One of the most common things that almost everyone around the world has to cope with throughout their adult years is having to go to work. While having a successful and productive day at work is great, having a terrible day can make us feel down and impede us from getting important work done.
Stress may be one of the main causes of these unpleasant days. Workplace stress is bad for everyone and it repeatedly makes getting work done a chore and infects everyone in the workplace.
So, to manage stress, let us get to the bottom of this by identifying the main causes of stress in the workplace. Make sure to stick until the end.
What Does Stress in the Workplace Mean?
Stress at work is a reaction people have to expectations and pressures at work that are either beyond the scope of their knowledge and skills or their capacity to handle certain situations.
Workplace stress is frequently unavoidable, and a person may view a certain level of stress as normal or even good. But when it becomes intolerable, it may result in burnout which harms an employee’s health and performance.
5 Causes of Stress in the Workplace
Thankfully, we can combat and learn to manage it by first identifying the cause. Check out which among these causes resonates with you, and make necessary adjustments to manage your work-related stress.
- Ineffective Communication
For the vast majority of workers, interacting with others is a skill that is quite important. Unfortunately, there will always be those team members who naturally communicate poorly. When these people are supervisors or are interacting with you directly, it can be very frustrating.
The objectives and phases of projects can become muddled by poor communication, which makes it harder to bring them back on track and, you can guess it, makes the job more stressful.
- Overtime Work Schedules
Perhaps the biggest source of stress at work is overtime. While working a little overtime here and there can result in projects getting finished sooner and good things for your team and even for your salary, doing so on a regular basis is likely to generate overwhelming feelings of fatigue and exhaustion, which ultimately leads to stress.
However, avoiding unnecessary overtime also results in happy, healthy teams that frequently finish projects faster and to a significantly higher standard than overworked teams who are stressed.
- Running On Unattainable Deadlines
Unattainable deadlines for tasks or projects that are assigned to people who can’t possibly finish them on time are a big contributor to extra work and, consequently, job-related stress.
Unrealistic timelines make team members fear management retaliation if they don’t finish their duties on time, which frequently results in overtime work and a great deal of stress. As a result, even if the assignment is accomplished by the arbitrary deadline, it might not be done well.
- Having No Sense of Control
According to our statistics, stress is closely correlated with the feeling of control, with many people indicating lack of control as the second biggest cause of stress at work.
When you believe you have very little control over your situation at work, tension is exacerbated. Typical workplace factors outside of our control include:
- Working methods
- Decision-making
- Performance objectives
- Conflict
Conflicts between workers or bosses are a personal issue that may be harder to handle than the worry of being laid off. Arguments over who is to blame for the failures of a project or task are an example of large conflicts that may be made worse by poor communication.
Conflict can vary from minor problems like who sits where during meetings to major ones. Therefore, addressing any communication issues is the best method to handle conflict.
Conclusion
There are other factors to consider for work-related stress aside from the top 5 causes of workplace stress outlined above. It could be the lack of support from the higher levels of the organization or the non-conducive working environment. Either way, these must be addressed so that they can be managed well by employees. Doing so will ensure that the operations of the business will run smoothly.
What is your way of managing work-related stress? Share it below!
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