There are a two conditions that will lead potential stress to become actual stress. First and foremost, there must be uncertainty over the outcome. Employees overthink and worry too much about the consequences until it disrupts their work processes. For example, when the employees knew that they did not did a great job on the things their employer asked, they will have the thought on whether are they going to be fired or their pay will be cut. When the employees have that thought, they will be more stressful because they are unsure what might be the outcome. Thus, their work processes will get interrupted.
Besides, the outcome must be important to the employees. For instance, loss of income. Income is one of the main thing most employees work for. They need to support themselves or even their family by buying basic needs such as food and clothes. If the employees knew that they will lose their income, they will feel stress because they might not know what to do next.
There are a couple of potential sources that can lead to stress. One of it is environmental factors. Economic uncertainties of the business will lead to stress. For example, the CEO is worried of the firm's state because of recession. Also, political uncertainties of political systems. Furthermore, technological uncertainties of technical innovation. For instance, employees are not used to the machines that are newly upgraded. They do not know how to handle the advanced machines, making the work processes harder and leading them to stress because they have to learn how to operate the machines over again. In addition, terrorism in threats to physical and security. As an illustration, people who live in a country or a place where terrorism happens, they live in fright. They are scared, thus finding shelter that will keep them safe from terrorists is one of the issue that will cause stress to them.
The second potential source of stress is organisational factors such as task demands related to the job. For example, employees are given a lot of tasks to do by the manager and they do not have enough time to finish it before the due date. Employees will feel very stress finding ways to complete the tasks given. Apart from that, role demands of functioning in an organisation. Some employees have to play multiple roles in the organisation and not all the employees can handle it. For example, an employee has a role of an supervisor, accountant and a store keeper. Other than that, interpersonal demands created by other employees. For instance, employees who are introverts will feel stressful if they were pushed to go and do sales. Additionally, organisational structure, leadership and life stage will also lead to stress. To give an example of organisation's life stage is when the firm is at the decline stage, employers and employees will try to find ways to keep the firm at a stable state.
The third potential source of stress is individual factors. It refers to the stress that comes from ourselves. Conflicts will occur between us and family. Hence, family and personal relationship will cause pressure. As an illustration, when we argue with our family members, our mind will get distracted as we will keep finding ways to solve the conflict. Moreover, economic problems from surpassing earning capacity. For example, financial problems taking care of everybody in the family. When we do not have enough income to support our family, it will cause stress as there is too much pressure on us. Besides, personality issues resulting from basic disposition. For instance, when an employee heard rumours about the firm is retrenching people, they tend to worry and stress themselves in relation to it and tell other employees regarding the fake news.
The way people cope with their stress depends on individual differences. One of the individual differences is perceptual variations of how reality will affect the individual's future. To illustrate, if a person do not take their work seriously, he or she will not feel the actual stress because they take their job easily. Furthermore, greater job experience moderates stress effects. In particular, during recession, an old CEO will experience moderate stress because they have experience it twice compared to younger employees that have not experienced it before. Other than that, social support buffers job stress. This is because when there is social support, people tend to feel more confident and have higher self-esteem in themselves. Not to mention, internal locus of control lowers perceived job stress because they believe that they are in control with what happens to them. In addition, strong feelings of self-efficacy reduce reactions to job stress. Self-efficacy refers to type A personality. People with type A personality are more task oriented compared to people with type B personality. Hence, they will know how to manage their time and tasks better. Lastly, hostility. Hostility is someone who will show their anger. People with high hostility will have lesser stress whereas people with low hostility will have more stress. This is because high hostility people will show out their true feelings.
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