Poor planning, weak supervisors and office cliques can all increase the level of stress in the office.

Poor planning, difficulties with assessing priorities, organizational policy gaps, supervisory issues and immature interpersonal relations among co-workers can create stress.

Here are some workplace stressors that, if not dealt with, harm staff and businesses:

* Accountability Stress:

Stress can come about when an employee has an enormous amount of responsibility but no authority. In situations like these, an employee may have to deliver on a project and may even be assigned as the lead person, but the employee may not have the power to deal with the issues that arise.The resulting stress is difficult to deal with especially when it looks like the project might fail.

Fixing this situation is difficult without the help of the superior who assigned the project. If that supervisor waves the staff person away, the project will probably fail.

Employees who are in charge of a project should be given the authority to lead or a supervisor must work with the employee to make sure that other employees take him/her seriously, and that work is done in an effective and efficient manner.  

* Work-Life Balance Stress:

Juggling work and home life responsibilities can become a great burden to employees with family and career obligations.  

People have the tendency to believe that they must perform at Olympic levels both professionally and personally. It is important to prioritize what is most important and to achieve those priorities.  

Those who think that they can handle everything that is thrown at them are at the greatest risk for workplace stress.

* Discrimination:

Experiencing discrimination at work based on your race, gender, sexual orientation or physical disability can be stressful. When this happens it is important that you know about your company's policy about how minorities should be treated.

Sometimes you may notice a particular ethnic or racial group is getting the interesting assignments or there are racial or sexual slurs made at your expense.

Many companies have policies and procedures on how to deal with situations like these. However, if there are no policies in place then you can only appeal to superiors.

It is important to keep a record of discriminatory situations for which you want action.

* Unfairness:

Unfair work practices are not any less stressful that discriminatory behavior. When employees are treated unfairly they become disengaged, think of quitting or apathetic at work.

Unfair behavior can include being promised a promotion after completing required tasks to a high standard only to find that the promotion is not forthcoming.

Other situations can include being given work that undermine your abilities, being criticized when circumstances prevented your optimal performance or when you weren't provided with the proper resources to do the job effectively. These kinds of situations lead to burnout.  

* Office-Clique Stress:

Being socially isolated can be devastating. We spent most of our waking hours at work.  As a result office cliques can be damaging to morale, given the amount of time spent there. It is normal for workers to be friends with some, but not all staff.  However, efforts should not be taken by people to exclude others.

Supervisors often tolerate office cliques because some supervisor may even belong to the clique.  

Employees should make an effort to inform the supervisor about the office clique and how it is hampering productivity.

“While stress may be common at work, there are ways individual employees, supervisors, and the organization can help reduce difficult encounters, harmful dynamics and poorly planned endeavors to generate increased efficiency, productivity and enjoyment.”

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Posted by: suhujitha on 2009-06-18 15:09:14

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