@ 2012 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning
Topics
1. Models of Organizational Stress
2. Stress and Occupations
3. Work Stress and Health
4. Shift Work and Other Work Schedules
5. What Is Burnout?
6. Burnout and Health
7. Burnout Prevention and Treatment
@ 2012 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning
Topics
6. Time Management
7. Time Management Strategies
11. Job-Related Well-Being
12. Work Stress Organizational Interventions
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MODELS OF ORGANIZATIONAL
STRESS
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Models of Organizational
Stress
 Organizational stress deals with how structure and
processes of the organization bring about stress.
 Job stress is specific to the roles,
tasks, and demands of a specific job
within the organization.
 Work stress is generic and applies
to all manner of work-related contexts including
the stress of informal work, self-employment, a
formal job, or work in an organization.
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Models of Organizational
Stress
 There are a number of theoretical models of
organizational stress.
 According to Robert Kahn and his associates,
stress involves adjustment to work roles.
 What is a work role? As described
by Beehr and Glazer (2005, p. 10),
a “work role can be defined as the
social character one ‘plays’ in an
organization.”
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Organizational Role Stress
Three concepts from Kahn, et al. (1964) model:
 Role conflict occurs when two or more role
demands are incompatible with another.
 Role ambiguity occurs when the duties,
responsibilities, and performance expectations of the
job are not clearly defined by leaders.
 Role overload occurs when the
workload is too great and there are
insufficient resources to complete
tasks, an experience referred to as
quantitative overload.
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Organizational Role Stress
(cont’d.)
 Or the employee does not have the required
competencies to complete
the tasks even when there
is sufficient time, an
experience known as
qualitative overload.
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Person-Environmental Fit
Model
 Stress occurs when there is a poor fit between the
worker and the work environment.
 A worker perceives (subjective) that his or her:
 Abilities do not match the demands of the
organization.
 His/her needs are not met by the
organization.
 The greater the misfit, the greater
the stress.
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Job Demands-Control (Job
Strain) Model
 Strain
occurs when a worker experiences high
psychological job demands and has little control.
 Low decision latitude refers to
having insufficient skills or authority
(control) over one’s job to
autonomously complete job tasks.
 The term job strain is used in this model and other
organizational stress contexts to refer to harmful
consequences that result from exposure to job
stressors.
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Job Demands-Control (Job
Strain) Model
 There may be:
 Emotion-related strains (e.g.,
frustration, anger, and anxiety).
 Physiological-related strains
(e.g., cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, or
musculoskeletal problems).
 Job-related strains (e.g., low motivation, low job
satisfaction, and absenteeism).
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Job Demands-Control (Job
Strain) Model (cont’d.)
 In this model, the less autonomy and control one
has over job stressors, the more strain one
experiences.
Figure 9.2 Karasek’s Job Demands-Control Model.
High demands coupled with low control leads to high job strain.
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Effort-Reward Imbalance
(ERI) Model
 The Effort-Reward Imbalance (ERI) Model
proposes that high-cost low-gain work efforts are
stressful.
 When we give a lot to our work, we expect
reciprocity in the way of high reward. Imbalance in
reciprocity causes one to experience distress.
 This loss of control threatens one’s
sense of mastery and self-efficacy,
resulting in further stress such as fear
of being laid off or being passed over
for promotion.
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Organizational Injustice Model
 The Organizational Injustice Model assumes that
stress occurs when the organization’s interpersonal
transactions, procedures, or outcomes are perceived
as unfair.
 Organizational injustice can occur
under a variety of circumstances
(employees are not treated with
respect and dignity, if workplace
procedures are unethical or inconsistent, etc.).
 This is seen not only as unfair, but as sources of
stress as well.
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STRESS AND OCCUPATIONS
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Stress and Occupations
 Some occupations and jobs appear to be more
stressful than others.
Police and firefighters:
 Deal with work of an erratic nature;
sometimes boring and sometimes
physically dangerous.
 Show higher rates of divorce and
alcoholism than the general public;
may reflect job stress.
