Stress Management Trends And Growth

Types of Stress

Discuss about the Stress Management Trends and Growth.

Stress is an emotional feeling of an individual that appears when an individual is faced with some problem or demand (Girdano et al. 2012). Stress put effect on the physical and psychological condition of a person and might result in mental, physical and emotional strain.

Acute stress: The most common form of stress that comes from the intense pressure and demand at work. This type of stress is most common among people at the work place when the employees are told to focus on their work (Johnson et al. 2013).

Episodic acute stress: The stress that occurred among people due to excessive worrying on a particular issue (Wolever et al. 2012). At times, employees have to deal with certain projects that last for a long time. In those projects, episodic acute stress occurs easily.

Chronic stress: The stress that an employee might have to face with the fear of losing the job (Gorman et al. 2012). This type of fear is common among the employees due to intense competition and replacement of employees at work.

The aim of the paper is to understand the level of stress at work. JP Morgan Chase has been selected for the case study of the paper. An evaluation of the various causes of stress and the symptoms of the stress at the Organization will be carried on. On the basis of the finding, certain solutions will be proposed to reduce the level of stress and the role of the HR management in managing the level of stress at workplace.

Stress caused to an employee at the organization can be broadly divided under two categories. These are:

The stress that is caused due to increasing responsibility or pressure of work at the workplace on the employees is considered to be organizational stress factors (Rose et al. 2013). A number of reasons can be stated as under which causes stress at an organization.

Task demand: It might happen that the responsibility on an employee is greater than the capability of the person. In many organizations, the work has become target based and every employee has to meet target. However, for few, meeting this target might create stress (Wolever et al. 2012). The situation at JP Morgan Chase is such that the employees are expected to be flexible to work at different positions. Sometimes, the responsibility might not match with the personality and trait of the person performing the task (Wolever et al. 2012).

Symptoms of Stress

Role demand: Every employee is given different roles and responsibilities to perform. An employee is usually faced with stress when the person is not able to perform his or her responsibility effectively (Lottrup et al. 2012). This is when, the person get pressurized from the management that increases the stress.

Interpersonal demand: People at the higher authority often have to perform more responsibility at the workplace. Expectation automatically increases on those groups of people and it demand for more work pressure that ultimately results in stress (Bhui et al. 2016).

Organizational Structure: As per the organizational structure, certain vital responsibilities rest on few persons and they have to deal with various types of circumstances. This is when this group of people have to suffer utter distress (Shaw et al. 2012). The organizational structure is rigid and the employees are supposed to follow the instruction of these people at higher position.

Organizational leadership: Leaders have to perform lots of responsibilities in managing people under them. At many times, there occur problems due to misunderstanding or mismatching attitude with the leaders and the team members (Jenny et al. 2015). This automatically creates stress on the leader. No such issues have been evident in terms of bad leadership in the organization at JP Morgan Chase.

Apart from the issues at the organization, a person might suffer from stress due to various personal factors. These factors are:

Family Issues: As commented by Berman et al. (2015), that apart from the organizational issues, a person has to face with family issues as well. Any issue related to family problems is a major reason of stress for a person that at times reflects on the work of the person as well.

Economic Problems: Economic and financial problems are common among people that creates stress. Life activities are largely depended on money. When a person lacks sufficient money, the person develops stress (Cooper 2015). This stress can directly reflect in the performance of the person at the workplace. The employees that get less salary are more often to fall under this category of stress.

Inherent Personality Characteristics: Some people have certain characteristics of inheriting stress. These people suffer from ultimate stress levels even for minute issues. For those people, taking stress is common (Shaw et al. 2012). However, at many times, due to this nature of people, the Organization as a whole has to suffer.

These are some of the reasons behind the creation of stress in an individual but it has to be understood that stress is a kind of emotion that might arise at any point of time due to any condition. The particular organization should have the basic responsibility of taking care of the situation if the employees are found to suffer due to them.

Organizational and Personal Factors That Contribute to Stress

The harmful emotional and physical responses that happen to a person when there is a conflict between job demand and the performance of the employee at the workplace results in workplace stress. A number of symptoms are common among the employees when they suffer from stress. These symptoms can be broadly categorised into three categories. These are:

Physiological symptoms: These symptoms are observed in a person in terms of certain changes in the traits and characteristics of the person. These include, sudden increase of blood pressure, headache and to adverse situation increase of the pulse rate of the person under stress (Bhui et al. 2016).

Psychological symptoms: Increased level of stress also leads to certain psychological symptoms as well. These include increased level of tension, anxiety and boredom. The person might suffer procrastination that ultimately leads to the decrease of productivity of the person (Abraham 2013).

