Managing Stress and Work-Life Balance

Managing Stress and Work-Life Balance

• This subject is about managing stress and maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
• Success criteria include evaluating the impact of personal stress on performance, describing factors contributing to stress, and analyzing stress reduction techniques.
• Stress is defined as an adaptive response to stimuli that are excessively psychological or physical.
• The perception of a demand as excessive triggers stress; what is excessive for one person may be tolerable for another.
• Stressors originate from work, personal life, and non-work situations.
• Stressors can affect work attitudes, behavior, performance, and health.
• Individual differences such as Type A and Type B personalities affect how individuals experience and react to stress.
• Type A personalities are competitive, devoted to work, and have a strong sense of time urgency, often aggressive, impatient, and highly work-oriented.
• Type B personalities are less competitive, devoted to work, with less time urgency, exhibiting a more balanced and relaxed approach to life.
• Common sense expectation that Type A individuals are more successful is inaccurate. Type B individuals may have better interpersonal skills and can avoid alienating themselves from others.
• Individuals tend toward one personality type or the other but are not solely one or the other.
• Four Corners exercise was suggested as a way for people to identify their type.
• Consequences of stress can be both constructive and destructive.
• Constructive stress acts as a positive influence, energizing, and enhancing performance.
• Destructive stress acts as a negative influence, breaking down a person's physical and mental systems, potentially leading to burnout and workplace rage.
• Intense or long-term stress can lead to job burnout.
• Job burnout includes Exhaustion (lack of energy, emotional distress, bad attitude, poor self-esteem), Lower Performance, Lower Satisfaction, Workplace rage, Personal problems. and Poor health.
• Stress can have individual, organizational, and burnout consequences.
• Individual consequences include Behavioral (smoking, alcohol and drug abuse, violence, eating disorders), psychological (depression, sleep disorders, family problems), and Medical (heart disease, stroke, headaches, backaches, ulcers, stomach/skin problems).
• Organizational consequences include poor performance, withdrawal (absenteeism, quitting), and negative attitudes (job dissatisfaction, low morale).
• Burnout is a feeling of exhaustion from too much pressure and few sources of fulfillment. Its dimensions are Emotional exhaustion, Depersonalization, and Diminished personal accomplishment.

Common Causes of Stress

• Stress sources can be categorized as organizational and life-related.
• Organizational stressors are workplace factors that cause stress. Four main categories of organizational stressors are Task Demands (type of occupation, security, overload), Physical Demands (temperature, strenuous labor, office design), Role Demands (ambiguity, conflict, role overload), and Interpersonal Demands (group pressures, leadership style, interpersonal conflict).
• Life stressors are factors and events that happen outside the workplace in personal life. The two general types are Life Change, and Life Trauma.

Individual Coping Strategies

• Exercise can reduce stress and improve self-confidence and optimism.
• Relaxation techniques, such as vacations and regular breaks, can manage stress.
• Effective time management involves creating daily tasks list organized by critical, important and optional tasks.
• Role Management can help avoid stress related to overload, ambiguity, and conflict. This can be done by seeking clarification and saying no.
• Support groups, like family and friends, provide a channel for conversation and shared time.

Organizational Coping Strategies

• Organizations need to work with employees to manage stress.
• Organizations are responsible for at least a portion of stress creation, hence should assist in reducing stress.
• This helps employees function more effectively at work.

Personal Wellness

• Personal wellness is the pursuit of personal and mental potential through health-promotion programs.
• Personal wellness is a form of preventative stress management.
• Engaging in preventative stress management can help individuals effectively cope with stress.