Stress and Resilience in the Work Place - Essay Sample

Introduction

It remains vital to cope with stress and hostile circumstances. In case the work environment puts pressure on an individual's mental status, then resilience remains just part of the solution (Shatte et al., 2017). People spend almost a third of their day working, so they need to immediately discover the causes of stress and put measures in place to address such problems. Although resilience alone cannot adequately solve stress at the workplace, it remains an essential skill to possess. Strength refers to the capacity to cope with difficult situations and overcome challenges (Shatte et al., 2017). Employees can deploy this approach to handle any hurdle in a work environment, such as frustrating workmates and stressful workload. Studies have shown that individuals with greater resilience can cope with stress, which remains a risk aspect of disorders like depression and anxiety (Shatte et al., 2017). The purpose of this paper involves an examination of stress and resilience in the workplace.

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Stressors (Issues Causing Stress), Preferably at Work

Stress involves the link between people and the environment that those individuals consider significant to their wellness and how people's resources get surpassed or taxed. Employment-associated pressure entails a design of responses when personnel get presented with employment burdens not connected to their skills, knowledge, or capacities and defy their competency to cope (Bhui et al., 2016). Stressors refer to reasons for experiencing stress. Some of the issues contributing to an unfavorable work environment include negative employment culture where workers do not receive support or motivation (Bhui et al., 2016). Other causes involve heavy workload, stressful tasks, and unrealistic deadlines.

Poor communication, unclear job responsibilities and roles, discrimination, and lack of support for the mentally ill employees can lead to stress. These causes can get categorized as situational factors, such as friends, policy, control, resources, organizational support, climate, equity, and role clarity (Bhui et al., 2016). Another category involves primary appraisal like threats or challenges in the workplace. Moreover, individual differences can cause stress, such as personality, age, gender, experience, skills, IQ, and ability. Lastly, demands like overload, underload, and work patterns represent some causes of stress in the work environment (Bhui et al., 2016).

Analysis of the Consequences of Stress and How to Cope With Them

In situations that stress does not get managed and the people and companies suffer, some of the consequences on people may include physical, emotional, intellectual, and behavioral effects (Hassard et al., 2018). The physical repercussions involve sleep disturbances, gastrointestinal upset, headaches, and increased blood pressure (a cardiac disorder). Emotional consequences may include depression, labile, anxiety, and irritable feelings. Behavioral outcomes of stress may entail substance abuse, inappropriate conduct, reduced libido, lateness, and isolation (Hassard et al., 2018). Besides, the firm's effects may involve high employee turnover, increased absenteeism, poor time management, and low morale. Other products include diminished productivity and performance, minimum motivation, high rates of workers' complaints (Hassard et al., 2018). Furthermore, stress can increase ill-health, incidents, and accidents.

Most people who have worked in various organizations have experienced the strain of work-connected stress. Any employment can exhibit stressful aspects, even when a person enjoys the job. A person may suffer from anxiety to meet a target or to accomplish a challenging task (Hassard et al., 2018). However, when work pressure becomes severe, it can overpower a person and become dangerous to both emotional and physical wellbeing. One of the ways to cope with stress involves regular monitoring of stressors. A person needs to document elements that cause the highest tension, and the individual reacted to them. The journal should contain records of feelings, thoughts, and data about the people, environment, circumstances, physical background, and how they responded (Schnall et al., 2018). Such documents can ensure that one discovers the patterns involved in the stressors and the approaches applied to minimize them.

Moreover, people need to develop healthy reactions. People need to use good options when they realize that the pressure has started increasing instead of battling stress through bad choices like engaging in drug abuse or fast food (Smollan, 2015). Physical activities like Yoga or any other physical exercise can help reduce stress and enhance a person's mood. Moreover, psychiatrists suggest that spending time engaging in favorite activities and hobbies can help decrease pressure. Another stress management measure includes getting adequate sleep through the development of healthy sleep patterns (Smollan, 2015). Reducing caffeine consumption and decreasing exciting activities like television and computer use during sleep time can enhance healthy sleep.

Establishing employment-life limits for oneself can ensure minimizing pressure for a 24-hour presence (Schnall et al., 2018). Creating a balance between work and home-life can reduce work-life conflict and the anxiety associated with it. Besides, taking time to relax can reduce the negative results of severe burnout and stress. Such a measure helps people reload and go back to their pre-stress condition of operation (Schnall et al., 2018). The approach involves a recovery procedure that requires a person to disengage from work-related duties, stop thinking about job chores, and from employment environments. Taking a vacation to rest and unwind can rejuvenate someone and make the person more productive at work (Schnall et al., 2018). People need to learn how to relax through different techniques, such as deep breathing, meditation, and mindfulness. The mindfulness method requires one to observe current encounters and opinions without arbitration to minimize stress intensely (Schnall et al., 2018). The skill of concentrating resolutely on a single event without interruption increases with persistent practice, and over time, it can help solve diverse life experiences.