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Stress and Occupations
(cont’d.)
People-oriented workers (teachers, social
workers and health care workers):
 Generally, experience high stress
and a greater likelihood of burnout.
 Nurses generally report high levels
of stress.
 Physicians report high levels of emotional stress.
 Physicians have higher rates of divorce, suicide,
and abuse of prescription drugs than the general
population.
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Stress and Occupations
(cont’d.)
Office workers:
 Coronary heart disease (CHD) rates
are twice as high in women clerical
workers than homemakers.
 Clerical work has high work overload
and perceived lack of control.
 Managers with difficulty coping with
stressors are more likely to report
high levels of anxiety, depression,
and alcohol consumption.
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WORK STRESS AND HEALTH
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Work Stress and Health
 Work stress, like any form of stress, may affect one’s
health and well-being. The most cited and tested
model is the job demands-control model.
 Meta-analysis found that work stress
contributes an extra 50% excess to
coronary heart disease (CHD) risk.
 Those who had permanent stress at
work were more than twice as likely to experience a
myocardial infarction (MI) as their matched controls.
 There is evidence of a higher morning rise in cortisol
among workers with higher work stress.
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Work Stress and Health
(cont’d.)
 Negative health behaviours such
as poor diet and low physical activity
and the metabolic syndrome
explained about one-third of the risk
of work stress on CHD.
 Another study found that work stress accelerates
coronary artery disease progression in women.
 Models of work stress help us understand their role
in the development of heart disease and MI, but
they are not the definitive answer.
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SHIFT WORK AND OTHER
WORK SCHEDULES
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Shift Work and Other Work
Schedules
 Working at night disturbs the Circadian rhythm
which is the 24-hour biological cycle linked to the
light-dark cycle that regulates internal
physiological processes (e.g., core body
temperature, hormone levels, blood
pressure, heart rate, etc.).
 When this is disturbed, it disrupts our
concentration and ability to perform work tasks well.
 It creates disturbances in sleep and wake cycles.
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Shift Work and Other Work
Schedules (cont’d.)
 Shift work is work outside the 7 am – 6 pm frame;
20-25% of workers do shifts.
 Adverse effects are chronic fatigue,
sleep loss, declines in memory and
cognitive functioning, family and social
life disruptions, and detrimental health
conditions.
 The most prevalent health problems found are those
related to the Gastrointestinal (GI) system.
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Shift Work and Other Work
Schedules (cont’d.)
 Shift workers often complain about digestive
disorders such as disturbances of appetite,
irregularity of the bowel movements with prevalent
constipation, heartburn, abdominal pains, etc.
 More serious conditions
such as chronic gastritis
and peptic ulcers also are
more prevalent.
 This is due to both low-quality food available at
night and sleep deficits and disruptions.
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Shift Work and Other Work
Schedules (cont’d.)
 Shift work also seems to increase
the risk for cardiovascular disease.
 Shift workers have a 40% higher
chance of cardiovascular disease
than their day worker counterparts.
 Working long hours (more than 60 hours a week)
and lack of sleep is associated with
increased risk of a Myocardial
infarction (MI).
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Shift Work and Other Work
Schedules (cont’d.)
 Night workers may also be at increased
risk of developing certain forms of
cancer (breast cancer and colorectal
cancer).
 Although the exact mechanisms are not
known, the most popular hypothesis relates to the
hormone melatonin.
 The pineal gland, a tiny gland in the centre of the
brain, releases melatonin during the dark phase and
inhibits its release during the light phase of the lightdark circadian cycle.
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Shift Work and Other Work
Schedules (cont’d.)
 Melatonin lowers our body temperature and causes
drowsiness, which helps us sleep at night.
 The hormone typically reaches its peak
concentration in the middle of the night.
 However, environmental lighting, such as the
lighting in a hospital during
the night, inhibits melatonin
production.
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Shift Work and Other Work
Schedules (cont’d.)
 Melatonin has an inhibiting effect on the production
of oestrogen and on the growth and proliferation of
cancer cells.
