Working Students and Occupational Stress
Occupational stress is the reason why one-fifth of company employees do not want to go to work. The source of stress can be anything: a demanding client, a marriage at work, a frantic pace of task changes, anger management, you trying to combine work and study and so on. The employee becomes nervous, depressed, and begins to cope worse with his duties. The final stage of stress is professional burnout when a person is completely devastated and finally tired.
To avoid a sad ending, one must be able to distinguish the first signs of professional stress and to take control of oneself or to resort to methods of smoothing out the nervous state. By the way, when I was a student I used to write my essay with EssayAssistant and it helped me to save some time for work, relaxation and so on. What exactly to do to calmly go through difficulties at work without consequences for the psyche, we have described in detail below.
Sources of occupational stress
Stress was once considered to be a purely scientific concept, but today it has become a part of everyday life. If there were no stressful situations, life would seem gray and monotonous, so stress is an integral and even necessary part of our lives. In a work atmosphere, minor stressful situations are even necessary. Thanks to them, the employee mobilizes all the forces of the body to achieve the goals set and solve current tasks promptly.
According to the World Health Organization, occupational stress is a worldwide problem today. According to statistics, workplace stress causes the dismissal of 30% of employees.
When occupational stress affects a worker, several negative factors associated with the performance of the current work affect the worker. As a result, he or she becomes stressed.
The causes of stress in the workplace may be very different. Let us list some of them:
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Work process: negative work environment, harmful or dangerous working conditions, including risk to life, uncomfortable schedule, constant deadline work, too much information.
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Career progression: very slow or, on the contrary, fast, blurred prospects, lack of professional training opportunities.
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Professional role: exaggerated requirements from the position, high responsibility for people, blurred job responsibilities, internal conflicts related to the position.
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Unfavorable social climate: difficulties in communicating with colleagues, management, conflicts between employees.
Not unimportant causes of professional stress are low pay, delays in payment of wages, lack of social package. Among other things, the peculiarities of a person's character, the level of his/her stress tolerance, and little professional experience play an important role.
Who is more susceptible to stress at work
About 20% of employees in companies are under constant stress. Specifically, 18% of employees said that they experience stress at work every day.
The results of the study also showed that female employees significantly worse tolerate workplace unpleasantness than men. While men who experience occupational stress regularly account for only 15%, women who experience negative emotions account for 21%. This is due to the natural emotionality of the female gender.
The age of the least stressful employees ranges from 25 to 45 years old. Interestingly, people outside of this age category (young specialists and workers of pre-retirement age) proved to be less susceptible to stress at work, as they relate to work difficulties much more easily. Likely, young people can more easily endure stressful situations due to age flexibility of emotional system and inexperience - they are not yet fully aware of what consequences this or that difficult situation may have.
Workers in their age, by contrast, are not as emotional by the experience that comes with the years, a kind of "hardened" nervous system and endurance. So in the risk zone, however paradoxical it may seem, are representatives of the most productive age of 25-45 years.
Surveys of employees showed the following results: 30% of people quite rarely experience occupational stress, and 8% have not experienced it at all. At the same time, one-fifth of the working population experiences daily emotional stress in the workplace. The results of the surveys were almost identical both before and during the pandemic.
The stress resistance of employees is also influenced by their professional sphere of activity. Insurers are the most at risk - 31% of employees in this field are regularly stressed at work. Such professionals as consultants, purchasers, human resources workers, specialists in hotel and restaurant business and tourism are exposed to emotional stress daily.
Workers are the least stressed in the workplace, with 62% of workers never or very rarely experiencing stress. In the sports and fitness industry, 51% suffer little or no stress, and among security personnel and resource extraction specialists, 45% each suffer little stress.
Mid-level managers and qualified employees are most exposed to occupational stress. Employees without special education or experience have an easier attitude to work problems. Top-level managers are also more stress-resistant: about 40% of them experience stress very rarely, and some do not allow themselves to waste energy on negative emotions at all.
3 stages of occupational stress
The concept of occupational stress implies a borderline state between a healthy state of the body and a painful one. An external stimulus that causes a negative state is called a stressor. The body's ambiguous response to it is the stress response. As a rule, stressors cause a negative reaction, as a consequence, physiology gets involved, which in turn allows the body to adjust to new conditions.
According to one theory, the state of stress has three stages of development:
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Anxiety. The body is influenced by some unfavorable factors. There is a feeling of fear, anxiety. Emotional tension increases sharply, reaching a critical point.
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Resistance. The body starts to fight. It switches on its internal resources, thereby resisting the stress factor. The body adapts, adapts to the changing circumstances.
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Exhaustion. If no action is taken to address the problem, the condition becomes chronic. The body's resources are running out, causing health difficulties, even serious illnesses.
Stressors provoke changes both emotionally and physically: there are changes in the way you feel, think, and behave.
