The Importance of Dealing with Organizational Stress

Abstract

Job stress is the harmful, physical and emotional responses that occur when the requirements of the job do not match the capabilities , resources, or needs of the workers. The experience of stress is a challange to the health and safety of workers and to the healthiness of the organization. Organizational stress could be considered as the result of those factors in an organization that cause stress for the individual employee,and in turn, have negative organizational consequences. Stress related issue can impede the progress of an organization- in absenteeism, accidents and loss of productivity. As a result, dealing with employee’s stress is important for the organization as well as individuals. This is because the survival of every organization depends to a reasonable extent on the workforce. Therefore, this paper is aimed at X-raying the importance of dealing with organizational stress. The paper, being a theoritical one, sourced data from two main sources, the primary and secondary  sources. Data from primary sources were obtained from intensive/unstructured interviews. While secondary data were obtained from Journals, articles, Text books and chiefly the internet. The study revealed that poor work organization and lack of communication are some of the major causes of stress in an organization. It was equally found out that stress could lead to employee’s burnout  and burnout is a contributory  factor to violence in a work place. Based on the findings, we recommended  that organizations should establish clear means of communication at all times, especially during time of stress. This will help alliviate fear and role ambiguity in an organization. Equally,organizations should establish and support wellness programmes as a means to reduce work stress. The study concluded that the best strategy in dealing with job stress is to identify the stressor, treat the symptom, change the person and remove the cause of the stress.

Keywords: Dealing with, organizational stress