TOPIC 7 : STRESS

Question 1

Two recent graduates join the same organization. Both are recruited as marketing executives.

Both work long hours and have tight deadlines to complete their assignments. They are under

constant pressure to complete projects and meeting deadlines. One executive is increasingly

feeling fatigue and despondent and has taken several days sick leave. The other is getting the

work done and seems to enjoy the challenges.

a) Use your knowledge on stress to explain why these two executives are reacting

differently to their jobs.

b) How can organization help its employees in coping with stress?

Answer

a) Stress is an adaptive response to a situation that is perceived as challenging or threatening

to the person’s well – being.

Because of unique personal characteristics, people have different stress experiences when expose

to the same stressor. Stressor can be work stressor, interpersonal, role related, task control,

organization or physical environment or there is no work stress known as nonwork stressor.

Consequences of stress can be physiological, behavioral, and psychological.

Job-related factors such as overwork, relocation, and problems with customers may put

the person under stress. External, environment factors can lead to job stress. These include work

schedule, pace of work, job security, route to and from work, and the number and nature of

customers or clients. Even noise, including people talking and telephones ringing, contributes to

stress.

No two persons react to the job in the same way, because personal factors also influence

stress. For example in this case can be type a personalities, people who are workaholics and who

feel driven to always be on time and meet deadlines, normally place themselves under greater

stress than do others. Similarly your tolerance for ambiguity, patience, self-esteem, health and

exercise, and work and sleep patterns can also affect how react to stress. Non-job problems like

divorce or family quarrel may add to job stress.

Other reason for this is that people have different threshold levels of resistance to the

stressor. Those who exercise and have healthy lifestyles have a larger store of energy to cope

with high stress levels. For the other reason for different stress responses is that people use

different coping strategies, some of which are more effective than others. Research suggests that

employees who try to ignore or deny the existence of a suffer more in the long run than those

who try to find ways to weaken the stressor and seek social support.

Then, reason why some people experience less stress than others is that some have higher

resilience. Resilience is the capability of individuals to cope successfully in the face of

significant change, adversity, or risk. Those with high resilience are able to withstand adversity

as well as recover more quickly from it.

Resilient people possess personality traits such as high extroversion and low neuroticism

that generate more optimism, confidence, and positive emotions. Resilience also involves

specific competencies and behaviors for responding and adapting more effectively to stressors.

Research indicates that resilient people have higher emotional intelligence and good problem-

solving skills. They also apply productive coping strategies, such as analyzing the sources of

stress and finding ways to neutralize these problems.

Another personal characteristic is a workaholism, which is attracts more stressors and

weakens the capacity to cope with them. The classic workaholic or also called work addict, is

highly involved in work, feels compelled or driven to work because of inner pressures, and has a

low enjoyment of work. Workaholics are compulsive and preoccupied with work, often to the

exclusion and detriment of personal health, intimate relationships, and family. Classic

workaholics are more prone to job stress and have significantly higher scores on depression,

anxiety, and anger.

Low task control increases employee exposure to the risk of burnout because they face

high workloads without the ability to adjust the pace of the load to their own energy, attention

span, and other resources. Furthermore, the degree to which low task control is a stressor

increases with the burden of responsibility the employee must carry. Assembly-line workers

have low task control, but their stress can be fairly low if their level of responsibility is also low.

In contrast, sports coaches are under immense pressure to win games, yet they have little control

over what happens on the playing field.

Job stress affects both of the employee and the company. To the employee, stress cause

anxiety, depression, anger, and headaches. For the company, stress affects job performance,

increases absenteeism and health care costs.

b) There are several ways to reduce stress. These range from commonsense remedies such

as getting more sleep and eating better to more exotic remedies like biofeedback and meditation.

Finding a more suitable job, getting counseling, and planning and organizing each day’s

activities are other sensible responses.

Some of the more common actions involve assigning employees to jobs that match their

skills and preferences, reducing excessive workplace noise, having a complaint system and

taking corrective action against harassment, and giving employees more control over the work

process.

