Peer Review of Stance Essay Use this week’s discussion to give and get some helpful feedback on the final essay assignment. To begin, upload your draft as an attachment to a posting here as early in the week as possible. Incomplete drafts are acceptable,
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Taking A Stand Against Stress in the Workplace
Assignment #3: "Stance Essay."
Joseph J Anderson
ENG 115- English Composition
Professor George McGeehan
February 17, 2017
We all have to go to work unless of course, you are so financially secure that money may not be a stressful responsibility. The majority of us do have to take on that responsibility and that alone causes tremendous amounts of stress. The reality is that working for a living is just part of life. Implementation of specific controlled factors could greatly increase job satisfaction and reduce stress. Reducing stress at work will benefit overall job satisfaction of most employees because strong leadership would manage them, support systems would be made available, and proper training techniques implemented.
There is supportive evidence of strong leadership reducing stress for employees. The employee needs to know their leader or management person will be there for them and not just some figure barking orders. When a leader is not respectful and just commands or delegates work orders that environment will typically be a stressful one. Without supporting evidence, anyone reading this should agree that no one should be treated disrespectfully by their leadership. An employee should feel as if their working for the leader and not under the leader as if the direct report was lesser of a human than that of the person in the leadership role. I would be willing to bet the majority of us have unfortunately experienced this type of behavior. Now, why is it crucial to have ethical leadership. Ethical leadership is defined as "the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way communication, reinforcement and decision-making." Ethical leadership involves exhibiting traits such as honesty and integrity. Treating employees fairly, showing concern and respect for employees, establishing two-way communication characterized by trust and openness and encouraging employees to participate in decision-making (Zhou, Jin, Ma. 2016, p. 176).
Imagine yourself driving to work early in the morning knowing your schedule for the day. What if you were unable to satisfy the requirements of that day? Would your boss be eager to bring to your attention that you failed or would your boss be more understanding of your workload? Or maybe even offer guidance without harsh backlash? I would much rather have the helping and understanding boss. The manager with a poor attitude and disrespectful appeal will maintain that role in most cases whether you were able to achieve the goal of the day or not. So who am I pleasing here? Should I continue to work hard every day being hopeful, there may be a chance just to make that grumpy boss happy if I work a little harder next time. Or maybe you were like me driving home thinking I failed myself and my expectations. I failed my boss and his expectations of me. Right now there is a dangerous level of stressful emotions occurring. It didn't take much thought to want to go back and work for the good boss we all like. The boss that demonstrates ethical leadership reduces your levels of stress and encourages you with thoughts of continuous improvement rather than constant failure. Take a moment now and think about the next thought. It’s a unique way of looking at leadership. Through the eyes of a soldier, the soldier has a job in mind. The soldier has a role to play and rules to follow. The soldier listens for directions and commands for guidance when performing a job he or she is set out to do. Just like an employee working for a company with obviously much less risk involved. The scenario here is to compare the soldier and the employee being led by a manager to perform and complete a job. Leaders' behaviors are predictors of stress. Leadership practices have the ability to affect certain stressors by providing soldiers with clear expectations for performance and giving soldiers the latitude to exercise judgment over how jobs are performed. Leaders who provide structure and support reduce within-group conflict, perceived role ambiguity and feelings of task insignificance. Stated another way, soldiers who recognize their leaders provide structure and support tend to get along with each other better with less conflict, know what to do in their jobs and feel that they are making more of a significant contribution. Proper leadership is proven to be a critical tool in an environment of reduced stress (Britt, Davison, Bliese, Castro. 2004, p. 542).
Should the employer help the employee during stressful periods or at least offer a company based support system? Take for example that time you had that big project to complete with the deadline fast approaching. Knowing that only the best is acceptable and failure is not an option, this project must be completed to the best of my ability. With those thoughts in mind, stress just entered into this equation. Now the pressure is mounting. There are many other underlying factors as well. Many of the work-life responsibilities that so many of us have just add more stress that could soon begin to blur the mental focus we need so much of to perform to the best of our ability. Let's make a conscious effort to control our stress by taking advantage of an Employee Wellness Programs. These programs offer physical fitness, nutrition, health education and stress management training. A study of 23,000 GM employees found that encouraging obese employees to engage in physical activity as little as once or twice a week reduced healthcare costs by $400 to $500 per employee for a total estimated savings of $790,000 in healthcare costs (Dhobale. 2009, p. 40). Many modern organizations have realized the importance of stress management training to their employees as part of the wellness program for increased productivity. Good mental health leads to good physical health. Healthy employees lead to a healthy organization. Stress management of employees encourages a healthy lifestyle (Dhobale. 2009, p. 44). Your health improves and the company in return has a safer and more productive employee. Implementing the wellness program is a win-win situation for everyone.