Behavioural symptoms: a number of behavioural symptoms can also be observed on the person suffering from stress. These behavioural stress symptoms include increased smoking or other addictive substances like increasing consumption of alcohol.

At times, it is often found that due to increased level of stress, the person suffering from stress is often found to fight with various situations like isolation from self or conflicting with others at work or personal place (Houghton et al. 2012). The stress sometimes comes out by the means of frustration, irritability, anger, powerlessness and restlessness. However, these symptoms are often expression less but requires great effort to deal with the stressful situation. It completely depends on the part of the victim to understand the problems and fight against the odd situations. It is only when the person is able to combat with the situation the level of stress can be reduced (Bhui et al. 2016).

The above stated symptoms are common among the employees of various organizations. JP Morgan Chase is also a well established and reputed company in its industry. The company puts pressure on the employees to fight against the increasing competition in the market. It is by the means of increasing the productivity of the organization, the employees are often over stressed with huge responsibilities and duties.

As stated by Houghton et al. (2012), in order to keep the functionalities and operations of the organization keep going on in a right way, it falls under the responsibility of the HR department of the organization to tackle the situation and manage to reduce stress.

Reducing Stress

Human resource staff should present on the front line for dealing with situations of stress related to work. In fact, it falls under the responsibility of the staff of the HR department to come up with different policies and strategies to help employees fight against stress. Some of the steps that the HR of the organization might undertake to fight against the stress caused among the employees can be stated here:

Matching individual to their jobs: One of the crucial jobs of the HR is to understand the right person for the right job. If the right person is given the right duty to perform, then there will be definitely less stress among the people working in the organization (Houghton et al. 2012).

Clarifying expectations: At times, it happens that the expectation of the employees is very high in regards to the job and responsibility that they have to perform (Michington 2014). It is important to clarify those expectation and as per the necessity, fulfilling the expectation of the employees. At JP Morgan, the organization has a number of retention and motivation plans that helps the employees to meet their expectation.

Redesigning jobs: As commented by Bhui et al. (2016), sometimes the employees should be given different jobs to perform at the organization. For companies like JP Morgan Chase, this could be an easy way to combat against the stress suffered by the employees due to their job role. At the Bank, the job responsibilities are often shuffled and reshuffled that the employees do not face boredom while doing their jobs.

Offering employee involvement and participation: Another way by which employees can be motivated and they can be made stress relieved is by offering them involvement and participation with the higher authority and major decision making functionalities of the organization (Michington 2014). At JP Morgan Chase, it has been observed that the employees working with the company for a long time are often involved with the management decision. This way they are motivated and stress is reduced (Frost 2014).

Wellness Programs: Every organization should run wellness programs as well to fight against any situation that leads to creation or increase of stress among the people at the organization. Such programs might include offering office parties at a regular interval that help to reduce the regular burden and stress of the employee (Romious et al. 2016). The management of JP Morgan

Role of HR Department in Helping Employees Cope with Stress

EAPs: Employee Associate Programs are also effective ways to fight against increasing stress among the employees or people at work. There are a number of EAPs that are designed to improve the performance of the employees at JP Morgan Chase (Michington 2014).

Conclusion:

The report highlighted the different types of stress and the reason behind the creation of stress among the employees of an organization. A case study of JP Morgan Chase, the bank has been considered as the case study for the report. It has been observed that there are various types of stress that occurs on an individual due to some activities at work. A number of situations have been identified that reduces the stress on the employees at the organization. It falls under the responsibility of the HR department of the organization to understand the situation that creates stress among the people and think of better ways to fight against those situations.

It has also been found that the HR management of JP Morgan think of the employees at the workplace and often make efforts to reduce the stress of the employees. There are a number of retention policies and strategies as well that are designed separately to help the employees to overcome any kind of situation that causes stress. By the end, it can be said that in an organization, there will be a number of situations that will create distress for the people working in the organization that will ultimately result in creation of the stress but it should be the prime responsibility of the HR department to understand the situation and think of better ways to improve the condition of the workplace.

References:

Abraham, S., 2013. Workplace Stress and Its Management.

Berman, E.M., Bowman, J.S., West, J.P. and Van Wart, M.R., 2015. Human resource management in public service: Paradoxes, processes, and problems. Sage Publications.

Bhui, K., Dinos, S., Galant-Miecznikowska, M., de Jongh, B. and Stansfeld, S., 2016. Perceptions of work stress causes and effective interventions in employees working in public, private and non-governmental organisations: a qualitative study. BJPsych Bull, pp.pb-bp.

Cooper, C.L., 2015. Stress Management Interventions: Reflections. In Derailed Organizational Interventions for Stress and Well-Being (pp. 271-273). Springer Netherlands.

Frost, J.G.L., 2014. EEOC v. JP Morgan Chase Bank, NA.

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