Organisational Behaviour #6 - Stress

[samvara]

I am now the proud owner of a Life Orientation Test, a Personal Stress Management Plan, a Life Event Stress Quiz and the Connor-Davidson Resilience scale. I'm apparently optimistic, have techniques for managing stress, score low for life event stress in the last 12 months (this is probably a little inaccurate as I had to class AD&T and Swancon2009 in the same category) and our lecturer wouldn't tell us how we scored on the C-D Resilience scale because the afternoon class got depressed when she told them :p

We had to skip back to last week's material to cover some stuff we ran out of time for so we quickly ran through Job Design where you assign tasks to a job to make it attractive/doable/productive. We talked about Job Specialisation where you divide work into smaller, and smaller parts so as to increase efficiency, lower training costs and better match people to jobs (while boredom and lack of motivation drives the product quality down). We covered Scientific Management which is keen on the former and emphasises person-job matching, training, goal setting and work incentives. We talked about the Job characteristic model which covers things a job should have (skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback), how you're gonna feel about it (experienced meaningfulness, experienced responsibility for outcomes, and knowledge of the actual results) and what's going to happen because of that (motivation, satisfaction (general and growth) and effectiveness). It looks better as a diagram :) We also talked about the advantages of Job Rotation (minimises RSI, multiskills workforce (I am looking at *you* AD&T) and can reduce job boredom) We talked about Job Enlargement where you, yes, give the job more tasks (there should be spam offering this) and Job Enrichment where you add more autonomy instead of tasks.

Why is job design hard? Jobs are hard to measure, people don't like to change (workers, leaders, unions) and it's difficult to optimise enrichments versus specialisation. It's possible I want to go work for Semco which has developed a program of workplace empowerment, which has (workplace empowerment, not Semco specifically) dimensions of self-determination - I have freedom to do my job; meaning - my work is important; competence - I'm good at my job and impact - my actions result in success. Brazil is lovely this time of year right? Success factors for workplace empowerment include having competent employees with the ability to do the work, good job design, enough resources, an organisation that wants to learn and high levels of trust. We also covered Self Leadership which seems to me to be a weasel phrase designed to make people feel better about the day to day process of getting on with being alive, anyway there are a bajillion websites on it and I've just exposed my prejudices :p

Stress: An adaptive response to a situation that is perceived as challenging or threatening to the person's well being. We might experience excessive stress as anxiety, memory loss, frequent illness, feeling overwhelmed, mood swings, depression, exhaustion or inexplicable amounts of anger (not a comprehensive list). Stress and Performance (link has a lovely graph) have a pretty obvious relationship; no stress lends itself to low productivity, a moderate amount to high productivity and excess stress causes us to crash and burn.

We talked about

• role related stress which can be interrole conflict where different roles compete, intrarole conflict where your role has internal conflicts and person role conflict where you're basically in the wrong job.
• interpersonal stress which can be conflict with others, forced teamwork, sexual harassment, violence or bullying.
• organisational stress which could be a merger or downsize (and the associated stress of being a downsize survivor with higher workloads, job insecurity and loss of friends)
• work-life stress which could be time-based - schedule, commuting, tendency for women to have to do a 'second shift' (housework etc.); strained-based - work stress follows you home or role behaviour-based - where work and non-work roles are incompatible (consider switching from being a prison warden to a parent in about 20 minutes)

What stresses us out varies enormously from person to person, we perceive situations differently, have different levels of personal reserves and use different stress coping strategies. Have a squiz at the type A and type B personality theory if you want, we discussed it briefly but I think of it more as an old model.

