Workplace stress

Workplace stress is a major concern in modern organizations, impacting both employees and business outcomes worldwide. It involves harmful physical and emotional responses when work demands exceed an individual's capabilities or needs. Stress arises from factors like lack of autonomy, unclear roles, poor relationships, excessive demands, and mismatched values, many rooted in organizational culture. Challenges such as heavy workloads, performance pressure, communication breakdowns and remote work have increased stress, especially since the COVID 19 pandemic. Because stress is subjective, organizations must prioritize prevention and support. Prolonged work related stress significantly impacts both individuals and organizations. For employees, ongoing stress can lead to fatigue, anxiety, burnout, and physical symptoms like headaches and sleep problems. Employers face lower job satisfaction, disengagement, more absenteeism, and higher turnover, resulting in lost productivity and increased recruitment, training and healthcare costs. A culture of stress can also harm organizational reputation and hinder talent retention, making proactive well being essential. To tackle workplace stress, it helps to understand its origins. Classic models like the job demands resources theory, suggest stress arises when job demands exceed available resources, such as too many tasks, tight deadlines, or unclear expectations with insufficient support or autonomy.