Executives can develop a working environment that supports workers' contentment, which improves employee health (Smollan, 2015). Proper communication between employees and managers can effectively help to design a strategy for handling the stressors recognized by personnel. Such a plan can improve organization productivity, profitability, and performance. The method can enhance employees' skills (like time management), detect worker-supported wellbeing resources, and elucidate roles (Smollan, 2015). Furthermore, the plan can help obtain resources or provision from workmates, elevating job to add more meaningful and challenging tasks, or modifying physical workstation to ensure a reduction in stress and make it more comfortable. Besides, coping with stress requires seeking support from confidential family and friends (Smollan, 2015). Family members, friends, and the employer can offer stress management materials beneficial for managing work pressure. Psychologists can also help improve stress management (Smollan, 2015). The above coping measures remain effective in managing stress if effectively applied and can help both firms and the employees become more productive, profitable, and perform well in the competitive environment.

A Wellbeing/Stress Reduction Application

The increasing use of the internet and smartphones has provided platforms for managing stress through applications' employment. Happify refers to one of the applications intended to help users minimize stress, negative thoughts, anxiety, and enhance emotional wellness. Users develop a profile and respond to a simple questionnaire that makes the application give the user propositions (Collins et al., 2020). These suggestions entail sets of games and activities which assist the user in accomplishing their objectives. The proposals follow mental, behavioral doctrines psychoanalysis, positive psychology, and mindfulness developed by experts to help users attain particular goals.

There exist an artificial intelligence (AI) coach to help train users. The application requires iOS and Android and remain compatible with iPad, iPhone, and iPod (Collins et al., 2020). The application remains effective in managing stress and worries, especially in the workplace, since it contains settings that comprise a high-contrast style, notification features for enhancing visual and audio content, and an operating system that resizes font (Collins et al., 2020). Furthermore, users have the opportunity to contribute to Happify society through public posts and forums. Also, users can read a summary of positive feedback through the application, making it one of the most effective e-Health applications for managing stress and worry.

Signs and Symptoms of Stress

Severe stress can reduce the natural body defense mechanism, leading to various physical signs and symptoms, such as dizziness, joint pains and aches, and clenched jaw or grinding teeth. Other signs and symptoms include acid reflux indications (indigestion), rise or decrease in appetite, and insomnia (Schnall et al., 2018). Muscle rigidity in the face, neck, and shoulders also indicate stress in a person. Increased heartbeat, exhaustion (tiredness), cold, and sweaty palms may also suggest tension (Schnall et al., 2018). Other signals include shaking (trembling), weight loss or gain, diarrhea (stomach upset), and sexual difficulties.

Distress can lead to emotional challenges, such as panic attacks, depression, and other kinds of anxiety. Stress causes death by increasing certain illnesses or symptoms like lung and heart ailments, liver cirrhosis, cancer, and suicide (Schnall et al., 2018). Pressure can also force a person into harmful behaviors and substance use to keep the human body in a stressed condition and increase the problems. Therefore, when the body reacts to changes, it does so emotionally, physically, and mentally to adjust.

The Concept of Resilience

People experience traumatic moments in their lives but find a means of overcoming them due to their resilience. Resilience refers to the capability to bounce back and cope with problems and stress (Hartmann et al., 2020). Everyone experiences trauma and stresses that can upset their personality and results in periods of stress, worry, and psychological pain. Overcoming these problems requires resilience. Resilience does not entail evading adversity and anxiety, but having the capacity to continue to operate efficiently and persevere regardless of setbacks, failures, and losses (Hartmann et al., 2020). Resilience requires building competent coping skills. Those who can persist and continue to work steadily during difficulty have high self-worth and minimum fear of failure (Hartmann et al., 2020). Some individuals have more resilience than others; however, resilience does not encompass inborn characteristics that one acquires during birth. Resilience can get nurtured and learned, and these involve simple techniques to enhance personal resilience.

Critique Theories Underpinning Stress and Resilience

Coping involves a process that may take time, and people can employ diverse methods with varying effectiveness levels. Different people can use the approaches depending on whether an individual needs to deal with one particular or many, minor or significant, and long-term or short-term stressors (Hobfoll et al., 2018). The conservation of resources approach refers to one of the theories that help people manage stress and increase or maintain t...