Does The Workplace Affect Stress Levels?

There are several contributing factors with regards to stress in the workplace.

One factor that needs to be taken into consideration is work overload. Johansson et al investigated this, and found that people with stressful, repetitive jobs are more likely to experience stress. In this study, Johansson studied sawyers in a Swedish sawmill, whose jobs were highly repetitive. This group were expected to work with an unrelented pace, and they had a sense of responsibility for the whole company, as the company as a whole could slow down if they got behind with their work. This group were found to have a higher illness rate and also higher adrenaline levels in their urine than a low risk group. This supports the fact that work overload has an effect on stress in the workplace, however it does not take into account what the workers may already be experiencing at home. For instance, if they are having marital difficulties, they may actually be less stressed at work than they would be at home, which would give inaccurate results to the researchers. Also, if they are under a lot of stress, the stress levels that are being reported by the researchers may be unrelated to the job and may actually have more to do with their day to day lives. Because of this, care must be taken when drawing conclusions from this study.

Another factor that must be considered when drawing conclusions from this study is the fact that the results could be biased. Because the study was carried out with just one profession being studied, the results may not be highly accurate of the way in which people from other professions may react to a similar situation.

Another factor that can act as a stressor is lack of control. It has been said by many psychologists that a lack of control can cause stress because the person in question is not directly responsible for what they do at work, and may therefore feel overwhelmed or pressured. Opposing this view however, Schaubroek found that some workers respond differently to lack of control, in that they are less stressed when they have no control or responsibility. In this study, Schaubroek measured saliva, in which the immune system functioning could be assessed directly. He found that although some people were more stressed when they had a lack of control, some people were less stressed. For the employees who felt less stressed when they had a lack of control, they could become stressed if they were given any control, and this could worsen the unhealthy effects of stress.

 In this study, a clear factor that must be considered is individual differences. Everybody has different ways of coping with stress; some being more effective than others, and this means that everybody will show different levels of stress to different situations. Because of this, we cannot generalise the results of this study, because the results cannot be applied to everyone.