 Suppression of melatonin through exposure to light
during the night-time peak concentration periods
likely results in an overall reduced level of blood
melatonin levels.
 The reduced levels of melatonin weaken its ability
to suppress oestrogen, which then has an indirect
effect on breast cancer risk.

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Shift Work and Other Work
Schedules (cont’d.)
 Oestrogen is known to directly stimulate hormone-
sensitive tumours in the breast.
 Some studies indicate that patients with colorectal
cancer have lower levels of melatonin.
 Sleep deprivation among shift
workers may lead to immune
suppression, which also may
contribute to increased risk for
cancer.
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WHAT IS BURNOUT?
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What Is Burnout?
 Arie Shirom (2011, p. 223), defines burnout “as an
affective reaction to ongoing stress whose core
content is the gradual depletion over time of
individuals’ intrinsic energetic resources, including
the components of emotional exhaustion, physical
fatigue, and cognitive weariness.”
 Burnout is a long-term process
mediated by our emotional
reactions to stress that saps our
emotional, physical, and mental
energy reserves.
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What Is Burnout? (cont’d.)
 A worker with opposite characteristics will have
vigour, a positive psychological state
characterized by emotional energy,
physical strength, and cognitive
liveliness.
 Workplace meaningful interactions,
challenges, and success are the top three activities
positively related to vigour.
 Maslach’s Burnout Inventory (MBI) originally
focused on people-oriented occupations.
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What Is Burnout? (cont’d.)
 She presents a three-dimensional model of burnout.
 Emotional exhaustion: the person
feels emotionally depleted, drained,
and lacking in emotional resources.
 Two of the major reasons for this
exhaustion are work overload or work-related
interpersonal conflicts.
 The specific dimension of emotional exhaustion is
being related to declines in work performance.
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What Is Burnout? (cont’d.)
 This dimension represents the individual stress
component of burnout.
 Cynicism refers to disillusionment, a loss of
idealism, negativity, detachment, hostility, and lack of
concern.
 Cynicism represents a way to protect
oneself against the overload of emotional
exhaustion, to create a buffer of detachment.
 This dimension represents the interpersonal
component of burnout.
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What Is Burnout? (cont’d.)
 Reduced
efficacy refers to feelings of diminished
self-efficacy, personal competency, and productivity.
 These feelings arise from a self-assessment of
one’s inadequacy to help others or to
be an effective worker.
 This dimension embodies the
self-evaluation component of burnout.
 Maslach (1998) regards burnout as residing on one
end of a continuum with engagement anchoring the
other end.
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What Is Burnout? (cont’d.)
 Engagement
represents the positive polarity of her
three dimensions and consists of:
 A state of high energy (rather
than exhaustion).
 Strong involvement (rather
than cynicism).
 A sense of efficacy (rather
than a reduced sense of accomplishment).
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What Is Burnout? (cont’d.)
 Burnout has some qualities such as fatigue and loss
of energy similar to that of depression but is different
because it is only associated with
work environments.
 Advanced burnout does not
necessarily lead to depression, it
could just be cynicism with one’s
job and client interactions
(development of a dehumanizing
outlook toward them).
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BURNOUT AND HEALTH
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Burnout and Health
Vital exhaustion relates to burnout and involves a
low energy state, sleep disturbances,
extreme fatigue, irritability and feelings
of demoralization.
 Increased risk of CHD, depression,
and fatal MI.
 Burnout measures the constructs of emotional
exhaustion, physical fatigue and cognitive weariness.
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Burnout and Health (cont’d.)
 The most common causes of death among the
burned-out workers were:
 Alcohol use related
 Coronary artery disease
 Suicide
 Accidents
 Lung cancer in men
 Breast cancer in women.
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Burnout and Health (cont’d.)
 There are evidence that vital exhaustion and burnout
are related to coronary risk factors such as:
 The metabolic syndrome. [The metabolic syndrome
includes high blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body
fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels].
 Dysregulation of the HPA axis along with
sympathetic nervous system
activation.
 Sleep disturbances.
