This paper aims at analysing the issues of workforce wellbeing in the given case study of university. This paper will conduct a proper literature review on the given two areas namely stress and burnout and emotional intelligence. The major factors for each of the area which is significantly contributing to recent inadequate employee wellbeing will be discussed. Moreover, the related theoretical frameworks for each area will be also discussed in the literature review. This paper will also provide certain recommendations to deal with these identified wellbeing issues.
Emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence can be defined as the capability to administer, utilise and determine one’s own respective emotion in favourable ways so as to relieve the stress, empathize with other individuals, interact efficiently, defuse disputes and overcome the challenges (Keskin et al., 2016). It enables the person to develop strong and effective connections, succeed at workplace and attain their personal as well as career goals. It can also enable to link with one’s feelings, change one’s intention into adequate action and make effective and well-informed decisions regarding the things which matters the most. Emotional intelligence is quite essential as it enable a person to manage and deal with his/her emotions and stress (Makkar & Basu, 2019). Moreover, it allows a person to direct the existing social complexities of a company, inspire and lead other individuals and become successful in one’s career. In addition to that, it also enables a person to effectively manage his/her emotions and stress. If a person is not able to manage his/her emotions or stress, it can result in unavoidable health issues. Thus, emotional intelligence helps a person to maintain good physical health despite work stress. It also enhance the overall performance of an individual at workplace and his/her leadership abilities.
Various and constant changes in the working and teaching style has led to significant factors which has affected the employee wellbeing in the given university to a great extent. Initially due to outbreak of Covid-19, this university responded to the situation and has shifted to online research and teaching and many of its faculty are operating from work. Moreover, the company has also implemented necessary safety measures on the site to minimise the total number of individuals in every building. However, in the post-Covid-19 situation, the university is moving again to campus teaching and is also sustaining certain aspects of the remote working and blended learning. This demonstrates that the employees have been experiencing huge changes in each aspect of their working life. These changes have led to ineffective work-life balance, feeling of anxiety, exhaustion and fatigue due to enhanced screen time, and inadequate social support among the academics, researchers and other staffs of this university. The employees are not able to deal with such major changes in their work life which is significantly affecting them mentally and emotionally. The employees are feeling demotivated towards their work. This situation of the employees is also hampering the students of this university as the teachers are not able to control and manage the student’s emotional experiences. The new practices implemented by the university during the new normal is creating resistance and anger among the employees and they are concerned about their safety on the site. The employees are anxious about how their work will look over upcoming 18 months. Fear is another emotion observed in the employees due to another wave of this virus which has resulted in reduction of overall students in this university. The employees are concerned about their job security and they are lacking self-confidence. These all factors are affecting the emotional intelligence of the employees.
Emotional intelligence got significant popularity after Daniel Goleman, a science journalist published his book on emotional intelligence (Lopes, 2016). This journalist defined emotional intelligence as the combination of characteristics as well as skills which drives the overall leadership performance. His theory was established in the year 1995 (Goleman, 2020). He stated that emotional intelligence is the capability of a person to understand his feelings as well as of others in order to motivate and manage such emotions for himself and his connection with other people. The major elements of this Goleman’s emotional intelligence theory are self-awareness, motivation, empathy, self-regulation, and social skills. These factors are widely discussed below:
There are many researches in the past which has discussed about the relation between the identified factors like anxiety and emotional intelligence. All the identified factors are related to five elements of the emotional intelligence theory. The employee are doubting their capacities because they are not aware about their skills and abilities. They are not able to regulate themselves and their emotions which is affecting their capability to manage their conflict and stress and resisting to change. They are also not able to empathise their students who are going through various emotional experiences. They are also not able to share these issues effectively with the management and heads which is again hampering them to a great extent. The employees are exhausted and demotivated and are not able to maintain proper work life balance.
