What is Stress? Definition, Importance, Types, Classification, Sources, Techniques

What is Stress?

The word stress is derived from the Latin word “stringi”, which means, “to be drawn tight”. Stress can be defined as follows:

In medical terms stress is described as, “a physical or psychological stimulus that can produce mental tension or physiological reactions that may lead to illness.” When you are under stress, your adrenal gland releases corticosteroids, which are converted to cortisol in the blood stream. Cortisol has an immune suppressive effect in your body.

According to Richard S Lazarus, stress is a feeling experienced when a person thinks that “the demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.”

Your body tries to adjust to different circumstances or continually changing environment around you. In this process, the body is put to extra work resulting in “wear and tear”. In other words, your body is stressed. Stress disturbs the body’s normal way of functioning. Without stress, there would be no life. However, excessive or prolonged stress can be harmful.

Stress is unique and personal. A situation may be stressful for someone but the same situation may be challenging for others. For example, arranging a world level symposium may be challenging for one person but stressful to another. Some persons have habit of worrying unnecessarily.

Stress is not always necessarily harmful. Hans Selye said in 1956, “stress is not necessarily something bad, it all depends on how you take it. The stress of exhilarating, creative successful work is beneficial, while that of failure, humiliation or infection is detrimental.” Stress can be therefore negative, positive or neutral.

Passing in an examination can be just stressful as failing. Sometime we know in advance that doing a certain thing will be stressful, but we are willing to doing that. For example, while planning a vacation to a hill station you know that it would be stressful at certain times. But you are willing to face those challenges.

People often work well under certain stress leading to increased productivity. Many times you do not know in advance and the stress periods may be sudden. The situation may not be under your control. Too much stress is harmful. You should know your level of stress that allows you to perform optimally in your life. In simple words, from the point of view of an individual, stress comprises of physical, mental and chemical reactions leading to the circumstances that endanger, confuse or irritate you. Poor management, may lead to various diseases like high blood pressure, asthma and the problem of thyroid.

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Definition of Stress

For understanding the meaning of the term ‘stress” a few definition may be given here:

According to Fed Tuthans, “Stress is an adaptive response to an external situation that results in physical or behavioural deviations for organisational

In the words of Beehr and Newman, “Stress is the condition arising from the interaction of people and their jobs and characterized by changes within people that force them to develop from their normal functioning”

According to Ivancevich and Matterson, “Stress is the interaction of the individual with the environment. It is an adaptive response mediated by individual differences and/or psychological processes that is a consequence of any external (environmental) action, situation or event that places excessive psychological factor in the environment”.

From the above definitions, it can be concluded that stress is a dynamic condition in which an individual is confronted with an opportunity, constraint or demand related to what he or she desires and for which the outcome is perceived to be both uncertain and important. Simply stated, stress refers to an individual’s reaction to a disturbing factor in the environment.

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Importance of Stress

Nature of stress is highly individualistic. Some people have a higher level of tolerance to face stress and do well in the face of several stressors in the environment. On the other hand some people have very low level of tolerance or stress and they become very much disturbed and upset and are unable to concentrate on their work In fact, for every individual there is an optimum stress under which he or she will perform to full capacity.

Following points highlight the importance of stress:

• Stress is not anxiety or nervous tension: Anxiety or nervous tension does not constitute stress. Person victim of anxiety or nervous tension may not be under stress as per the various studies conducted by various authors.
  
  
• Stress may not be always damaging: People usually feel stress without any stain. Routine activities of life may be stressful but not always damaging.
  
  
• Stress may not be always due to overwork: Overwork may not result in stress. It has been observed that stress may result from having to do a little. A person who is not doing anything may have more stress as compared to person who is very busy.
  
  
• Stress is indispensable and cannot be avoided: Stress is inevitable and indispensable part of life of an individual. It cannot be avoided. What can, however, be avoided are the negative impacts of stress.
  
  
• Body’s capacity to respond is limited: There are no two opinions about the act that stress is the body’s biologically response mechanism. Body’s, capacity is limited to response to various stressors (various factors leading to stress).

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Types of Stress

Stress can be physical, emotional and intellectual which is briefly explained as under.

• Physical stress: Under physical stress, our body parts and muscles become tired leading to physical stress.
  