 Systemic inflammation.
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Burnout and Health (cont’d.)
 Impaired immunity functions.
 Blood coagulation and fibrinolysis. In fibrinolysis, a
fibrin clot, the product of coagulation, is broken down.
 Poor health behaviours.
 Burnout is not only a risk for heart disease, but also
for other health conditions
such as type 2 diabetes and
musculoskeletal pain.
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BURNOUT PREVENTION AND
TREATMENT
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Burnout Prevention and
Treatment
 Organizational strategies for reducing burnout:
 Hiring additional employees to reduce work
overload.
 Instituting job orientations and preview programs to
prevent burnout in new employees.
 Give employees realistic and timely
job performance feedback.
 Worker social support groups.
 Use cognitive restructuring intervention programs.
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Burnout Prevention and
Treatment (cont’d.)
 There are some empirical support for the use of
cognitive restructuring interventions.
 Researchers found that cognitive restructuring
training that focused on workers looking at their
situation differently; examining their expectations,
goals and plans as well as learning
relaxation skills reduced emotional
exhaustion, but not the other two
components of burnout (i.e., cynicism
and reduced efficacy).
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Burnout Prevention and
Treatment (cont’d.)
 Self-care: each individual takes responsibility for
using strategies to minimize burnout.
 Examples: using humor, quality time
with friends and family, engaging in
wellness behaviours, taking vacations.
 Staying current on occupational strategies is also
promoted (e.g., attending professional
development workshops).
 Consulting with other professionals
on a regular basis (a mentor).
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Burnout Prevention and
Treatment (cont’d.)
 Exercising greater control over one’s work
environment when appropriate.
 Maintaining a healthy balance between work and
personal life.
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TIME MANAGEMENT
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Time Management
 Time management refers to using our time efficiently
to accomplish our goals.
 Effective use of time is a good stress management
tool because it reduces the feeling of pressure when
we have a backlog of unfinished work or impending
deadlines.
 It improves our productivity and
frees time for leisure activities.
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Time Management (cont’d.)
Types of time wasters:
Lack of goals
 People who do not set goals
waste valuable time because
they do not know where they
are headed.
 Fear of making the wrong decision or too much
stress also can create indecisiveness about which
goals to pursue.
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Time Management (cont’d.)
Too many goals
 People who have too many goals
become quickly overloaded.
 They may experience concentration
difficulties or physical fatigue as the
worries and pressures of unfinished tasks mount.
Procrastination
 Procrastinators view certain tasks as aversive and
try to avoid them as long as possible.
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Time Management (cont’d.)
 As a result, they waste valuable time until their
deadline is about to approach and then rush to
complete the task at the last minute.
 Some enjoy the thrill of their
brinkmanship, the adrenalin rush
of living on the edge.
 Others simply are unable to
self-motivate until the anxiety of
their impending deadline becomes intolerable.
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Time Management (cont’d.)
 Procrastinators may avoid dealing
with unwanted or unpleasant tasks
by using distraction, daydreaming,
wishful thinking, etc. to kill time so
that there is insufficient time left to
work on the avoided task.
 They then can rationalize that they will do the task
tomorrow.
Perfectionism
 Perfectionists often become immersed in trivial
detail and lose sight of the big picture.
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Time Management (cont’d.)
 They waste a great deal of time on minor tasks
instead of allocating their time proportionally to
ensure that major tasks receive the lion’s share of
their time.
 They also may engage in endless
cycles of repetitive checking and
rechecking of their work product
in pursuit of perfection.
Work interruption
 Interruptions, whether they are phone calls or dropins, can consume a lot of your time.
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Time Wasters
TIME MANAGEMENT
STRATEGIES
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Time Management Strategies
 Some limited research that demonstrates time
management training results in enhanced
perception of the control of time, greater job
satisfaction, and less job-related somatic tension.
Popular time management strategies:
Keep a daily time log
 The idea is to record information
about how you use your time.
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Time Management Strategies
(cont’d.)
 This raises your awareness of
particular times or situations where
you are wasting time or could be
working in a way that uses time
more efficiently.
