In the current labor shortage, it is critical to develop strategies to attract and retain quality employees. The idea of creating a workplace that will act as a magnet and pull more quality people into the organization needs to be explored in detail. But to exercise magnetic pull, the workplace environment must account for and minimize stress. This article focuses on the role of stress in creating a mentally, physically and, ultimately, financially healthy work environment.

Selye & the Origins of Stress Research

Battle fatigue among soldiers in combat situations generated the scientific research on which our current understanding of stress is based. Symptoms of stress made soldiers unable to fire arms, surrender without cause and generally engage in conduct that compromised their military effectiveness.

Dr. Hans Selye is generally considered the father of stress research. Selye recognized that a certain amount of stress, called eustress, is necessary for normal function. Too little stress, as in the use of isolation chambers that were popular at the time as a form of therapy, can result in psychosis and other kinds of mental distress. Less dramatically, lack of stress can result in boredom and lack of engagement in work activities.

Conversely, too much stress, referred to as distress, can result in frustration and burnout. Burnout is epitomized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and low personal accomplishment. Emotional exhaustion is characterized by feeling drained, frustrated, fatigued and not engaging with fellow employees. Depersonalization causes a calloused response where empathy is lost and people are treated like objects.

Individuals suffering from depersonalization tend to blame other people for their problems and frequently feel persecuted. When they begin to lose productivity and focus they cannot deal with problems effectively. They cease to be positive role models and no longer seek to understand other people's issues. They see work as a chore and are no longer excited about their job.

These are the consequences of burnout, which many companies fail to recognize or address effectively. (Fig 1).

Fig. 1 - Individual Consequences of Stress: Burnout

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Achieving the Stress Balance

The idea, then, was to find the right balance of stress. Once optimum levels of stress are attained, individuals feel engaged and challenged. They enjoy what they do; they are in the moment and have maximum productivity. Thus, stress follows a bell curve, as illustrated by the following figure.

Fig. 2 -  Stress Level

Stress in the Workplace

Today's employees are experiencing more stress in the workplace. Stress is especially prevalent in organizations where there are not enough employees to perform the work. Understaffing forces employees to do more with less. It causes employees to feel a sense of powerlessness and loss of control, which creates a vicious cycle and escalates stress.

According to a survey by USA Today, people perceive that they work for their supervisor, not for the senior administrator. But supervisors pick up on senior management. Thus, as upper level managers no longer model appropriate positive behaviors, their frustration and irritability trickles down to supervisors and thence to floor workers. Soon it can permeate the entire organization. This engages a feedback mechanism which further increases workplace stress creating a toxic workplace environment where absenteeism increases and productivity plummets.

Conclusion

Although companies are quietly aware of this syndrome in their environment, they generally do not discuss it because they lack a method to correct it. Thus, there is the flavor of the month mentality where thousands of dollars are spent with little or no return. Exacerbating this tendency is that very few training methodologies even track the impact of the training over time. These metrics must be measured and trends analyzed to gain maximum benefit from this training strategy. Next week, we will look at a solution to the toxic effects of stress - increasing the hardiness of managers.

HEROES OF WORKPLACE SAFETY

Dr. Hans Selye: The Father of Stress

Dr. Hans Selye

By Glenn Demby

Like so many other of history's great psychologists, Hans Hugo Bruno Selye (pronounced SELL' yeay) was born in Vienna. In 1926, at the age of 19, Selye began developing his theories on the influence of stress on the individual's ability to cope with injury and disease.

As Barbara and Leslie describe, he distinguished between positive (eustress) and negative (distress) stresses and suggested that different mental states were attributable to the current balance or imbalances between the two. He believed that symptoms were manifestations of the body's response to these differing stress levels. Selye, who was also an endocrinologist (a branch of medicine that deals with hormones), organized the various symptoms of stress into a system that he called the General Adaptation Syndrome.

Selye was a professor and director of the Institute of Experimental Medicine and Surgery at the University of Montreal, where he spent 50 years developing his theories. He died in 1982.

ARE YOU SUFFERING FROM BURNOUT?

McGraw Hill has developed a pretty neat self-assessment that you can use to determine if you're experiencing burnout. You can take the test at the following website: http://www.dushkin.com/connectext/psy/ch12/survey12.mhtml

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