Steps Towards Prevention
Low morale, health and job complaints, and employee turnover often provide the first signs of job stress.
But sometimes there are no clues, especially if employees are fearful of losing their jobs. Lack of obvious or widespread signs is not a good reason to dismiss concerns about job stress or minimize the importance of a prevention program.
Step 1 - Identify and Analyze the Problem
The best method to explore the scope and source of a suspected stress problem in an organization depends partly on the size of the organization and the available resources. Group discussions among managers, labor representatives, and employees can provide rich sources of information.
- Informal group discussions may be all that is needed to track down and remedy stress problems in a small company.
- In a larger organization, formal group meetings can be used to help design formal surveys for gathering input about stressful job conditions from large numbers of employees.
Regardless of the method used to collect data, information should be obtained about employee perceptions of their job conditions and perceived levels of stress, health, and job satisfaction.
Objective measures such as absenteeism, illness and turnover rates, or performance problems can also be examined to gauge the presence and scope of job stress. However, these measures are only rough indicators of job stress at best.
Data from discussions, surveys, and other sources should be summarized and analyzed to answer questions about the location of a stress problem and job conditions that may be responsible. For example, are problems present throughout the organization or confined to single departments or specific jobs?
Survey design, data analysis, and other aspects of a stress prevention program may require the help of experts from a local university or consulting firm. However, overall authority for the prevention program should remain in the organization.
Here are some ways to obtain information from employees:
- Hold group discussions with employees.
- Design an employee survey.
- Measure employee perceptions of job conditions, stress, health, and satisfaction.
- Collect objective data.
- Analyze data to identify problem locations and stressful job conditions.
Knowledge Check Choose the best answer for the question.
3-9. Which of the following objective measures is considered only a rough indicator of job stress at best?
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