Establish goals and prioritize
 Use a “To-Do List.” On the list
record all the tasks that you need
to do.
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Time Management Strategies
(cont’d.)
 Large or complex tasks should be broken down
into smaller tasks that are also listed.
 Then prioritize your tasks using an A,
B, C goal system.
 “A” goals are top priority goals that
have important positive or negative
consequences associated with their completion.
 B” goals are important, though second to “A”
goals.
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Time Management Strategies
(cont’d.)
 Finally, “C” goals are given the lowest priority.
 This is a rolling list so task items that are completed
are deleted, and new tasks are added as they arise.
Follow the Pareto principle
 The principle that only 20% of
one’s goals contain 80% of the
total value; therefore, good time
management involves spending most of one’s time
on the most important 20% of one’s goals.
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Time Management Strategies
(cont’d.)
Prune and weed
 File or throw away paper when it
crosses your desk rather than letting
it pile up.
 Archive or delete already-read e-mail messages that
are filling your inbox.
 The idea is to process paper or electronic
information once rather than repeatedly.
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Time Management Strategies
(cont’d.)
Set boundaries to manage your physical
workspace and technostress
 Closing your office door sends an
implicit message that you are busy
and not to be interrupted unless it is
important.
 Reply to e-mails, text, or phone messages at
scheduled times each day rather than throughout the
day (e.g., once in the morning and once in the late
afternoon).
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Time Management Strategies
(cont’d.)
 Turn off your cell phone during periods when you
are working on a task and wish not to be interrupted.
 Take time out from focusing on digital media to
prevent digital overload.
 Delegate when feasible and
appropriate.
 Delegating lower priority tasks enables you to focus
more of your time and energy on “A” priority tasks.
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Time Management Strategies
(cont’d.)
 Many who are reluctant to delegate are
perfectionists who believe that if they do not do it
themselves, it will not be done correctly.
Schedule relaxation time
Scheduling relaxation time to
recharge your batteries seems
counterintuitive to some (e.g., Type A
personalities).
However, the idea is to work more
efficiently rather than to just work harder.
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Time Management Strategies
JOB-RELATED WELL-BEING
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Job-Related Well-Being
 Two reasonable goals for obtaining job satisfaction
are to manage job stress well and strive for jobrelated well-being.
 We are most likely to experience flow when we work
on tasks that challenge us while at the same
time, we feel some sense of mastery over them.
 The addition of positive thoughts
and feelings is required for job
satisfaction.
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Job-Related Well-Being
(cont’d.)
 The Self-determination theory states that when
we are intrinsically motivated to move toward
realistic goals we choose, we have a greater chance
of experiencing well-being.
 A job is more likely to foster well-being if there is
flow, we develop meaningful relationships with
community and employees, and
we move forward with goals.
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Job-Related Well-Being
(cont’d.)
 In sum: A job is more likely to foster well-being if it
supports:
 our ability to experience flow,
 pursue intrinsically motivating goals that we have
some say in choosing,
 develop and maintain positive
connections with other employees when
working on our goals, and
 experience a good rate of forward
progress toward achieving our goals.
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Job-Related Well-Being (cont’d.)
Elements of the job environment that determine
well-being:
Opportunity for personal control
 Aspects of previously discussed self-determination
theory such as autonomy, freedom of choice, and the
ability to make decisions about how to conduct one’s
work.
Opportunity for skill use
 The ability to use one’s skills and talents
in the job relates to the experience of competence.
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Job-Related Well-Being
(cont’d.)
Externally generated goals
 Goals presented by others (e.g., organizational
leaders) should be reasonable so that we do not
experience quantitative or qualitative job overload.
 They should be communicated
clearly to avoid creating role
conflicts.
 And there should be sufficient
resources to accommodate the job demands.
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Job-Related Well-Being
(cont’d.)
Variety
 Varying routines and changing the nature of work
tasks help to prevent boredom.
 This also introduces new
challenges that can foster the
development of new skills and
promote the experience of flow.
