Vasyuta, PhD of Psychology, Associate Professor of the Chair of Psychology in the Field of Education and Development at Volgograd State Socio-Pedagogical University (VSSPU), e-mail: vasyuta@inbox.ru.
In the present article the author demonstrates topicality of conducting research devoted to stresses in modern organisations and technologies aimed to optimise such stresses. The article also proves necessity to focus more attention on practices of stress management in Russian companies. The author considers professional stress, its levels (high, optimal (medium), low) and its sources. The article identifies existing methodical approaches to managing stress in the organisation and levels of stress management (at the level of the organisation and the level of the individual). The article presents foreign practices of applying stress optimisation programmes at the level of the entire organisation (employees support programmes, healthcare programmes, programmes aimed to improve the quality of life for employees, absenteeism control programmes, stress management programmes), as well as gives an estimate of management practices, pertaining to stress management in Russia. sources of stress; stress optimisation programmes in the organisation; professional / occupational stress; preventive measures and psychological stress control; stress condition; stress reaction / stress response; stress factor / stressor; stresses in the organisation; tolerance to stress; stress management; stress levels (high, optimal, low); levels of stress management.
The very fact that issues of managing the organisation and its human resources play an especially significant role during critical periods, periods of restructuring or innovation reforms, explains the topicality of studying stresses in organisations as well as technologies of their optimisation. Generally speaking, stress is quite a common and frequent phenomenon, besides, insignificant stresses are inevitable and do not cause a considerable harm. Modern publications on the problem of stress feature certain statistics, according to which people state that in recent years they have been feeling higher and high-
Abstract.
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er levels of stress, particularly in the workplace1. Expansion of stress reactions is possible even in the most progressive and well-managed organisations. It is not only its influence on performance, stability and competitiveness of the entire organisation that makes it necessary to draw attention to the issues of stress in organisations (working or professional stresses)2; it is also the fact that stresses globally affect the person's life, alter his or her mental and somatic condition, occasionally resulted in the loss of health, psychological problems and changes of human personality [Nesterova, 2012, 2012: 148-152].
A great majority of organisations demonstrate awareness of the necessity to manage stresses, since one of the principal goals of modern management is to And such an optimal working stress, which would provide high efficiency of work without leading to unwanted aftereffects. In practice managers often face numerous difficulties in achieving this goal, and these difficulties are associated with an obvious lack of attention to the problem of work-related stresses in the process of training managers in Russia. Russian textbooks and manuals, devoted to the issues of management, human resources management, managerial behaviour, etc., as a rule either present the problem in question in a superficial and schematic way (e.g. [Upravlenie personalom, 2002: 580], or give its discrete and fragmentary description, or even do not mention it at all (see: [Glukhov, 2009: 352-360], [Potemkin, 2010] and other textbooks).
Over several last years the notion of stress has become very popular, even fashionable. However, even though we can find a considerable number of works in this field, including social-psychological researches, there is still no clarity and precision in scientific definitions of the term, in fact, we have no generally accepted definition of stress ([Bodrov, 1995: 19-39; Bright, Jones, 2003: 30-69; Greenberg, 2002: 29-31; Nesterova, 2012: 15-21]). Today stress is associated either with environmental conditions (stimulus characteristics), or with responses of individuals to their environment, or with environmental conditions in their combination with the response of the person. According to one of the existing points of view, stress is defined as a gap between the pressure and adaptability. A majority of psychologists who conduct researches on stress in organisations use the term «stressors» (or «stress factors»), understood as events and environmental conditions that can trigger a stress, while stress is understood as a human response to such events and conditions. This distinction allows to separate a cause (stressor) from its consequence (stress), taking into account individual
1 For example, according to Richard Daft, «percentage of employees who declare they are exhausted because of stresses at the workplace increased from 39% in 1995 up to 53% in 1998. Over the same period number of employees who admitted they would miss work for stress-related reasons increased by more than 35%» ([Daft, 2008: 560, 563]; see also: [Bright, Jones, 2009: 20-23], [Greenberg, 2002: 339-341], [Greenberg, Baron, 2004: 160] and other sources).
2 Findings of researches on stress related issues conducted in the USA suggest that annual expenditures, connected with consequences of stress amount to about 300 bln dollars, furthermore, they are continually growing [Newstrom, Davis, 2000: 365]. On the average stresses cost American companies 10 thousand dollars per one employee [Robbins, Coulter, 2007: 560, 563].
differences in reactions to these environmental aspects ([Bodrov, 1995: 3-39; 2006: 11-43; Greenberg, 2002: 29-30]).
Professional or work-related stress is a multidimensional phenomenon, manifested in physiological and psychological responses to an intricate work situation. According to H. Selye, working under stressogenic conditions always results in mobilization of internal resources and can induce both immediate disorders and aftereffects. In terms of behaviour, psychology and health, stress can cause destructive consequences.
Stress can debilitate physical and psychological ability of a person to fight against stress-inducing factors, so called distress; but stress can also have a positive, healthful and evaluative impact, so called eustress (however, some researchers claim this approach to be rather disputable1). «Medium level» of stress (also called optimal, since the nature of response depends upon individual characteristics of the person and some people have higher resistance to stress, while others have lower resistance to stress) results in increased work productivity. If the level of stress is low, there are no stimuli for the person to develop (since his or her intellectual and physical capacities are not fully used), thus, to say the least of it, it would be problematic to reach high economic parameters. At the same time a high level of stress exhausts personal resources: it affects unfavourably physical and psychic health and many aspects of performance.
Stress reactions (and consequently the stress level) are preconditioned by to what extent people are disposed to perceive a particular situation as stressful. Perceiving production factors as stressors is determined not so much by objective actualities, but rather by the individual psychological constitution of the employee and his or her work motivation, otherwise any activity in complicated or extreme conditions would be impossible in principle [Leonova, 1984: 27].
Stress sources are complex by nature. Psychology and work physiology use a developed classification, which comprises a large number of so called production stress factors. Among them researchers distinguish the following kinds of factors: physical (vibration, noise, dusty atmosphere), physiological (working in shifts, absence of fixed schedule for having meals), social-psychological (conflict of roles and uncertainty in regard to roles, excessive pressure of work with respect to its quality or quantity, or, contrariwise, providing employees with an insufficient workload, using information channels that are not adequately tested, interpersonal conflicts, high level of responsibility, time pressure, sexual harassment at work), structure and organisational factors (so called organisational stress) ([Leonova, 1984: 546-547; Psikhologiya, 2004: 296] and other sources). Sensitivity or tolerance to stress-factors depend upon a number of situational variables (nature of the stressor, combination of present and absent stressors,
1 British managers mostly believe that one should avoid stress in the workplace by all possible means, since «possibly, when taken in low doses, it [sfress] sometimes appears to give the intended effect, yet ultimately stress always has a negative impact on people's health, complicates interpersonal relations, undermines corporate ethics, leads to conflicts and disaffection» (see: [Millins, 2003: 534-537, 717]).
duration of exposure to the stressor, predictability of the stressor) and personal variables (good physical health, high self-assessment, past experience of successful stress coping, positive, goal-oriented, self-reliant approach to life, type B).
There exist many strategies and tactics that can be applied to optimise the influence of stress on employees and eliminate its harmful consequences as much as possible. Preventive measures and regulation of psychological stress contribute to a great extent to ensuring a good performance of employees and the entire organisation. Stress management is understood as the process of making a purposeful impact on the staff, aimed to ensure adaptation of the person to a stress situation, eliminate sources of stress and provide all employees with methods for counteracting stressors [Upravlenie, 2010: 578].
We can distinguish several levels of stress management: the community level, the organisation level, and the level of the individual. Stress management in the organisation is possible only on two of these levels.
