Occupational Stress

It would not be improper if we name today's age as the age of stress and strain. Every individual right from a KG child to his retired grandparents, from a maidservant to the housewife and from an individual standing at the bottom of the hierarchical level to the top boss of the organization-nobody is immune to stress. It may be physiological, sociological, psychological or occupational stress.

If we analyse the problems faced by the heterogeneous group of individuals, stress is sure to be found a root cause in the majority of the cases. One is usually unaware that ailments like ulcers, headaches, backache, indigestion, increased blood pressure and fatigue are due to emotional stress. At one time it was thought that such disorders were medical problems physical in origin and that there were little psychologists could do about them. Now, however, these are seen as psychological problems arising from the physical, social and psychological conditions of work.

We frequentlymake use of the term ‘stress’ but where form it has originated? The term ‘stress’ was first used in the 15^th  century as a shortened form of the term ‘distress’ and for the first time appeared in psychology in 1936.

Although some interesting studies on stresswere conducted during world war II and same work is done during the 1960s, stress joinedthe galaxy of the terminology of organisational psychologyin the latter half of 1970s and since thenhas been instrumental in generating voluminousresearch in different disciplines from different angles.

Stress is a multi-disciplinary field. Almost every branch of study- it may be pertainingto life sciences, social sciences, behavioural sciencesor physical sciences- have taken cognizance of stress since so many disciplines are involved, each having their own ideas and approaches, there is no consensuson the definition of stress, e.g: To a student of engineering, stress means an externalforce directed of some physical object resulting in strain that caused a temporary or permanent alteration in the structureof the object. From a psychological point of view Prof. Pestonjee, a leading figurein organisational psychology and management, defines stress as occurring when demands on an individual exceed his adjustment resources. In other words, according to psychologists, when an individual is motivated to achieve a certain level of proficiency, failure or threat of failure produces stress.

Let usillustrate the viewpoints of two disciplines viz. engineering and psychology with an example, if a small amount of weight is put a bridge, it would create mild stress and the resultant strain would be minimal. If we go an increasing the weight on the bridge, and have the level of stress, the strain would also go on increasing and depending on the material of bridge and the quality of construction there might be sagging or buckling or perhaps eventually the break down of the bridge.

The same is true of individuals also. People vary widely in their capacity to withstandstress. As in the case of the bridge, the stress-bearingcapacity varies with the material and quality of construction, in case of individualsalso the stress-bearing capacity varies from individual to individual. Individual's personalitycharacteristics, emotional health, physicalhealth and past experiences in coping with the stress are among the factors that determine his response to stress.

For instance,one individual may find the job of a personnel officer very interesting and will emerge as a very successful PO whereas, on the other hand, even the news of officiating that post for a short period may raise the bloodpressure of another individual. One individual may carry on his duties well with ease and efficiency without a least noticeable difference in his behaviouralpatterns in very stressful conditions whereas his counterpart may completely collapse when confrontedwith the slightest stress. Therefore it cannot be said as to how much stress is more or less. It all depends on the individualfacing the situation.

Although it is an established fact that excessive stress is detrimental to an individual’s efficiency and performance, researchers have shown that an optimumamount of stress is essential for achieving proficiencyin performance. Again what is ‘optimum amount’ will differ from individual to individual.

We have already discussed that stress manifests itself in many forms viz. physiological stress, psychological stress, sociological stress, occupational stress etc. Let us now see what occupational stress is.

The centurywe are living in is characterised by cut-throat competition,economic pressure and specialized industrializationand as such experience of mental disturbances on the part of employees have become the order of the day. Such mental disturbancesof the personnel working in manufacturing and /or service-oriented organisations are named as occupational stress by the organisational psychologists.In other words, occupational stress can be conceived as a state of disturbed mental health experienced by employee owing to occupational stressors (Helode and Palnitkar, 1987)

In 1981, the importance of stress at work was dramatised by the nationwide strike of the air traffic controllers’ union which was justified on the basis that the controllers' jobs were so stressful. The controllers argued that the tension created by the workload and the responsibility for human life required that they be given shorter work hours with more frequent breaks in order to release some of that tension and also that they are paid at a higher level to compensate for the threats to their health created the stressors of the job.