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Job-Related Well-Being
(cont’d.)
Environmental clarity
 Timely and accurate feedback
about worker performance and
communication about the
consequences of satisfactory
and unsatisfactory work behaviour help to reduce
ambiguity.
 Clarity about the future security of the job reduces
uncertainty.
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Job-Related Well-Being
(cont’d.)
Availability of money
 Salary and overall income play a
role in overall job satisfaction.
 Workers tend to use a social
comparison process of comparing their pay with
other workers’ pay in the same job category.
 If they believe their pay is less than others’ pay with
similar experience working the same job, they are
more likely to be dissatisfied.
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Job-Related Well-Being
(cont’d.)
Physical security
 If a worker feels endangered because of unsafe
working conditions, he or she is more likely to be
dissatisfied.
 Environmental physical stressors
such as excessive heat or noise
also can reduce satisfaction.
 A comfortable, safe, and ergonomically healthy work
environment is optimal.
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Job-Related Well-Being
(cont’d.)
Supportive supervision
 Effective leadership and supportive management
can create work environments that are more positive
and conducive to employees satisfactorily fulfilling
work goals.
Opportunity for interpersonal contact
 The opportunity to have satisfactory
social relationships at work is
important.
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Job-Related Well-Being
(cont’d.)
 Co-workers provide many of the social rewards
(e.g., validation, social support).
 If there is frequent interpersonal
conflict, then social rewards are
diminished, and employees are
less likely to be satisfied.
Valued social position
 Having a job that has meaning to the worker is
important.
@ 2012 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning
Job-Related Well-Being
(cont’d.)
 The job’s status or the prestige
of the occupation also can play
a role in job satisfaction.
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WORK STRESS ORGANIZATIONAL
INTERACTIONS
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Work Stress Organizational
Interactions
 Organizational
work stress interventions aim at the
employee directly or the organization itself and may
be either preventive or recovery oriented.
 Primary prevention strategies: minimize the
source of stress and promote a supportive
organizational culture.
 Stress audits are used to identify
problem areas.
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Work Stress Organizational
Interactions (cont’d.)
 Then resources are directed to these areas to make
positive changes such as changing personnel
policies, improving communication systems,
redesigning jobs, or allowing more decision making
and autonomy at lower levels.
 There is generally good evidence
for their effectiveness in reducing
objective measures of stress (e.g.,
blood pressure, sick days taken).
@ 2012 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning
Work Stress Organizational
Interactions (cont’d.)
 Secondary prevention: teaching
stress management skills.
 This educational approach is
usually multimodal and includes
training in relaxation, time
management, assertiveness, lifestyle management,
or any one of a host of traditional stress
management skills.
 These skills usually are taught to groups of
employees at the work site.
@ 2012 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning
Work Stress Organizational
Interactions (cont’d.)
 There is considerable evidence to suggest that any
measured benefits decay rapidly over time and are
rarely maintained beyond 6 months post-training.
 Tertiary prevention: employees need rehabilitation
and recovery assistance due to mental or physical
health conditions related to stress.
 The Employee Assistance
Program (EAP) is an example.
@ 2012 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning
Work Stress Organizational
Interactions (cont’d.)
 The Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is a
program that provides “counselling, information,
and/or referral to
appropriate internal or
external counselling
treatment and support
services for troubled
employees”.
@ 2012 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning
(cont’d.)
Table 9.2 Primary, secondary, and tertiary workplace stress management
interventions.
The End….
@ 2012 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning
Summary
 Job demands-control model states that stress
results from a worker experiencing high
psychological job demands and low control.
 Certain occupations and jobs are stressful.
 Shift work can result in GI problems and some
types of cancer.
 Burnout is the gradual depletion of personal
energy.
@ 2012 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning
Summary (cont’d.)
 Work environment that supports well-being should
allow for autonomy, work variety, and more.
 Time management strategies can reduce stress
and burnout.
 Organizational work stress interventions include
primary, secondary, or tertiary prevention
strategies.
@ 2012 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning