Managing Stress Factors in the Workplace

Abstract

Tackling excessive workplace stress, associated with a number of diseases that can affect employees under stress, is among every organisation’s main goals . Greater number of diseases means higher costs for the organisation. Even before employees develop serious illnesses due to excessive stress, stress negatively affects their overall work performance which can lead to poor business results. For that reason, it is important for each organisation to set up a program in order to eliminate stress factors in the company, performed in three phases. In the first phase, the amount of stress in the company is determined, and in which areas; in the second phase, strategies and measures are developed to prevent and reduce the effect of stress factors; and in the third phase, the measures are implemented. After that, it is of crucial importance to periodically return to the first phase, to check the effectiveness of the implemented measures and potentially discover new stress factors. The article presents the first two phases, where, in the first phase, types of stress factors causing excessive stress reactions in the workplace as well as critical groups experiencing excessive stress are identified, and in the second phase, measures are suggested to prevent and reduce the effect of stress factors in the workplace based on a model of successful coping with stress at the workplace.