Stress Management in IT Company

Stress plays an unavoidable part in each one’s life several factors influencing stress hampers
our day-to-day lifestyle. For instance, a student faces exam stress, an employee faces work-overload
stress and elderly faces poor health stress so thus it becomes indispensable to learn stress
management with this note I Mylipilli Mahesh came along with my team members to give a
PowerPoint presentation on the topic of Stress Management. So lets have a look on what are the
topics we will be discussing in this presentation are: -

 What is Meaning of stress?

 What are the types of Stress?
 What are the Causes of Stress?
 What are the sources of Stress?
 What are the Effects of Stress?
 How to Manage Stress?

The term “Stress” means an imbalance between the mental and emotional levels of an individual.
Stress is our mind and body’s reaction to real or imagined threat event or change. It is an adaptive
response to an external situation that results in physical, psychological, or behavioural deviations for
Organizational Participants. The Physical or Psychological demands from the environment that cause
stress are called as “stressors.”

Let’s understand what are the two types of stress. Broadly if I classify stress, it can be classified as a
positive stress which is also known as eustress and negative stress is known as distress. Let’s start
with the first one i.e., positive stress.

Eustress or positive stress has the following characteristics: -

 It motivates and focuses our energy.

 It is usually short term.
 It is perceived within our coping ability.
 It makes us feel excited and it improves our performance.
 The result of positive stress or eustress are: -
 It enables concentration
 Increases our performance
 And it energises into motion.

Where as on the contrary if I talk about a negative stress or distress, it has following characteristics
such as: -

 It causes Anxiety or concern

 It can be short-term or long-term
 It is outside our coping abilities
 It makes us feel unpleasant.
 It decreases our performance and can lead to Mental and Physical problems.
Now let us move on to what are different cause of stress in an organization. From an organization
point of view the different causes of stress can be: -

 Poor working conditions

 Work overload
 Occupational demand
 Role conflict
 Rotating work shifts
 Career Concerns

How an Individual experiences stress depends on…?

 The persons perception of the situation

 The persons experience and
 The presence or absence of social support

There are various symptoms of stress which vary from psychological in the firm of anxiety and
depression and in the physical forms of Headache, insomnia, and bowel problems. In the Severus
forms stress can lead to hypertension, heart attack and mental breakdown. Now a days it is also
being blamed for causing cancer.

Moving onto the different sources of stress: -

 Stressors originate at Individual level, group level, Organizational level and at extra-
organizational level.

Let’s begin with the first i.e., Individual Level stressors

These relate directly to a person’s personality and job responsibility. The most common
individual level stressors are type of personality, role overload, role conflict and role Ambiguity. I
take example of personality to make this concept clearer.

Type A personality is more stress prone as it is associated with the following behavioural
patterns. Type A people always move, walk, and eat rapidly. They feel impatient with the pace of
things, hurries others, dislikes waiting. Type A people does several things simultaneously. They
feel guilty when they are relaxing. Type A people schedule more and more number of work in
less number of time. They do not have time to enjoy life. Type A personalities in this sense brings
stress on themselves.

Moving on type B personality on the other hand they are less stress prone because of the
following typical characteristic which they have. Type B personality is nor concerned about time.
They are patient, they do not brag, play to fun and not to win. They relax without feeling guilty.
They have no pressing deadlines. They are Mild-Mannered and they never are in a hurry.

Now coming to second level of stressors is group level stressors. The group level stressors are
caused by group dynamics and managerial behaviours. Mangers create stress for employees by:
-

 Exhibiting inconsistent behaviours

 Failing to provide support
 Showing lack of concern
 Providing inadequate direction
 Creating a high productivity environment
 Focussing on a Negative while ignoring while the good performances.

Coming to the third one i.e., organisational stressor. Organizational stressors effect many
employees Organizational climate is the prime example of understanding the organizational
stressor. a high-pressure environment that places chronic work demand on employees fuels the
stress response.in contrast when we talk about a participative management style it reduces the
organizational level stressor who are lightening, loud noise, improper placement of furniture and
a dirty and smelly environment can create stress. Excessive rules and lack of participation in
decision that effect an employee are an example of structural variables that might be potential
stressors. Organizational leadership represents the Managerial style of some of the
Organizations senior executives. Some cheap executives create a cultures characterized by
tension, fear and anxiety. They establish unrealistic pressures to perform in the short run, which
imposes the excessively tight control.

Coming to the fourth one i.e., extra organizational stressors extra organizational stressors are
caused by factors outside the organization. For instance, conflicts associated with one’s own
career family life are usually stressful. Personal life certainly impacts one’s attitudes and
performance at work. Death of a spouse, injury to one’ child, failure in school or at work other
life events can be stressful.

Now lets talk about what are the effects of stress. Stress has behavioural,

Cognitive, psychological consequences. Research studies indicate that stress is negatively related
to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and performance where as it is positively related
to turnovers. To understand effects of stress we will be talking about of very interesting topic
i.e., burnouts. Burnout is a trouble some outcome of stress. It is a state of mind resulting from
prolonged exposure to emotional stress. It manifests through emotional exhaustion and a
combination of negative attitudes. Burnout occurred due to prolonged exposure to stress and
that to in different phases. The key phases of burnouts are emotional exhaustion,
depersonalization and feeling a lack of accomplishment. Emotional exhaustion is due to
combination of personal job and organization stressors. People who expect a lot from
themselves in a n organization in which they work ten to create more internal stress, which in
turn leads to emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion is fuelled by having too much work to
do by role conflict and by the type of interpersonal interaction encountered at work. Overtime
emotional exhaustion leads to depersonalization which is the state of psychological withdrawing
one job. Which results in the feeling of being unhappy, unappreciated, ineffective, or
inadequate. The addictive of these three phases is a host of negative attitudinal and behavioural
outcomes.

Now let’s discuss how to manage the stress?

Stress management strategies may be categorized into two; -

Individual strategies and organizational strategies. let’s start with the first one i.e., the individual
strategies the first step in the managing stress is to understand and that the individual is
exposed to stressors. Stress cannot be manged unless we know that what has caused stress and
how these causes are affecting us psychologically, physiologically, and organizationally.
Individual strategies to cope put the stress are music relaxation, bio feedback, meditation,
cognitive restructuring and time management.
Coming to the organizational strategies, the organizational strategies helps to reduce the
harmful effects of stress in three ways it helps to identify and then modify or eliminate work
stressors it helps the employees to modify their perception and understand the work stress. It
helps the employees to cope up effectively and efficiently with the outcome of the stress.
Organizational strategies aimed at removing stress often include in the improvement of the
physical environment, job redesign to remove stressors, structural reorganization, changes in
work schedules more flexible hours, greater level of employee participation, workshops dealing
with role clarity and role analysis.

Now we talked about stress management now we talk about what is the relevance of stress
management having in any organization. If you have a proper stress managing techniques I your
organization it helps to you to improve your ability to motivate employees. It reduces the
possibilities of workplace conflicts.it strengthens the communication process. It helps in smooth
running of projects and it improves your ability to develop the team work and team building.
Stress management programs are built to improve professional ads well as personal life.
Therefore, the corporate sector is taking an initiative to run these campaigns for their
employees.