Paste yoWork Stress on Job Satisfaction
Introduction
Modern working life is becoming increasingly challenging and stressful. In recent decades, the structure, content, and process of work have changed increasingly. Work is now more multifaceted, more team-based and more dependent on social skills and technological competence. Firms are more focused on finding value from the customer perspective and continually reorganizing to maintain a competitive advantage. Many organisations adopted new techniques and methods of work that generates new production processes such as just-in-time production methods, total quality management, expansion of appraisal systems, job rotation, multi-skilling and flexible production system. The employees who work for these organisations are now facing highly demanding and rapidly changing work environments. Green (2004, p.712) pointed out that the changing competitive environment has resulted in an intensification of work being passed on to workers. Nonetheless, the difficulties of balancing the competing demands of the workplace and personal lives can positively affect employees’ job and life satisfaction and benefits for organizational performance.
Impact of work intensification and job stress on job satisfaction
Job satisfaction refers to how satisfied people are with their jobs. When work is overloaded, it causes stress resulting in poor job satisfaction which in turn affects the health of employees. Fast technological advances have created stressful situations such as techno-overload, techno-invasion, techno-complexity, techno insecurity and techno-uncertainty for employees (Srivastava et al. 2015, p. 358). Besides, the introduction of high-performance work system causes employees to lose control of the work pace and expose them to increased job strain and health hazards. Kalmi (2008 p. 435) showed that the new organisation environments caused job intensity and job strain and are related to cumulative trauma disorders. In the same way, Swanson et al. (1998, p. 258) mentioned work intensification as an emergent risk factor for job strain and is often related to heart attacks, strokes, exhaustion, headaches, high blood pressure depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, absent-mindedness, failure of attention and memory, absenteeism, abuse and aggressive behaviour. According to Wood et al. (2010, p. 559), an estimated 10,000 Japanese died from overwork each year. In the United States, the average working hours per year increased by nearly 700 hours in the past two decades and the number of employees reported sick had tripled from 1997 to 2001. The American Institute of Stress stated that stress contributes to eighty percent of all work-related injuries and forty percent of workplace turnovers. On the other hand, in the United Kingdom, the Confederation of British Industry described stress as the second highest cause of absenteeism among non-manual workers. In Australia, most employees are working longer than 44 hours per week, and there is an increasing number of workers’ compensation claims resulting from workplace stress (Richardson & Rothstein 2008, p. 69). Work stress over a prolonged period can make employees susceptible to physical and mental breakdown. According to Stone (2014, p. 681), stress-related illnesses represent up to 75 percent of all health problems.
The stress caused by work intensification can be related to Karasek’s High Demand-Low Control Model (Wall et al. 1996, p. 157) as shown in Figure 1 which explained the four kinds of jobs faced by workers such as high strain, low strain, passive and active.
According to the model, workplace stress refers to job demands such as the pace of work, the proportion of work under pressure, amount of work, the degree of concentration required and the time pressures which represent psychological stressor in the work environment. It defines high stress and the unhealthy job as related with high demand conditions and low control. High demand conditions are excessive workload whereas low control conditions are reduced skills and decision-making autonomy for workers. Besides, high strain jobs have high demands and low control, and have a high risk of psychological strain and physical illness. However, active jobs have high demands but also high levels of control and lead to active learning and motivation for workers.
From another perspective, work intensification increases the effects of role overload which impair employees’ well-being and job satisfaction as shown in Fig. 2.
Ortqvist and Wincent (2010, p. 1358) asserted that role stress increased exhaustion and dissatisfaction which in turn increase levels of role stress. Figure 2 provides a picture of the causal relationships between role stress, satisfaction, and exhaustion, such that role stress at Time 1 will negatively influence satisfaction at Time 2 and so forth. In organisations, high-stress levels generated by excessive job demand result in decreased performance quality, physical overuse injuries and stress-related illness (Macdonald 2003, p. 105).
Prevention and Management of Stress in Workplace
There are many ways to prevent the effects of work stress. Some of the common actions involve assigning employees to jobs that match their skills and preferences, reducing unnecessary workplace noise, taking action against harassment, and allowing employees to have more control over the work process. Another important way that organisations can remove stressor is by providing better work-life balance. The work-life balance initiatives such as flexible and limited work time, job sharing, teleworking, personal leave and child care support would reduce conflict between the employee’s work and non-work demands (McShane et al.2010, p. 144). A significant way to enhance work-life balance of employees is to limit the number of their working hours and giving them flexibility in arranging those hours. Likewise, in job sharing the employees would experience less time-based stress between work and family as they can work at different times of the week for a job which is shared by two people. This strategy enabled employees to work part-time in jobs that are designed for full-time workers. Teleworking makes it easier to fulfil family obligations as employees can temporarily leaving the home office to pick up children from school. And for better work-life values, employers offer prolonged maternity, paternity and personal leave to employees. Providing child-care support on site and subsidising child-care facilities can help to reduce stress as employees are not worried during the day about the well-being of their children and less rushed to drop off children.
Although stress cannot be removed completely, yet employees can learn to manage it. Many organizations have adopted stress management programs to reduce the stress levels of their employees and work-related stressors. Some common stress prevention programs provide employees with techniques to cope with stress such as cognitive–behavioural skills training, meditation, relaxation, deep breathing, exercise, journaling, time management, and goal setting (Richardson & Rothstein 2008, p.70). Cognitive–behavioural interventions provide employees with the skills to modify their thoughts in order to facilitate coping with stress. For example, employees are taught to become aware of negative thoughts or irrational beliefs and to substitute it with positive or rational ideas. In meditation interventions, the employee focuses on a single object and keeps all other thoughts away from his mind. Relaxation therapy promotes stress reduction and helps to release tension while deep breathing benefits the body in the reduction of stress and blood pressure. Another method of stress prevention is through journaling intervention which requires the employee to keep a journal of his stressful events in life. The journal assists the employee to monitor stress levels, to identify the frequent causes of stress, and to note his reactions and to formulate action plans for managing stress. Time management and goal-setting interventions are designed to help employees to focus their energy to achieve better results. Employees often operate under time pressure and are required to work on multiple tasks simultaneously. As such, time management interventions provide training in the areas of goal setting, scheduling and prioritizing tasks, self-monitoring, problem-solving, delegating and negotiating,
One of the other ways to manage stress is for employees and employers to openly address health problems. It is important for employers and employees to create a forum to talk about stress and health issues without fear of judgement (Miles and Perrewe 2011, p. 732). McCrea (2016) stated that one in three people have experienced mental health problems at work and given timely and appropriate support; most people can manage any mental health problems and get themselves better and back to full productivity.
Conclusion
To sum up, job satisfaction is important for the employees and also the organisation as a whole. However, organization factors such as work-overload and poor working conditions are negatively related with job satisfaction. In this essay, we discussed both of job stress and job satisfaction from the employees’ point of view based on empirical studies from literature. We found that high levels of work stress are associated with low levels of job satisfaction and affecting the employees’ physical health and psychological well-being. It is considered that job satisfaction influence workers' performance, efficiency, endeavour, absenteeism, and turnover. Furthermore, job satisfaction is an important factor to an individual's welfare in general and his intentions to either maintain or quit his job. The happier are the workers, the better their minds toward their work and the better will be their performance.
ur essay in here…