Stress

Stress

Stress in Organizations

As the pace at which our society operates increases, the pressures for every member of society to keep up with this pace also increase. Many of these pressures affect people through their jobs. Stress has become the "buzzword" that many people use to describe the impact that these pressures cause. In the short-term, stress can enable individuals to meet high levels of demand or pending deadlines. Prolonged stress, however, has been shown to cause illness and other conditions that can have detrimental effects on an employer's workforce. As Leon Warshaw noted in 1979 in his book on dealing with stress in the workplace: "Stress affects personality, modifying our perceptions, feelings, attitudes and behavior. And it reaches beyond its immediate victims to affect the political, social and work organizations whose activities they direct and carry out." In other words, the increasing rate of stress at work has wide-ranging effects—absenteeism, impaired teamwork, workplace violence, decreased efficiency, increased rates of physical and mental illness, employee burnout, risk of discrimination and growth in early retirement.

In his 2004 article "Workplace Stress Sucks $300 Billion Annually from Corporate Profits," Ron Ball cites a recent study by Ravi Tangi that establishes a formula for measuring the "hard costs" of stress on business as whole.

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