  
• Emotional stress: Due to some disputes and misunderstandings with family members or outsiders, emotions may be adversely disturbed.
  
  
• Intellectual stress: It is pertaining to our career when we do not get proper opportunities in accordance with our calibre as a result of which our mind gets disturbed.

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Classification of Stress

Stress can also be classified as:

• Acute stress: Sometimes stress can be brief, and specific to the demands and pressures of a particular situation, such as a deadline, a performance or facing up to a difficult challenge or traumatic event. This type of stress often gets called acute stress.
  
  
• Episodic acute stress: Some people seem to experience acute stress over and over. This is sometimes referred to as episodic acute stress. These kind of repetitive stress episodes may be due to a series of very real stressful challenges, for example, losing a job, then developing health problems, followed by difficulties for a child in the school setting.
  
  For some people, episodic acute stress is a combination of real challenges and a tendency to operate like a ‘stress machine’. Some people tend to worry endlessly about bad things that could happen, are frequently in a rush and impatient with too many demands on their time, which can contribute to episodic acute stress.
  
  
• Chronic stress: The third type of stress is called chronic stress. This involves ongoing demands, pressures and worries that seem to go on forever, with little hope of letting up. Chronic stress is very harmful to people’s health and happiness. Even though people can sometimes get used to chronic stress, and may feel they do not notice it so much, it continues to wear people down and has a negative effect on their relationships and health.

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Sources of Stress

We can say that stresses generate from four sources:

Extra organisational Stressors

Job stress is not limited to things that happen inside the organisation, during the working hours. Extra organisational factors also contribute to job stress. These stressors include the following factors.

• Political Factors: Political factors are likely to cause stress in countries which suffer from political uncertainties. The obvious reason is that if the countries have stable political system, change is typically implemented in an orderly manner.
  
  
• Economic Factors: Changes in business cycles create economic uncertainties. When the economy contracts, people get worried about their own security. A very important example is the great depression of 1930s. During this period, suicide rates touched the sky. Minor recessions also cause stress in the work force as downward swings in the economy are often accomplished by permanent reductions in the work force, temporary layoff or reduction in pay.
  
  
• Technological Factors: Technological uncertainty is the third type of environmental factor that can cause stress. In today’s era of technological development new innovations make an employee’s skills and experience obsolete in a very short span of time. Computers, automation are other forms of technological innovations, which are threat to many people and cause them stress.

Organisational Stressors

In organisations, there is no shortage of factors which can cause stress. Almost every aspect of work can be a stressor for someone. Although there are many factors in the work environment that have some influence on the extent of stress that people experience at the job, the following factors have been shown to be particularly along in inducing stress:

• Job Related Factors: Job related factors or task demands are related to the job performed by an individual. These factors include the following:
  
  
  • In a job which is routine, dull and boring or happens to be too demanding in terms of frequent transfers or constant travelling, (which limits the time he can spend with his family),the individual is likely to experience stress.
    
    
  • Some jobs can also be hazardous normally conflicting to the individual who interface with it, for example, working in explosives manufacturing factory by the individual who is a staunch believer and advocate of peace. For lack of other job opportunities, he may be forced to work in this environment and this may be a constant source of severe stress and anguish to the person.
    
    
  • Some duties and responsibilites have inbuilt stress such as those of the fire fighter or the police squad which defuses bombs.
    
    
  • Jobs where temperatures, noise or other working conditions are dangerous of undesirable can increase anxiety. Similarly, working in an overcrowde room or invisible location where interruptions are constant, can also lead to stress.
    
    
  • The more the interdependence between persons and the tasks of others, the more potential stress will be there. Autonomy, on the other hand tends to lesson trees.
    
    
  • Security of job is another task demand that can cause stress’ someone in a relatively secure job is not likely to worry unduly about losing that position. On the other hand, if job security is threatened, stress can increase dramatically.
    
    
  • The final task demand stressor is workload. Overload occurs when a person has more work to do than he can handle. The overload can be either quantitative (the individual has too many tasks to perform or too little time in which to perform them) or qualitative (the person may believe that he lacks the ability to do the job). Little work or no work can also be full of stress. It can result in boredom and apathy just as overload can cause tension and anxiety. Thus, a moderate degree of work related stress is desirable because it leads to high level of energy and motivation.
    
    
• Role Related Factors: Role related factors relate to pressure on a person as a function of the particular role he or she plays in the organisation. Individual can experience the following role related stresses:
  
  
  • Role Conflict: Role conflict occurs when two or more persons have different and sometimes opposing expectations of a given individual. Thus, there are two or more sets of pressures on the individual so that it is not possible to satisfy all of them. Role conflict takes place when contradictory demands are placed upon an employee simultaneously.
    
    For example, an advertising manager may be asked to prepare a creative ad compaign while on the other hand, time constraint is put upon him, both roles being in conflict with each other.
    
    
    Another type of role conflict is the inter-role conflict where an individual plays more than one role simultaneously in his life and the demands of these roles conflict with each other. For example, a police officer is invited to his friends’ wedding party where the guests use drugs which are against the law. Here he faces a role conflict.
    
    
  • Role Ambiguity: Stresses from job ambiguity arise when an employee does not know what is expected of him or her or how to go about doing the job. For example, if an employee who joins an organisation is left to himself to figure out what he is supposed to do and nobody tells him what are the expectations of him or his role are, the newcomer will face a high degree of role ambiguity. Even an old employee can be given a responsibility without being given much information.
    
    
    For example, a production manager might tell a foreman that 500 units of steel rods are to be manufactured in next five days and leaves town immediately without specifying what kind of additional help will be provided, or what is the purpose, cost, weight, design details, etc. The foreman is left with a lot of role ambiguity and does not know how he should go about doing the job.
    
    
  • Role Overload: Role overload refers to the situation when an individual is expected to do too many things within a limited time as part of the daily routine.
    
    
    For example, if Mrs. X is expected to perform the duties of a supervisor, receptionist. Public relations officer and an accountant, she is likely to experience a lot of stress from the several roles she has to play during the day. She may be able to manage the various roles for a short period of time, but if expected to continue in this fashion on a long term basis, she is likely to fall sick or quit.
    
    
• Inter Personal and Group Related Factors: Interpersonal demands are pressures created by other employees. Group related stressors include factors like conflicts, poor communication, unpleasant relationship and fear of being ostracized from the group as a valued member. Working with superior, peers and subordinates with whom one does not get along can be a constant source of stress.
  
  Some people can deal with conflicts and misunderstandings in an open way and resolve issues as they arise. Many, however, find it difficult to do this and build internal stresses for themselves. Moreover, lack of social support from colleagues and poor interpersonal relationships can cause considerable stress, especially among employees with a high social need. Sometimes, the individuals try to avoid stress by remaining absent and even may start looking for new jobs.
  
  
• Organisational Structural Factors: Organisational structure defines the level of differentiation, the degree of rules and regulations and where decisions are made. Excessive rules and lack of participation in decisions that affect an employee are examples of structural variables that might be potential stressors.
  
  
• Organisational Leadership Factors: These factors represent the managerial style of the organisation’s senior managers. Some managers create a culture characterised by tension, fear and anxiety. They establish unrealistic pressures to perform in the short run, impose excessively tight controls and routinely fire employees who fail to turn up.
  
  
• Organisation’s Life cycle: Organisations go through a cycle. They are established, they grow, become mature and eventually decline. An organisation’s life cycle creates different problems and pressures for the employees. The first and the last stage are stressful. The establishment involves a lot of excitement and uncertainty, while the decline typically requires cutback, layoffs and a different set of uncertainties.
  
  When the organisation is at the maturity stage stress tends to be the least because uncertainties are lowest at this point of time. Each stage in the life cycre poses its own challenges and problems while the early stages are exciting, the latter ones create anxiety and tension.

Group Stressors

Another source of stress in an organisation is poor interpersonal relations and conflicts. These conflicts can among the members of the group or between the superiors and subordinates.

Groups have a lot of influence on the employees, behaviour, performance and job satisfaction. On the other hand the group can also be a potential source of stress. Group stressors can be categorised into the following:

• Lack of Group Cohesiveness: The famous Hawthorn studies proved that group cohesiveness is very important to the employees, particularly at the rower levels of the organisation. Lack of cohesiveness can be stress producing, especially for those persons who cannot thrive in isolation.
  
  
  The other side of the picture is that too much cohesiveness can also lead to stress. Sayings like “Too much familiarity breeds contempt” is very valid because prolonged contact with other people can also cause stress. This stress becomes more intensified when the people we are close to or with whom we come in contact, are in distress. For example, people tend to become distressed when their friends, colleagues or pears are in distress.
  
  Due to this reason people belonging to certain specific professions, who deal with the problems of other people, have the highest level of stress.
  
  According to Albercht doctors have the highest rate of alcoholism and that psychiatrists have the highest rate of suicide.
  
  
• Lack of Social Support: Satisfaction’ though a state of mind, it primary influenced by the positive external factors. These factors include friendliness, respect from other members, self respect, support, opportunity to interact achievement, protection against, threats and a feeling of security. If this type of social support is lacking for an individual, it can be very stressful.
  
  
• Conflicts: People who are working in the organisations are prone to interpersonal and intergroup conflicts. Conflict has both functional and dysfunctional aspects. Whenever conflict has dysfunctional consequences, it will lead to stress in all the concerned parties’.
  
  
• Organisational Climate: Much of the group or interpersonal relationships depend upon the organisational climate. An overall organisational climate may have a relaxed style of working or it may be tense and crisis oriented. All the employees of such organisations will be continuously tense, if the climate in general is unfriendly, hostile or totally task oriented.

Individual Stressors

Among industrial factors contributing to stress are personality, life and career changes. The individual works for about 8 to 10 hours a day. The problems and experiences which he has to face in the remaining 14 to 16 non-working hours can spill over to his work place. Our final category of stressors thus includes personal or individual stressors. Following are the main factors which can cause stress to individuals:

• Job Concerns: One of the major job concerns is lack of job security which can lead to concern, anxiety or frustration to the individual. The prospect of losing a job especially when you have a family and social obligations is always very stressful. Career progress is another reason of anxiety. This is particularly true for middle aged people, because middle age is a period of soul searching and self doubt. If these people were not given promotions when due or they may feel that the jobs which were given to them were beneath their qualifications and they may become very anxious. This anxiety will lead to stress.
  
  
• Career Changes: When an employee has to relocate geographically because of a transfer or promotion, it disrupts the routine of his daily life causing concern and stress.
  
  
  The relocation can lead to the following problems:
  • The fear of working in a new location.
    
    
  • Unpredictability about new work environment.
    
    
  • Anxiety about creating new relationships.
    
    
  • Uprooting of children from their schools and friends.
    
    
  • If the employee has got a working spouse then the stress is greater. Uncertainty about getting a new job at the new location creates some degree of stress.
    
    
    Thus, when a person is geographically relocated, his stress will depend upon how many changes occur in his social relationships and family life. More the changes, more will be the stress.
    
    
• Economic Problems: Some people are very poor money managers or they have wants and desires that always exceed their earning capacity. When individuals over extend their financial resources, or in simple words, if they spend more than they earn, it will always cause stress and distract the employees from their work.
  
  
• Changes in Life Structure: The life structure of a person changes as he grows older. As a person grows older, his responsibilities to himself as well as others increase. The higher the responsibility, the greater the stress.
  
  
• The Pace of Life: As the responsibilities of a person increase, his capacity to execute them should also increase. A hectic pace of life when the person is always busy in business or otherwise can create more stress than a relaxed pace of life. Certain professions like teaching are less stressful than those of company executives, bankers or businessmen.
  
  
• Life Change and Life Traumas: Life change and life traumas are both stress producing. Life changes may be slow (like getting older) or sudden (like the death of a spouse). Sudden changes are highly stressful. Life traumas can be highly stressful. A life human is any upheaval in an individual’s life that alter his or her attitudes, emotions or behaviours. Life change and life trauma look alike but there is difference between the two.
  
  
  To illustrate, the death of a spouse adds to a person’s potential for health problems in the following years. At the same time, the person will also experience an emotional turmoil, which will constitute life trauma and life trauma will spill over to the work place.
  
  
  Thomas’ Holmes and Richard Roke developed “Social Adjustment Rating Schedule” to assess the degree of stress created by certain events in life. In order to develop the scale of impact, they asked people to rate as to how long it would take them to adjust to certain stress producing events in life. After considering the responses of the people, they developed a ranking and weighing schedule for each of these stress producing event. The following table shows the ranking of these events along with the weights.
  
  
• Personality of a Person: The extent of stress is also determined by the personality of a person. In respect of personality the distinction between ‘Type A’ and ‘Type B’ behaviour patterns become relevant. As mentioned earlier, Type A personalities may create stress in their work circumstances due to their achievement orientation, impatience and perfectionalism. In Type A, people, thus, bring stress on themselves. Type B personality; on the other hand, is less stress prone.
  
  
• Abitity to Cope: How a person is able to cope with the stress and the sources a person seeks to deal with stress are also very important. For example, people who have strong faith in God, find it easier to deal with stressful situations like the loss of a loved one. Similarly, family, relations and friends are a source of great comfort at such times of crisis.

Thus, if we have to appraise the stress of an individual, we have to sum up his various reasons of stress as extra organisational, organisational group and personal stressors.

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Techniques to Manage Stress

When we look at stress from organisational point of view, management may not be concerned about the low to moderate levels of stress experienced by the employees. The reason is that some functional level of stress is necessary to improve employee performance. But high levels of stress and sustained low levels of stress are a cause of action by the management.

But when we look at stress from individual’s point of view even the low levels of stress are perceived to be undesirable. Keeping this in mind we can discuss the individual and organisational approaches towards managing stress. Before discussing these approaches, we must keep in mind two points:

• Firstly, we must not make any generalisations. Each one of us have different limits, different optimum stress levels and may perceive stress differently. One person’s overstress may be another person’s challenge and optimum stress.
  
  
• Secondly, we need to differentiate between what we can do to equip ourselves and to organise our environment to prevent us from becoming over or under stressed. We label this as Prevention. Yet, however well we may prepare ourselves and try to control our environment from time to time, we will still experience undesirable stress.

Now we discuss the individual’s and organisational approaches to managing stress.

Individual Strategies

As we know that stress has got a number of negative consequences for the individuals, that is why every individual should take personal responsibility for reducing his or her stress level. There are a number of ways by which a person can avoid stressful conditions, change them or learn to cope with them. Stress can be managed by an individual, which will enable him to regain control over his life. Some of the stress reducing strategies from individual’s point of view is:

• Knowledge About Stress: In the first stage, an individual should become knowledgeable about stress. He should know about the process and effect of stress. He must find out the major sources of his stress. He must anticipate stressful periods and plan accordingly in advance. He must be honest with himself and decide what he can cope with what he cannot.
  
  
• Physiological Fitness: Exercise in any form can help people in coping with the stress. Non competitive physical exercise such as aerobics, walking, jogging, swimming, riding a bicycle, playing softball or tennis has been recommended by physicians as a way to deal with excessive stress levels.
  
  
  There is evidence to suggest that individuals who do exercise are much less likely to suffer from certain types of stress related exercise. With proper exercise, diet control and non-smoking habit, blood pressure and cholesterol become controlled and the bodies become resistant to pressures. People are more likely to get physically sick or emotionally depressed if they are overweight or poorly nourished.
  
  
• Time Management: Most of the people are very poor in managing their time. They don’t know that what must be done and when it would be desirable to do so. The result of poor time management is feeling of work load skipped schedules and tension. A well organised person can often accomplish twice as much as the person who is poorly organised. Therefore an individual must understand how to manage his time so that he can cope with’ tensions created by job demands.
  
  A few of the well known time management principles are:
  • Preparing a daily list of activities to be attended to.
  • Prioritizing activities by importance and urgency.
  • Scheduling activities according to the priorities set.
  • Knowing your daily schedule and handling the most demanding parts of a job when you are most alert and productive.
    
    
• Assertiveness: An individual should become assertive. He should not say ‘Yes’ when he wants to say ‘No’. He should start saying ‘No’ to people or managers who demand too much of his time. Being assertive is an important factor in reducing stress.
  
  
• Social Support Network: Every person should have people to turn to, talk to and rely upon. Good friends become highly supportive during times of stress and crisis. Social net work includes friends, family or work colleagues. Expanding your social support system can help in tension reduction because friends extend necessary support when needed and also guide him to get through stressful situations.
  