Another important way that companies can remove stressor is by facilitating better work-

life balance. Work-life balance initiatives minimize conflict between the employee’s work and

nonwork demands. Five of the most common work-life balance initiatives are flexible and

limited work time, job sharing, telecommuting, personal leave, and child care support.

Flexible and limited work time.

An important way to improve work-life balance is limiting the number of hours that employees

are expected to work and giving them flexibility in scheduling those hours. In this case,

employee should schedule their timeline to complete their assignments within time given.

Otherwise, he/she will face the stress if fail to complete the assignment within the period.

Jobs sharing.

Job sharing splits a career position between two people so that they experience less time-based

stress between work and family. They typically work different parts of the week, with some

overlapping work time in the weekly schedule to coordinate activities. This strategy gives

employees the ability to work part-time in jobs that are naturally designed for full-time

responsibilities. For this case, the two graduates should work together in terms of sharing a job.

With cooperation with each other able to reduce stress and can complete the job within time

given.

Telecommuting

Telecommuting reduces the time and stress of commuting to work and makes it easier to fulfill

family obligations. Research suggests that telecommuters tend to experience better work-life

balance. However, telecommuting may increase stress for those who crave social interaction and

who lack the space and privacy necessary to work at home.

Personal leave

Employers with strong work-life values offer extended maternity, paternity, and personal leave

for employees to care for a new family or take advantage of a personal experience. The U.S

Family and Medical Leave Act gives expecting mothers and anyone considered to have an illness

12 weeks of unpaid job-protected leave. However, most countries provide 12 to 16 weeks of paid

leave, with some offering one year or more of fully or partially paid maternity leave.

Child care support

According to one estimate, almost one-quarter of large American companies provide on-site or

subsidized child care facilities. Child care support reduces stress because employees are less

rushed to drop off children and less worried during the day about how well their children are

doing.

We also able to control the consequences of stress through several programs. The

programs that would control the consequences of stress experienced by this employee is change

stress perceptions. Employees experience has different stress level because they have different

levels of resilience, including self-confidence and optimism. For this employee situation, he/she

can improve optimism and create positive emotions by taking some psychological weight off the

situation. Consequently, another way to manage stress is to help this employee improve their

self-concept so that job challengers are not perceived as threatening even though he/she work

long hours and have tight deadlines to complete the assignment. Otherwise, with set personal

goal setting and self-reinforcement can also reduce the stress that people experience when they

enter new work settings.

The other programs that would control the consequences of stress by helping employee

moderate his/her breathing and heart rate, muscle tension, and stomach acidity. Through the

physical exercise able to reduce the physiological consequences of stress. Research has found

that various forms of meditation reduce anxiety, reduce blood pressure and muscle tension, and

moderate breathing and heart rate. This employee also can join the fitness and relaxation or

meditation, or wellness programs can help control the consequences of stress. For example

annual on-site checkups and meditation classes or counseling services.

Behavioral also would control the consequences of stress. Employee emotions, attitudes,

and stress influence employee behavior mainly through motivation. This employee can have a

motivation to avoid him/her from excessive stress and able to make them love and enjoy with

their jobs. This is known as receive a social support. Social support also provides information to

help the person interpret, comprehend, and possibly remove the stressor.

In his book Stress and the Manager, Dr. Karl Albrecht suggests the following ways to

reduce job stress.

Build rewarding, pleasant, cooperative relationships with colleagues and employees.

Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

Build an especially effective and supportive relationship with your boss.

Negotiate with your boss for realistic deadlines on important projects.

Learn as much as you can about upcoming events and get as much lead time as you can

to prepare for them.

Find time every day for detachment and relaxation.

Talk a walk around the office to keep your body refreshed and alert.

Find ways to reduce unnecessary noise.

Reduce the amount of trivia in your job, delegate routine work whenever possible.

Limit interruptions.

Don’t put off dealing with distasteful problems.

Make a constructive “worry list”. That includes solutions for each problems.

Human Resource (HR) specialists and supervisors can also play a role in reducing job stress.

Fair treatment and support are two possible actions. Employees expect to be fairly rewarded for

good performance. Being healthy enables employees to resist stress. Companies can help by

introducing fitness programs, monitoring the quality of food served at the cafeteria, and

encouraging a healthy lifestyle.

TOPIC 5: MOTIVATION

Question 1

Use all three components of expectancy theory to explain why some employees are motivated to

show up for work during a snowstorm whereas others don’t make any effort to leave their home.

Answer

Expectancy theory on the other hand, offers an elegant model based on rational logic to

predict the chosen direction, level, and persistence of motivation. Essentially, the theory states

that work effort is directed toward behaviors that people believe will lead to desired outcomes. In

other words, we are motivated to achieve the goals with the highest expected payoff.

The expectancy theory is the motivation to expend effort to do something is determined

by three basic individual perceptions:

Effort will lead to performance. (E-to-P expectancy)

Rewards are attached to performance. (P-to-O expectancy)

Outcomes, or rewards, are valuable to the individual. (outcome valence)

Components of the Expectancy Model:

Expectancy

The belief that a particular level of effort will be followed by a particular level of

performance.

Instrumentality

The probability assigned by the individual that a specific level of achieved task

performance will lead to various work outcomes.

Valence

The value or importance that the individual attaches to various work outcomes

(rewards).

Increasing E-to-P Expectancies

E-to-P expectancies are influenced by the individual’s belief that he or she can

successfully complete the task. Some companies increase this can-do attitude by assuring

employees that they have the necessary competencies, clear role perceptions, and necessary

resources to reach the desired levels of performance. Matching employees to jobs on the basis of

their abilities and clearly communicating the tasks required for the job are important parts of this

process. Similarly E-to-P expectancies are learned so behavioral modeling and supportive

feedback (positive reinforcement) typically strengthen the individual’s belief that he or she is

able to perform the task.

With the highest motivation and good behavior in terms of complete the task, employee

will have responsibilities to the company and normally willing to contribute to the company.

Employee will take an advantage or make as a reason why they not supposed to go to the work

during a snowstorm. This is show their attitude how they show their effort and responsible to the

company.

Increasing P-to-O Expectancies

The most obvious ways to improve P-to-O expectancies are to measure employee

performance accurately and distribute more valued rewards to those with higher job

performance. P-to-O expectancies are perceptions, so employees need to know that higher

performance will result in higher rewards, and they need to know how that connection occurs.

Companies meet these needs by explaining how specific rewards are connected to specific past

performance and by using examples, anecdotes, and public ceremonies to illustrate when

behavior has been rewarded.

For this situation, if company has provide the rewards for those employees who are

provide good performance, employees will motivated to give the best commitment for

companies. Even though working during a snowstorm, employees still motivated to commit with

the company as their feel company has appreciate their effort or contribute to company.

Otherwise, employee will not motivated if their feel that there is no reward if their willing to

work in a bad condition like work during a snowstorm.

Increasing Outcome Valences

Everyone has unique values and experiences, which translate into different needs at

different times. Consequently, individualizing rather than standardizing rewards and other

performance outcomes is an important ingredient in employee motivation. At the same time,

leaders need to watch for countervalent outcomes. Consequences with negative valences that

reduce rather than enhance employee motivation. For example, peer pressure may cause some

employees to perform their jobs at the minimum standard even though formal rewards and the

job itself would otherwise motivate them to perform at higher levels.

Overall, expectancy theory is a useful model that explains how people rationally figure

out the best direction, intensity, and persistence of effort. It has been tested in a variety of

situations and predicts employee motivation in different cultures. However, critics have a

number of concerns with how the theory has been tested. Another concern is that expectancy

theory ignores the central role of emotion in employee effort and behavior. The valence element

of expectancy theory captures some of this emotional process but only peripherally.