Stress can be considered as the feeling of the physical or emotional tension in response to the pressure or demands of person’s daily life (Anthony?McMann et al., 2017). It generally arise from any thought or event which makes a person feel nervous, exhausted, angry or frustrated (Judd et al., 2017). The general causes of such stress incorporates illness, relationships, money and work (Nowrouzi et al., 2015). Workplace stress also has unfavourable on the overall mental health of the employees with an enhanced risk of depression, burnout and anxiety (Lan et al., 2020). The employees who are stressed out at their workplace are observed to be engaged in the unhealthy behaviour like ineffective dietary patterns, drug and alcohol abuse, and cigarette smoking. Burnout can be defined as the psychological syndrome which emerges as the prolonged response to the interpersonal stressors at workplace. Burnout is related to emotional, physical or mental exhaustion which is caused by the long run stress generally as an outcome of excess personal or workplace responsibilities (Peasley et al., 2020). Burnout is related to higher level of stress, ineffective performance, less productivity, absenteeism and more illnesses (Friganovi? et al. 2019). It is seen that the organisational culture where high demands are placed on the workforce, the staff turnover is high and overall profitability is low. This burnout concept originated from psychology and Herbert Freudenberger was the first one to recognise this concept in the year 1970. Burnout is usually not regarded as distinct disorder as it overlaps with depression. Burnout might occur because of changes in the overall demand of job and work environment and also alterations in behaviour of individual and one’s approach to the work. In case this stress and burnout is not addressed properly, it can lead to unsustainable situation like dissatisfaction and exhaustion at workplace that ultimately results in ineffective performance at workplace.
There are certain factors observed in the given case study which has significantly resulted in stress and burnout situation in the Metrocity University. This University like any other organisation have to adapt to the recent changes due to the outbreak of the Covid-19. Due to significant changes in the working practices as well as overall working environment, the employees were facing several challenges and the employee of this university were also complaining about the stress and burnout issues. The issues with regards to stress and burnout in this organisation were inadequate support while operating in latest manners, and enhancement in sickness absenteeism. It is seen that proper support and guidance to the employees from the management is necessary for effectively implementing the changes and keeping the employees engaged and motivated at work. If the company is not able to provide adequate support to the employee then they feel ignored and has to bear immense stress. This stress will significantly influence their overall performance and productivity at work. Moreover, it will also influence the overall physical and mental health of the workforce in this university. The employees has also complaint about inadequate support from the organisation for addressing the overall emotional experiences of pupils during this uncertain situation. This university has not assisted the employees how to deal with the emotional traumas and other emotional experience of its students because of changes in learning style. The workforce are also feeling demotivated and exhausted.
Stress theory can be defined as the social theory which describes the observations regarding stress which a part of life (Laeeque et al., 2018). Such theories incorporates the concepts which demonstrates the classes of the phenomena to describe the observations. On of such concept is occupational or work stress. Work stress can be defined as chronic situation which can administered by determining what stressful situations at job are and the necessary steps which can be taken to deal with such situations. It is generally the psychological stress associated with a person’s job. One such model for this occupational stress is job demand-resource model (Vella & McIver, 2019). This model is derived from other two theories of occupational stress namely DCS model and resource conversation theory. As discussed earlier, this burnout was initially introduced by the Freudenberger in early 1970s who described it as the state of frustration which resulted from the professional connections which was unsuccessful to generate the expected rewards. This theory was further developed by another well-renowned person Maslach in the year 1982. He defined this burnout as the psychological syndrome which involves depersonalisation, emotional exhaustion and a minimal sense of the personal achievements which took place among several professionals who operate with other individuals in uncertain and challenging situation (Durand et al., 2019). From the point of view of Maslach, this burnout weakens the professional and attention and care which is provided to the customers of the human service experts like the nurses, lawyers, officers, police, teachers and such other eminent people (Moss, 2019). It is seen that there is no such consensus on the overall evaluation of the burnout. As per Maslach & Jackson, MBI (Maslach burnout inventory) is the most common instrument which is utilised for evaluating the burnout. There were other researchers who have confirmed that this MBI is the most effective tool for measuring the burnouts and have supported the 3 dimensions of this tool.
