Effects of Stress to Individuals and Organizations (Essay Sample)

Effects of stress to individuals and organizations
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Introduction
Stress affects nearly every person in the world especially employees who are under pressure to attain target quotas under strict deadlines and other work conditions. Reynolds (n.d) asserts that most employees face stress because of dissatisfaction by remuneration, poor working and unfavorable conditions, low job progress , insufficient training opportunities, poor communication systems within the organization and overburdening work assignments just mentioning a few. According to Barden (2001), Stress on employees goes a long way to negatively affect the entire organization by reducing the employees’ performance hence the organization’s failure to attain its overall economic and financial goals. Stress can sometimes have positive or negative impacts on the employees and the organization depending on the approach given to the stress. This paper discusses some impacts of stress on individual members of an organization, effects o stress on the entire organization and the extent to which the manager should get concerned in helping the employees overcome stress.
Causes of stress
Some of the causes of stress to individuals include poor working environmental conditions, inadequate opportunities for employee professional progress, excess and strict rules, inconsistent communication systems by management and disrespect among peers and managers within the work[lace. Poor remuneration or insufficient compensation to the workers is another reason for which individuals are stressed in organizations because they feel they are not awarded value for their services to the organization. Inadequate channels of freedom of expression for employees within an organization also leads to stress since the employees are not able to air their issues affecting them at individual levels.
How to identify stress
There are a number of ways of identifying stressed individuals in an organization but the most important step in determining stressed workers is through observing their behavior change (Reynolds, n.d). Often stressed employees become argumentative, easily agitated, taking unhealthy foods, increased smoking among smoking employees among other characteristics. Due to stress, employees are more likely to make mistakes and show reduced task performance output as well as absenteeism from job and late coming to work.
Some of the effects of stress for the individual concerned
There are several effects of stress on the concerned individual within organization namely:
Increased safety risks
When employees are stressed especially manual laborers and machine operators, the employee is more likely to get injured by the machine or working tool they use because of stressed attributed reduced concentration (Maurer, 2002). Furthermore, most of the employees especially in developing countries are not properly insured for adequate and comprehensive compensations. The individuals often end up being thrown out of the work place as they seek medical treatment while new employees are hired to fill the gap left. The injured individuals end up in extreme misery and suffering as they have extra burden of family needs as well as medical costs. In other instances, accidents due to stressed individuals may lead to loss of life even through suicide.
Increased absenteeism
Due to more illnesses experienced by stressed individuals, they tend to take extra time off the job seeking medical care (Maurer, 2002). In organizations where pay compensation is determined by work rate output, the sick individual workers who take time off will be highly disadvantaged because they will have done no work to earn the pay during the time they are off duty. Sometimes the employees choose to be absent to avoid the stressful work environment and choose to stay at the comfort of their homes so that they feel better.
Reduced performance
Another main effect of stress on individual employee within an organization is the reduced performance on work (Foster, 2002). Many employees get self fulfillment and self actualization when they excellently undertake tasks according to the set targets or even surpass the targets. When individuals cannot effectively perform their task because of stress, it becomes an individual, employee’s concern as it affects the employee as an individual.
Health risks
Stress is becoming a public health concern because many of public health problems like alcoholism, hypertension, drug abuse, and cardiovascular risks among others are stress related (Meneze, 2005). Stress affects individual’s personality traits and occupational health problems such as anxiety could be contributed by stress factors like dissatisfaction in job (Miche & Williams, 2003).
Effects of stress for organizations
Organizations whose individual employees are stressed are also affected. If the stress is not promptly identified and controlled, the organization and society are also affected in a massive impact in many ways (Imtiaz & Ahmad, 2015). Effects such as experiencing decline in overall performance, uncompleted orders, and poor customer care service among others are common with stress. Some of the most common effects of stress to organizations are discussed below.
Increased staff hiring costs & turnover
One of the most experienced effects of organizational stress consequences is the increase in staff hiring cost and turnover (Reynolds, n.d). Many stressed employees often dislike their work environment and only a few may open up to seek support from the employer. Majority of employees dessert their jobs due to stress especially on medical grounds. Even those employees who seek help from their employers to deal with stress, sometimes they receive no assistance and finally quit the organization hence a loss on the organization. Because many organizations do not really accept the reasons for which employees quit, they rarely discover that they have a stress problem within hence no action is often taken to deal with stress at the organizational level.
Absenteeism and presenteeism
When individual employees are stressed, they are likely to suffer from illnesses such as hypertension, alcoholism, drug abuse among others (Imtiaz, & Ahmad, 2015). Illness will force workers out of the job hence being absent to seek medical attention or just remain within the comfort of their homes. In other cases, workers would report to the job but would be unable to work because of stress hence only being physically present but absent psychologically, a situation called presenteeism. Organizations stand to lose if their employees are stressed because they do not perform to meet the target goals. When there is proper discipline, employees will not have guidance on how they relate one to another thus may lead to haphazard operations and disrespect among individuals. Lack of respect among individual work peers is also one of the causes of stress and the situation may also lead to absenteeism due to indiscipline.
Reduced productivity levels
Prolonged exposure to stress leads to chronic fatigue and depression. In such a case, employees usually find it more difficult to attain optimum working levels (Imtiaz, & Ahmad, 2015). Chronic stress individuals lose concentration and work motivations thus are prone to making more mistakes while undertaking tasks. Time duration taken to complete a task is often longer than usually with a poor quality outcome with less quantity resulting in a general low productivity output by the organization.
Litigation
Employees are guaranteed a healthy and safety working environment as a legal responsibility pegged on the organization (Imtiaz, & Ahmad, 2015). Some of these requirements include establishment of safe practices at work, sufficient trainings, and a free working environment without harassment and bullying. If an individual employee faces stress caused by lack of one of these legal obligations, it may lead t an expensive legal process and damage to the organizational reputation within the society.
Reputational damage
Reputation damage is also another dire consequence on an organization if its employees are stressed mostly due to the negligence on the organizational management team to control stress both at the individual and organizational level (Imtiaz, & Ahmad, 2015). It usually take a long time for organizations to build good reputation with the clients and the society but it may only take a short time for such a reputation to be lost occasioned by declined productivity, poor customer care services and reduced staff performance culture.
Increased training costs
Due to increased staff turnover, more training on induction courses and orientation are required. Other areas, which may see the organization spend more, include trainings aimed at sharpening staff interpersonal skills, safety and health related issues such as insurance litigation, and stress management courses (Reynolds, n.d).
How mangers can reduce stress
Stress management is important core factor for the individual employee and the entire organization because stress impacts cut across the two entities (Bashsir & Assad, 2007). The extent to which a manager can feel responsible for trying to help reduce employee’s stress wo...