What if incentives helped to motivate an employee to join a workplace program? What if the option was available that you could be reimbursed for costs related to stress management and health care? For example, employee wellness program incentives that Integris Health offered to staff required that if the employee met the necessary goals for BMI waist size, cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar and no tobacco use the eligible employee would receive $250 (Jamison, Kleiner. 2016, p. 80). Incentives and reimbursements options are great benefits every employee should utilize.
Proper training is the foundation of any successful business. A structured training program that is easy to follow for both the trainer and trainee should help to set a course of goals and objectives for both parties. Structured format combined with excellent instructors should ensure the best experience and potential of growth and reliability for the trainee. It's understandable that if training is not sufficient, then how could the trainee help the business grow and profit. All sorts of issues are a direct effect of insufficient training including the level of proficiency the employee feels of themselves would lack and the intent of the employee to look elsewhere for employment is elevated. The quality of the product or service could be less than required as well as additional costs to the business to support rework or the need for overtime to relinquish lost production time all caused by insufficient training. When human error causes incidents, person responsible usually say they didn't know what to do or how were they supposed to know that was going to happen. For some reason when human error occurs the person at fault is quick to point the figure. Soon after displacing responsibility, the lack of training or insufficient job knowledge is usually next to be called out. If a choice is given to an employee to own up to their mistake or point the finger at someone else than an issue has already been created. The issue being that the employee has a choice. No employee should have that choice. You are either trained or you are not trained. Taking into consideration expectations should not elevate above level of knowledge. A major failure of many employers is simply this. They set up the employee to fail. Now in many cases that intent is not deliberate but the employer needs to stay mindful of skill level and knowledge before assigning work orders. An employee may be unlikely to question the management of what was asked of them in fear they could be looked at as if they didn't know what they were doing when essentially they didn't. The employee tried their best to do what was asked of them.
One study performed with twelve undergraduates with no prior behavioral analysis resulted with those applicants demonstrating positive results after implementing specific training techniques. Combinations of instruction manuals and instructor-led training strategies were surveyed. Both strategies were effective, but the instructor led training was predominately the most useful method of training (Hatlenes, Eikeseth. 2016, p. 380). Techniques of using only one of each method and a technique of combining the methods were implemented. The most beneficial were the technique of combining manual instruction with hands-on supervision proved major gains of 90% increase in skills. Proper training is without a doubt essential for the employee.
We shouldn't have to just deal with underlying issues at work that causes stress if those issues could be controlled. Following these recommendations could allow for a happier employee in the long run. Reducing stress at work will benefit the overall job satisfaction of most employees with effective leadership, systems that offer help to the employee, and proper training techniques put in place to encourage the employee to succeed.
Reference List
Britt Thomas W, Davison James, Bleise Paul D., Castro Carl Andrew. (2004) How leaders can influence the impact that stressors have on soldiers. Military Medicine, 2004 Jul; Vol.169 (7), pp. 541-5.
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Dhobale Rajasshrie Suressh. (2009) Stress Management Training: a boon to employee wellness. ICFAI journal of soft skills. Mar2009, Vol.3 Issue 1, pp.39-77. 6p.
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Hatlenes Linda Teikari, Eikeseth Svein. (2016) Effects of theory training, hand-on supervision and a self-instructional treatment manual on staff competency. International electronic journal of elementary education; Dec2016, Vol. 9 Issue 2, pp373-383, 11p.
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Jamison Jessica, Kleiner Brian. (2016) Excellence in wellness program incentives. Insights to a changing world journal, 2016, Vol. 2016 Issue 1, pp. 232-236. 5p.
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Zhou Hao, Jin Maozhu, Ma Qian. (2016) Remedy for work stress: The impact and mechanism of ethical leadership. Cent Eur J Public Health, 2015; 23 (2): 176-180.
Retrieved from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=cb86396b-56e0-41bd-94cb822988fb2570%40sessionmgr103&hid=119&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#AN=26851431&db=mdc
