765 Managing Workplace Stress

Preventing Job Stress

Stress Management

Theresa's company is providing stress management training and an employee assistance program (EAP) to improve the ability of workers to cope with difficult work situations. Nearly one-half of large companies in the United States provide some type of stress management training for their workforces.

Stress management programs teach workers about the nature and sources of stress, the effects of stress on health, and personal skills to reduce stress (For example, time management or relaxation exercises. Typically, EAPs provide individual counseling for employees with both work and personal problems).

Stress management training may rapidly reduce stress symptoms such as anxiety and sleep disturbances; it also has the advantage of being inexpensive and easy to implement. However, stress management programs have two major disadvantages:

• The beneficial effects on stress symptoms are often short-lived.
• They often ignore important root causes of stress because they focus on the worker and not the environment.

Organizational Change

In contrast to stress management training and EAP programs, David's company is trying to reduce job stress by bringing in a consultant to recommend ways to improve working conditions.

This approach is the most direct way to reduce stress at work. It involves the identification of stressful aspects of work (e.g., excessive workload, conflicting expectations) and the design of strategies to reduce or eliminate the identified stressors. The advantage of this approach is it deals directly with the root causes of stress at work.

Knowledge Check Choose the best answer for the question.