The sudden outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and its detrimental impact leading to the imposition of various restrictions enacted across the world has caused a significant shift in the ordinary working condition and home life of every individual (Hayes etal, 2020). Chronic professional stress, as well as the resulting burnout, has a well-documented harmful influence on both the people and organizations, especially among those helping professions such as psychiatry, nursing, social work, teaching, and even librarianship. (Wood et al, 2020). The earlier research conducted for understanding the relationship between remote work and work-life stress revealed several possible issues for those who transitioned to remote work quickly, besides explaining role stress and role overload as a result of managing work and family issues. (Duxbury, Stevenson, & Higgins, 2018); lack of apparent support from the organization impact on job performance due to the physical environment as well as the effect of subjective time experiences on workplace stress. Each of these fields of study adds to and supports views that stress is caused by “role overload.” and “spillover” resulting from home to work and work to home which results in the creation of or intensifies the work-family conflicts in the life of an individual. Faculty morale appears to be eroding as a result of attacks on their professional priorities, time pressures, the publish or perish syndrome, excessive administrative paperwork, faculty workload and what tasks faculty should work on, working with inadequately prepared students, poor reward systems, a lack of trust in their institutions’ administrative and professional support, and the erosion of their quality of life. Teachers and professors are expected to teach, counsel, research, lecture, publish, volunteer in the community, serve on committees, and develop new curricula. Overall, this has resulted in a situation that has the potential to cause severe stress and burnout among educators.
To reduce the harmful effects of workplace stress and its ultimate expression, burnout, management must take a more proactive role in assisting people in achieving better levels of performance. Once stress has been diagnosed, workplace stress management treatments, as well as effective individual stress coping techniques, must be implemented. These efforts should be focused on reducing the negative impacts of stress and humanizing a work environment that maximizes employee performance while reducing the negative consequences of job stress and burnout (Cuny.manifoldapp.org, 2022).
There were certain major themes in the given case study. The first theme was anxiety due to inadequate clarity about the way in which their work would look over 18 months or upcoming year. The second theme is fear due to 2nd wave of this virus, minimised number of the students creating job insecurity and inadequate confidence in their capacity to attain the goals for both research and teaching. The third theme is some amount of resistance and anger due to latest working practices like online research and blended learning. The forth theme is enhancing conflict and stress between their employees due to inadequate cooperation and bullying behaviour in certain cases. The last theme is burnout due to inadequate support from management for working as per latest guidelines and practices. Burnout is also in terms of enhancing sickness absence since the employees are feeling fatigue and exhausted. However, there are certain ways via which the university can deal with these identified themes of emotional intelligence and stress and burnout. The university needs to first hold a meeting with all its employees especially the ones who are facing such issues so as to understand the issues comprehensively. Secondly, the university should conduct a counselling session for all those employees who are facing such issues. This counselling session will enable the management to deal with the mental issues which the employees are facing. Moreover, the university should introduce employee support program for all the employees who need support and assistance from the organisation so as to understand their assistance needs and provide the same effectively. Furthermore, the university must enforce a proper management training program for the managers so that they are well equipped and trained to coach as well as advance employees as groups and individuals. It is seen that the ineffectively equipped management can intensify stress among the employees and enhance employee turnover. The university should also practice open communication setting so that the employees can understand the change properly and the reason behind such change. In addition to that, open and effective communication will enable the employees to share all their concerns with the heads and get the required help. The university must also hold a training program so that the employees can understand the ways in which they can manage the required work-life balance properly. These practices will help the organisation to motivate and engage the employees so that they can deal with the issues like anxiety, stress, and burnout and so on.
Conclusion:
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that the two chosen areas of concern have significantly influenced the overall performance, health and productivity of the employees working in the given university. The major theoretical framework related to each identified area was known. The major themes in the give case study were identified. Furthermore, it was also known that there were certain ways via which this university can effectively deal with the identified problems.
References:
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