WORK PLACE STRESS

WORK PLACE STRESS
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Introduction
Work place stress is the emotional or the physical pressures that a person may have to deal with at the workplace environment. Work place stress can have several risks to the safety of the workers and to the overall health of the workplace. Certain stress levels can be useful as the workers can be motivated by increased adrenaline levels. However, certain stress types could be disastrous and can have long-term effects to the employees and the employers of a given institution. Different people experience stress in different ways and the responses given by the affected people do vary depending on several factors. Stress leads to increased heart rates, increased blood pressure and an increase in the frequency or severity of headaches. It can also lead to overeating or a significant loss of appetite (Lewinsohn and Teri, 2006). These all have different effects to the performance of individuals in their places of work.
There are several causes of stress in the work place. In the United States, the economic depression resulted into: layoffs, mergers, downsizing of companies and bankruptcy of organizations that led to people losing their jobs. Job loss then became one of the major causes of stress to the working population. It greatly affected the health of several institutions and even the individuals who were working for different companies in the US (Sauter , Murphy and Hurrell, 1990).
Pressure at workplace, intimidation, favoritism, nepotism, tribalism and corruption also cause a lot of stress among employees and cause a bad relationship between the employees and the employers. When there is a bad relationship between employees and employers, the productivity of the companies are also affected greatly. Therefore stress should be avoided at all cost in order to prevent the decrease in productivity of the companies (Lewinsohn and Teri, 2006).
A feeling of powerlessness and being in a state of having no voice is a universal cause of stress across several professions. When a person is in a state of powerlessness, he/she stays in a state of hopelessness and has to conform to the rules and directions of those in authority whether they are good or not. In the US, the power to make decisions is often vested on the employers and the employees have very little influence in the decision making process. Therefore unpopular decisions may be made but they have to comply with them since they have no choice or risk their jobs (Teri, 2000).
Undefined job description has also been realized to be another cause of stress among the working population in the United States. A good number of people in the US do not cling to one particular kind of job. They tend to move across different professions in an attempt to make more money. People`s jobs are not properly defined hence individuals are left in a state of quagmire when approached to do a job that may not be ...