OCCUPATIONAL STRESS

By: Dr. Ainsley Deer, MSc,CEO/Senior Consultant,

Training Dynamics & Consultants Ltd.

No one can deny the fact that:

• The world is changing rapidly

• There is a new renaissance in the world of learning

• Business is changing rapidly

• There is a need for continual development

• Assessing self against competence is required now and in the future

• There is a need to make development happen

• There is a need to formulate action plans

• There is a need to prioritise development against needs.

All these factors have implications for Occupational Stress and Professional Burnout. Healthy organisations, which enhance the well-being and commitment of their staff, are expected to provide better services of greater quality than those which are less healthy. The services of unhealthy organisations are expected to be particularly low quality, as staff experiencing poor well-being and reduced commitment attempt to implement inadequately designed and managed procedures.

Organisational healthiness is usually measured in terms of Task Accomplishments, Problem Solving and Staff Development.

Staff well-being moderating the impact of Organisational Health on Service Quality

Organisational Health

Staff Well-being

Quality of Service

Thus an assessment of staff well-being and commitment should be part of any evaluaton of service delivered.

Occupational stress has been a long-standing concern of health care professionals.

Burnout among staff serves as a sensitive indicator of organisation healthiness.

The relationship between burnout and organisational healthiness may be captured in three (3) concepts:

• Harmony

• Consensus

• Balance

Harmonious social relationships may reflect consensus regarding major goals and objectives, as well as balance between those goals and objectives and the availability of appropriate resource.

Burnout encompasses three (3) clusters of symptoms

1. Exhaustion (intellectual, emotion or physical) and lack of enthusiasm.
2. Depersonalisation and emotional detachment.
3. Reduced personal accomplishment.

Emotional exhaustion is the defining feature of burnout.

Work overload, interpersonal conflict and underutilisation of skill facilitate the development of the feeling of emotional exhaustion.

The dominant view in burnout research is that a causal chain exists in which stress contributes to the aetiology of burnout, which in turn is related to negative job perceptions, lack of organisation commitment and withdrawal behaviour, for example, absenteeism.

WORK STRESS is the psychological state that is or represents an imbalance or mismatch between peoples’ perception of the demands on them (relevant to work) and their ability to cope with those demands.

A work environment that is typically perceived and experienced as stressful is one in which:

• Peoples’ resources are not well matched to the level of demand placed on them, and where there are constraints on how they can cope and little social support for coping.

It is generally assumed that the quality of the organisation, of the work environment and of work itself can affect the experience of stress and employee health and work performance.

The healthiness of the organisation may affect the health and performance of its employees.

The healthiness of the organisation is a reflection of the “Goodness” of its psychological subsystems and of their coherence and integration.