Consequences of stress (some of them):

• Physiological cardiovascular disease, ulcers, sexual dysfunction, headaches
• Behavioural work performance, accidents, poor decisions, absenteeism (illness and flight), workplace aggression
• Psychological moodiness, depression, emotional fatigue

Job burnout; it's not unusual for someone to casually refer to being 'burned out', sometimes we meant we're just knackered, sometimes we're genuinely experiencing burnout. If it's really happening in your life go and get help, good help, because once you're in it it's darn hard to get out by yourself. It's characterized by exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy within the workplace and is very common in human service professions. What that means in simpler terms that you're tired all the time, you've stopped thinking of people as 'people' and starting thinking of them as 'things' or 'obstacles' and you're no longer able to do your job at the level you used to. *sends out hugs*

Techniques for managing stress (in no particular order):

• Receive social support (talk to friends, co-workers, supervisors)
• Control stress consequences (manage symptoms, care of self)
• Remove the stressor (bury the body in the desert)
• Change stress perception (look for silver lining, reframe as 'challenge', start liking tuna)
• Withdraw (sabbatical, holiday, different project)

Exercise! Heh, you knew I'd say that eventually right?

• Physically healthy bodies handle stress better, this is a fact. Good cardiovascular health means when you have a stress response your heart rate and blood pressure won't go as high and you will recover faster after. This is important.
• Reduces tension, depression, fear etc
• Reduces likelihood of heart disease - you want this.

Things organsations can provide to reduce stress:

• Flexible work hours
• Job sharing
• Telecommuting
• Personal leave
• Childcare facilities (Australia is teh suxors at this)

We then did a small group interview/discussion exercise (groups of three) where we invited each other to talk about the following:

• What causes me stress?
• What is the impact of that stress on me and my work?
• What strategies have I adopted to deal with this?
• What could I do in the future?

It was valuable, as was the class debrief after. My group talked about not taking responsibility for things outside our control, about how hard it is to let go of things we know have to turn out well that we can't, personally, resolve, about time management and making sure we put our energy in the best place, about making sure we set ourselves up to succeed (S. makes sure he has a good morning, he doesn't rush, he creates a good space to approach the day from) and a bunch of other things.

My personal three are making sure I get samvara time where I do things I value that make me happy and relaxed, choosing to see the positive in everything and choosing to act positively, even in awful situations, and continuing to seek advice and support when things get tough (and when they don't!)

Next week - Decision Making!

Comments

[copracat]

bury the body in the desert

It's possibly a sign that I really, really love this option.

start liking tuna

Do I want to know?

(Australia is teh suxors at this)

I have heard an unsubstantiated anecdote, that Department of Human Services (in Victoria) chose not to have corporate child care because the rules are too hard to follow.

[samvara]

Desert - I will help youuuuuuuuuu!

Tuna - no, it's really quite boring

Child care - grRRRrrrr

[onceamy]

yes, give the job more tasks

I'm guilty of this! Give me a inch, and I'll make up a mile!

I'm certainly no expert, but the automation must have to be close to the task creation---part of the reason AD&T is a hard (but gleeful, worthy, and enjoyable) slog is because much of our work is non-automated and we've solutions for some of those, but we can't implement them all.

Ah, for work-life stress, you didn't talk about disability? Whether by being a care-taker of having one yourself?

[samvara]

Yes! I like to have a certain amount of richness in my job - once I've mastered my basic tasks I go off looking for other tasks.

Automation - I think you may have misread this word but it's so totally applicable to what you're working on right now that it works perfectly anyway - yes, trying to implement as many automated solutions as possible is very important!

Disability did not come up in the seminar at all. This does not surprise me (although it does sadden), it's a room full of young-ish, fit career people who are healthy and wealthy enough to have full-time jobs and do a Masters on the side. We briefly talked about the role of women and the increased challenge of a work-life balance but that's as close as we got to acknowledging the vast difference in able-ness of the population.

[evilmattikinz.livejournal.com]

Matti resolves to bury tuna in the desert more often. Although due to a lack of deserts around here, will improvise and hide tuna in desserts.

[black-samvara.livejournal.com]

That sounds like an excellent solution to me!

*snuggles you*

[bardiegrub.livejournal.com]

That Life Event Stress quiz is bizarre

"in the last 12 months have you experienced...Christmas"

[black-samvara.livejournal.com]

*grins* I hear it's hell on wheels for some people!

I didn't tick it, my family don't tend to celebrate Christmas in any meaningful fashion so there is no pressure or stress that makes it an unusual time. There's a very laid back BBQ my brothers run on Boxing Day and sometimes we do brunch with parents if we're all in the same state/country.