  
• Readjust life Goals: Every individual must know what he really wants to do. This should relate to not only the major decisions of the life but to all activities of our life. He must know what is important for him. Because of the severe competition in the life to go ahead, most individuals set very high standards and goals for themselves. These high expectations and limited resources to reach such expectations result in stress. Accordingly, every person must re adjust his goals and make sure he has the ability and resources to reach such goals. The goals should be established only after the resources have been analysed.
  
  
• Relaxation Techniques: Every individual must learn the methods to reduce tension through relaxation techniques such as Yoga, meditation, hypnosis and biofeedback. 15-20 minutes a day of deep relaxation releases tension and provides a person with a sense of peacefulness. Deep relaxation condition will bring significant changes in heart rate, blood pressure and other physiological factors. Yoga is probably the most effective remedy for stress. Studies have revealed that yoga has cured several stress related diseases.
  
  
  
• Plan your life in Advance: Many a time, people create situations which induce stress because they either did not plan or did a bad job of planning. There is a traditional Indian attitude of “whatever will be, will be” a way of accepting the unexpected difficulties in life. This attitude may be relevant if those situations over which we do not have any control like death in the family, but for other events in rife, it is better to plan in advance, so that we can confront them with confidence when they occur.

Organisational Strategies

Individuals may design their own strategies to reduce stress, but it is a must for the organisations to develop programmes that will help the employees in reducing their stress. This will lead to less employee turnover, absenteeism and as a result productivity will improve. Some of the measures which organisations can take are:

• Selection and Placement: Individuals differ in their response to stress situations. We know that ‘Type A’, individuals are more prone to stress. On the other hand, in the organisations there are certain jobs which are more stressful as compared to other jobs. While conducting the selection and placement of the employees, these factors must be kept in mind. The individuals who are more prone to stress should not be put on jobs which are stressful. The individuals who are less prone to stress may adapt better to high stress jobs and perform those jobs more effectively.
  
  
• Goal Setting: Based on extensive amount of research it has been concluded that individuals perform better when they have specific and challenging goals and they receive feedback on how well they are progressing towards those goals. Goal setting can reduce stress as well as provide motivation. It will result in less employee frustration, role ambiguity and stress.
  
  
• Improved communication: Sometimes due to lack of effective communication from the superiors, the employees do not know what they have to do and how they have to do it. This results in role ambiguity. Similarly, when two or more persons have contradicting role demands from an employee, it leads to role conflict if there is lack of proper communication. Effective Communication with employees reduces the uncertainty by lessening role ambiguity and role conflict.
  
  
• Redesigning Jobs: Organisations should redesign the jobs in such a way as to give to employees more responsibility, more meaningful work, more autonomy and increased feedback. This will help to reduce the stress caused by monotony, routine work, work overload or under load and role ambiguity. Job redesigning enhances motivation, reduces the stress among the employees and enhances “Quality of work life”.
  
  
• Participative Decision Making: If the organisations give the employees participation in those decisions that directly affect them and their job performance, it can increase employee control and reduce the role stress. The main reason of role stress is that employees feel uncertain about their goals, expectations and how they will be evaluated. These uncertainties can be reduced by the management by giving the employees a right to participate in the decision making.
  
  
• Building Teamwork: The management should try to create such work environment in which there is no provision for interpersonal conflict or inter group conflict. Such conflicts are the causes of stress, and should either be prevented from building or eliminated if they develop. Accordingly, such a team work should be developed that groups and the members are mutually supportive and productive. Members of the group should consider themselves as members of the same family and seek social support from each other.
  
  
• Personal wellness Programmes: These personal wellness programmes focus on the employees total physical and mental condition. Organisations can provide facilities at their premises for physical fitness such as gyms, swimming pools, tennis courts etc. as well as psychological counseling. They should hold seminars or workshops to make the employees understand nature and sources of stress and the possible ways to reduce it. These workshops can help especially those individuals who are already under stress.
  
  
  Moreover, a supervisor can impact personal wellness of his subordinates through positive example, encouragement and by practicing the basic concepts and techniques of human resource management.
  
  To conclude we can say that all these strategies or a combination there of should be applied to make the work environment less stressful to a level which is positive and challenging