At the level of the organisation stress management is realised through changes of organisational policies and structure of production, by means of setting forth concise requirements to employees and assessment of their activity. Stress management process in the organisation is to start already at the job placement stage, since cases when the employee does not have an adequate competence for the job, are potentially stressful. Measures, designed to improve communication within the organisation, to develop programmes of setting objectives, etc., contribute to lowering the level of stress associated with uncertainty. Besides, as a mean of employee assistance organisations, now launch systematic programmes are designed to decrease and / or prevent stress. The guiding principle of such programmes is that a decrease in unfavourable stress response on the part of employees will make them healthier, lead to higher work satisfaction, raise productivity and efficiency of their work, which, in its turn, will result in enhancement of efficiency of the entire organisation. These programmes applied at the level of the entire organisation are particularly characteristic of companies in countries of Western Europe and the USA ([Greenberg, Baron, 2004: 173-175; Jewell, 2001: 226, 438; Robbins, Coulter, 2007: 612]). They include the following programmes:
- Employee support programmes comprising the policies, procedures and consultation services, designed to identify the employees who have personal, emotional or behavioural problems, which hinder from proper execution of work, or to render assistance to such employees. Consultation support can be provided in the form of so called electronic therapy (also known as virtual psychotherapy), which is becoming more and more popular.
- Health programmes, comprising training programmes, conducted inside the organisation, during which employees acquire skills necessary to lead a healthy life. Among the most popular topics there are physical exercises, nutrition issues and consultations on weight regulation.
- Programmes, designed to improve the quality of employees' life, that offer employees sessions in fitness clubs, medical consultation services (including, massage, health food programmes, etc.), specially fitted recreation rooms («quiet rooms», «meditation centres»).
- Programmes, designed to control presence at the workplace, comprising procedures of granting employees flexibility with respect to choosing their days off. Some companies, for example, allow for certain number of days off known as «paid days off» (or «balance days») for employees, so that they can use their off time basing upon the total pre-determined quantity of such days.
- Programmes of stress management, consisting of training employees, so that they acquire various techniques (for example, meditation and relaxation), which can be applied in order to decrease injurious effects of stress. The second level of stress management is the level of the individual.
There exist a great number of principles designed to help employees hold stress under control, for example, time management techniques, physical exercises, nutritional care, relaxation, meditation, sleep, an ability to shift one's ground, consider any problem in perspective, take it all in good fun, distance oneself from the situation, endeavour to slow the rate of life down, etc.
Stress management in organisations is realised within the framework of different approaches. So, L.R. Murphy distinguishes three technical approaches with regard to minimising impact of stressors ([Bright, Jones, 2003: 309-329; Greenberg, Baron, 2004: 182-183; Monina, Rannala]), viz.:
- Primary prevention, comprising such methods of protection against stress, which are aimed to exclude from the person's life or to depress the impact of factors causing stress. These methods imply producing a change in the organisational environment or modifying work conditions. As a rule, the organisation spends considerable funds on this type of interference, while its results are often not easy to assess.
- Secondary prevention, comprising such methods of protection against stress that are aimed to minimise consequences of stress for the person's life. These methods imply such an interference that aids to ease stress symptoms (health promotion, social assistance, cognitive restructuring, stress management training, books on self-aid, anti-stress websites, etc.).
- Prevention of the third order, comprising such methods of protection against stress that are aimed to treat stress-related symptoms. This category includes consulting provided for the person in order to help eliminate already existing problems.
There also exists a somewhat different approach to identifying management stress techniques in the organisation ([Jewell, 2001: 437-438; Vesnin, 2009: 212]), viz.:
- Reduction of intensity or quantity of stressors in work environment (lowering the workload, job enrichment, improvement of working conditions, job rotation, etc.);
- Measures, designed to change assessment of the situation by people who face stress (making the assessment of potentially stressful situations more objective, enhancing voluntary control over own psychosomatic conditions);
- Measures, designed to enhance the ability of people to effectively cope with consequences of stress (including medical help, psychological consultations, etc.).
Therefore, at the present moment it is necessary to establish fundamental theoretic basis and reliable, valid measuring procedures in order to ensure an adequate valuation of stress in organisations. Stress optimisation programmes in organisations should correspond with the challenges, which a particular organisation is currently facing. For the time being the stress management practice existing in Russian management is inadequate for significance and topicality of the present problem; managers pay extremely little attention to the methods, designed to control work-related stress.
It should be pointed out that some scholar insist that the critical factor for the success of programmes on coping with stress at the workplace is providing managers who launch these programmes with understanding and support [Bright, Jones, 2003: 337].
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