Well-Being at Work Abstract For as long as there is life, stress, in whatever perspectives it has to be looked at simply illustrates the fact that it should be an integral component in daily living. As reviewed, stress is obtained from either outside or in the workplace, which makes it easy to detect probable measures so as to maximize or eliminate it from a person or in an organization. As a growing problem in modern times, stress should not be completely overlooked. In this paper, proponent seeks to analyze further the well-being at work by understanding more about stress and its potential impacts on an individual’s daily activities in life.
Introduction Stress is part of everyday living. It is therefore an integral component of life. Without stress, life would never be completed. Contrary to common beliefs, stress is also beneficial although it is also noted to be detrimental to human health and even at the workplace. This is the reason that various organizations require their human resource to undergo stress management programs. Stress management programs try to encompass effective ways and means to balance life.
For employees, it is necessary for them to have a healthy-balanced life, but it does not mean they have to be completely free from stress. In fact, they need to experience it at certain level, as it is noted to encourage good performance at the workplace and outstanding health. There are individuals when put under pressure will eventually produce good outputs. Thus, a good level of stress would help an individual achieve specific targets or deadlines. However, too much of it is said to create undesirable impacts that would hinder an individual to be effective at work.
Primarily, stress is said to cause “psychological disorders, behavioral problems, medical illness, participation problems, performance decrements, and compensation awards” aside from the fact that it could also lead to improve performance at work and individual health such as “increased arousal, burst of physical strength, full engagement, cardiovascular efficiency, balance in the nervous system, and enhanced focused in an emergency” (Nelson & Quick, 2011, p. 229). In this paper, the proponent seeks to analyze further the well-being at work by understanding more about stress and its potential impacts on an individual’s daily activities in life.
More about stress From both biological and psychological point of view, stress is a specific mental and physical response of individuals to the actual situations or events in life within their nearby environment (Feldman, 2003; Nelson & Quick, 2011). For instance, listening to actual news in the media would specifically create a specific response and it is either a person would be happy to hear about them or the other way around. Nelson and Quick substantially discuss essential ideas about stress.
They are able to talk about the four approaches to stress which are actually the different perspectives on how to look at it. For them, stress can be elaborately explained from medical, cognitive appraisal, person-environment fit and psychoanalytic perspectives. All of these approaches consider the environment, and the person’s mental ability to interact with varying situations. In the event that there would be remarkable imbalances with an individual’s cognitive and environmental response to actual situation or environment, stress is expected to come out as a consequence.
This would lead further to varying circumstances as stated earlier and they are either good or bad. It is in this reason that it is important to trace the very nature of stress in order to eventually understand how to essentially manage them. Nelson and Quick try to identify different sources of stress at the workplace and these include work demands that are associated with an individual’s task, role and interpersonal concerns at the workplace; and non-work demands which include home and personal involvement. As clearly observed, all of these major classifications of what cause stress has something to do generally with the role people play in their environment.
This is the reason why distress can also be classified as either individual or organizational (Nelson & Quick, 2011). Furthermore, stress would also depend on the individual’s gender, personality or characteristics (Nelson & Quick, 2011). For instance, people who enjoy challenges are most likely to take stress seriously as an opportunity to put their best foot forward on something else. In addition those who enjoy in the presence of others are considered self-reliant which at some point a good opportunity to have secure attachment with others.
Thus, Nelson and Quick emphasize that these individuals with potentially good and strong personalities are most likely to cope positively with stress. Considering that stress can be due to individual or organizational reasons, its coping and preventive measures can be also classified in accordance to the nature of their cause. Thus, stress management programs have to be either individual or organizational too (Nelson & Quick, 2011). Analysis Stress is associated with individual health, but not only that, it is also directly linked with the well-being at work and the entire organization.
Stress is a surging problem especially in the modern time (Middleton, 2010). Since it is a growing problem, individual’s health and the organization’s are remarkably placed at the brink of falling down. Considering that employees are important resources in an organization, it would make sense to manage them in a way stress would not take its toll on them that would eventually lead to negative results within an organization. Thus, it would make sense that the entire organization should not be passive about looking at stress.
After all, it is something that should never be overlooked as there are potentially many things to learn about it. The ideas of Nelson and Quick are therefore sufficient to elaborate the significance of understanding stress at the highest level and its deepest importance in an organization. Conclusion Stress cannot just be simply overlooked because it would entirely affect the organization and its entire performance considering that its very target is the human resource. The human resource should then be evaluated how they respond to stress in order to understand if they have positive mental attitude towards it.
Well-being at work is important so as to ensure that the chosen people in an organization are there to maximize the work output. Thus, the entire organization’s performance cannot be compromised in the end. References Feldman, R. S. (2003). Essentials of Understanding Psychology (5th ed. ). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Nelson, D. L. & Quick, J. C. (2011). Organizational Behavior-Science, the Real World, and You (7th ed. ). Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning. Middleton, K.
(2010). Stress. Oxford: Lion Hudson.