Stress or Stressors?
Years ago, I left my post as Director of the Missouri Department of Mental Health to start up a practice of organizational behavior with another psychologist. Although headquartered in St. Louis, we developed a portfolio of recurring and referring clients among Fortune 500 and many other corporations nationwide. Our typical intervention was a one-day stress management seminar for employees at varying levels in the organization. Sometimes representatives of different levels and work groups were mixed, sometimes they were kept separate. The work was very satisfying, and was generally very appreciated.
But incidental remarks, side comments and tough questions raised by the participants in our training created in my mind a troubling question: In some organizational settings was stress management training an attempt by management, whether intentional or unintentional, to displace onto their employees the responsibility for minimizing the effects of a poorly designed, poorly staffed or poorly managed organization?
I began to review the then-limited research on what we now call workplace stressors. Recognizing that when available, individuals tend to select occupations with a stress level suited to their temperament, coping repertoire and external supports, I was interested in workplace situations in which persons with a good alignment of type and level of jobs to personal and personality conditions were reporting workplace stress.
My inquiries brought me to the writings of Joseph E. Magrath of the University of Illinois, who described stress as the result of environmental demands exceeding a person's capabilities and resources under conditions in which the consequences of meeting or not meeting the demands are expected to result in a substantial difference in rewards or costs. Organizational stress results from the demands that a member cannot meet or from insufficient resources in the organization / environment to meet the member's needs. Occupational role stress is the perception by an individual of role ambiguity, conflict or work overload. This perception can arise from characteristics of the individual, the work environment, or both.
An excellent typography of stressor conditions was first promulgated in the early 1990s by Beryce MacLennan. She identified three major workplace stressor areas:
1. Sensory and perceptual factors.
2. Interpersonal relationships and organizational climate.
3. Organizational and managerial factors.
Coincidentally, a new colleague focused on reasons for turnover in organizations. His work, which included one-on-one exit interviews with thousands of employees exiting a wide variety of public, non-profit and private organizations documented that employers control the vast majority of reasons why employees leave or continue to work at their current organization. These factors tend to be ranked in this order [1]: (1) how you were treated; (2) management; (3) salary; (4) supervisor; (5) advancement opportunity; (6) workload; (7) work/personal life balance; (8) recognition for contributions; (9) policies and procedures; (10) career development; (11) job challenge; (12) work content; (13) working conditions; (14) benefits.
The Medical Director for one of St. Louis’ Fortune 500 Companies where we had periodically conducted stress management training approached me about a problem he was observing among the headquarters workforce. Recently there had been an increase in the number of employees who were reporting for sick call for what he considered to be stress-related conditions. To sort out the potential sources of these stress-related issues, together we designed a study of perceived stress levels and perceived workplace stressors in the affected work areas. The study consisted of two questionnaires: the Profile of Workplace Efforts and ResourcesTM (PoWERTM) and the Derogatis Stress Profile (DSP).
The Profile of Workplace Efforts and ResourcesTM (PoWERTM) is a 25-item questionnaire that addresses the follow six factors:
Factor 1: Corporate Stress Awareness
Factor 2: Workplace Supports
Factor 3: Workplace Control
Factor 4: Workplace Competence
Factor 5: Corporate Stress Management Resources
Factor 6: Workplace Communication
The Derogatis Stress Profile is a 77-item self-report inventory derived from interactional stress theory. According to this model, stress is comprised of three interactional components: environmental events, personality mediators, and emotional responses.[2]
Using these two instruments, we were able to identify four general categories of stressor/stress conditions:
1. High Reported Stressors & High Perceived Stress (HiRS + HiPS)
2. High Reported Stressors & Low Perceived Stress (HiRS + LoPS)
3. Low Reported Stressors & High Perceived Stress (LoRS + HiPS) and
4. Low Reported Stressors & Low Perceived Stress (LoRS + LoPS).
Multiple applications of the PoWER/DSP methodology generated different distributions of employees across the four quadrants, as well as differences within the same organization associated with a variety of variables for example, company-wide, by supervisor, by task, by pay grade, age, gender, length of service, educational level, etc.
Employees in the High Stressor/Low Stress (HiRS + LoPS) group were seen as having extremely well-developed stress management skills and were recruited and trained to act as peer counselors to other employees who were in the High Perceived Stress groups.
As we expected, many employees in the High Stressor/High Stress (HiRS + HiPS) group experienced high stress levels. They were encouraged to participate in the company’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP) as well as follow up stress management training. They were also offered the opportunity to work with a peer counselor from the High Stressor/Low Stress group.
The employees at greatest risk were those in the Low Stressor/High Stress (LoRS + HiPS) group. The primary intervention was their referral to the company’s EAP program. In every instance, we later received a call from these employees thanking us for making the referral. They all reported personal issues generally unrelated to work that were contributing to their high stress levels. As appropriate, they were offered access to additional stress management sessions and to the trained peer stress management coaches.
Employees in the Low Stressor/Low Stress (LoRS + LoPS) group were eligible to participate in further stress management sessions as desired and available. Many persons in this group reported exporting the knowledge they learned to friends and family members who were experiencing personal, school or work-related stress.
Analyses based on 26 employee variables uncover interesting and important differences. The work of Lois Tetrick highlights the importance of interpersonal relationships and organizational climate, including: atmosphere; management; supervisory and peer relations; toleration of discrimination and harassment; and prestige of the occupation and organization in setting a stressor-free workplace.
Tetrick’s studied four primary conditions associated with organizational perceived role stress: (1) anxiety; (2) perceived job importance; (3) perceived leader facilitation; and (4) perceived workgroup supportiveness. Here are her most important findings:
1. Perceived role stress increases anxiety and anxiety increases perceived role stress. In short, employees who import anxiety from outside the workplace have higher levels of perceived role stress. However, employees who experience perceived role stress can also export anxiety from the workplace to their non-work lives.
2. Perceived role stress decreases perceived leader facilitation and perceived leader facilitation decreases perceived role stress. In short, the greater the level of perceived role stress, the less a leader is viewed as facilitating work adjustment. Reciprocally, the more a leader is viewed as facilitating work adjustment, the less perceived role stress among subordinates.
3. Perceived role stress decreases perceived workgroup supportiveness and perceived workgroup supportiveness decreases perceived role stress. In other words, the greater the level of perceived role stress, the less co-workers are seen as being supportive (whether concerning work-related or non-work-related situations) and reciprocally, greater the level of perceived workgroup supportiveness, the lower perceived role stress.
4. Increases in perceived leader facilitation can increase perceived workgroup supportiveness by reducing perceived role stress; and, vice versa, perceived workgroup supportiveness can increase perceived leader facilitation by reducing perceived role stress.
5. Finally, perceived job significance is directly related to perceived role stress: the more significant one sees his or her job, the more they experience corresponding levels of perceived role stress and the more perceived role stress an employee experiences, the more important he or she views his or her job. “I must be important; see how stressed out I am.”
Our original findings using the Derogatis Stress Profile and Profile of Workplace Efforts and ResourcesTM questionnaires can easily be replicated today at a time when many workers report increased stressors at home and at work, resulting in corresponding – and sometimes enhanced - susceptibility to workplace stress and its consequences. They include: poor morale, increased health care costs, decreased productivity, avoidable turnover.
In the intervening years between our first studies and now the focus of workplace interventions has been broadened to promote resiliency, and the range of these interventions has been enlarged to include highly effective techniques such as mindful meditation and related evidence-based approaches. The research on workplace stress and stressors continue to document their deleterious effects on employees, their well-being and performance. In many industries and organizations, it is past time to assess and ameliorate high levels of manageable workplace stressors.
References
MacLennan, B. W. (1992). Stressor reduction: An organizational alternative to individual stress management. In J. C. Quick, L. R. Murphy, & J. J. Hurrell, Jr. (Eds.), Stress & well-being at work: Assessments and interventions for occupational mental health (pp. 79-95). Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/10116-006
McGrath, J.E., “Stress and Behavior in Organizations.” In M.D. Dunnette (Ed.), Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
Tetrick, L.E., “Mediating Effect of Perceived Role Stress: A Confirmatory Analysis.” In Quick, J.C., Murphy, L.R. & Hurrell, J.J., Stress and Well-Being at Work. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1992.
[1] See: Ahr, P.R. & Ahr, T.B. (2000). Overturn Turnover: Why some employees leave; why some employees stay, and ways to keep the ones who you want to stay. St. Louis: Causeway.
[2] An unintended outcome of this approach identified several employees with extremely high stress scores on the Derogatis scale. Through a complex process for notifying respondents, all were encouraged to contact us at which time we referred them to the company’s employee assistance program. In every instance, the employees thanked us for making the referral.