Work Stress: Effects, Theories, and Coping Strategies

This essay discusses the effects of work stress, theories of stress (Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome and Folkman & Lazarus' Cognitive Appraisal Theory), and coping strategies. It also explores the causes of work stress, such as fear of being laid off, working long hours, and lack of control. The essay concludes with suggestions for managing work stress and preventing burnout. Course code, course name, and college/university are not mentioned.

RUNNING HEADER: Work stress
Work stress
Name
Institution
Date
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Abstract
Stress is a way in which the body expresses itself to react to any kind of threat or expectations
put unto someone. Stress isn’t considered a bad thing at all as stress in a work place can actually
turn out positive .stress has two effects in a person taking an instance of work stress it may keep
one focused on a task that they are supposed to perform but excess of this will turn out disastrous
as it may derail ones performance at work.
Work stress may spill over to family stress and this may hurt the wellbeing of a family. Fear of
being laid off is the biggest cause of work stress followed by working long hours, pressure to
meet high expectations set by pressure to work all time and finally lack of control of how to do
your work (Biron,Gatrell & Cooper,2010). All these result to making work very uncomfortable
and soon they pill up and may result to a breakdown health wise ,financially and even socially as
one may suffer depression ,job loss and loos his/her family respectively .
Throughout my essay I will elaborate more on the effects of work stress possible steps to reverse
the .The main theories to be analyzed in this context will entail Selye’s (1956) General
Adaptation Syndrome of stress and Folkman & Lazarus’ (1984) Cognitive Appraisal Theory of
stress and the methods of analysis of the data criticizing the flaws while I suggest possible
amendments (Elçi, Şener, Aksoy,& Alpkan,2012).

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Seyles general adaptation theory
In this theory they access the effect of stress on an individual on a longer duration of exposure.it
can simply be split into three categories the initial alarm stage followed by the interim resistance
stage and finally the exhaustion stage. The steps of growth in stress form start with the basic
adrenaline rush that is quite helpful but with time this grows to depression as the high levels of
adrenaline result to a hyper system (Cheek ,et all, 1983) in which the heart is always pumping
excitedly and the blood pressure remains high. If the effects persist with longer period of the
body being subjected to such it finally becomes overwhelming and the body finally tends to
succumb to this through heart failure and other pressure related disorders.
Keeping the seyles theory in mind we take in account unresponsive and rowdy students. Students
that fail to meet the basic requirement of class attendance and still expect to get better grades at
the end of the desired learning period. Such cases take a toll on the teachers as teachers are given
a mandate to teach and prepare students well so as they may get better grades in the final exams,
uncooperative students like this tend to be a pain to the teacher making stress levels to the
teacher rise slowly but gradually till they get to levels detectable (Lambert, E. G,2004).
Strict deadlines being set by the school board .taking into account a university setup lecturers are
expected to upload student results at a given time frame that has been allocated and failure to this
is a compromise to the lectures job .such strict deadlines are very tough they take a toil in one
and would often result to the lecturer taking his/her work home since during the same time they
are expected to offer lectures. This prolonged adrenaline will overstay its welcome resulting to

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levels of depressions like the one we discussed above the initial alarm stage which is just the
window stage of depression.
Folkman & Lazarus’ (1984) Cognitive Appraisal Theory of stress
In this theory focus is made on self-interpretation. If a stressor is seen as a challenge we perceive
a way to formulate a strategy to cope with it and a threat that cannot be resolved or that doesn’t
have a way to be resolved is perceived as stress.in this theory stress is viewed as a two way
perspective in which the individual is in control of the environment and how he/she perceives it
predetermines the response (Gray‐Stanley et al, 2010).Overwhelming administrative tasks and
parents tasks ,Administrations do offer offices to teachers this offices come with them more
duties and challenges .a teacher may be forced to work overtime to achieve all duties delegated
to the office he/she holds .the teacher in this case can choose to perceive this as a challenge and
come up with a solution such as proper time management within the normal working hours and
curb this problem, on the other hand the teacher may see this overwhelming duty as a threat and
see no way out of it maybe get stuck working up to wee hours just to deliver in the position
assigned. This two approaches tackle the same problem but one really works the teacher out and
work overload and working wee hours has been a major cause of work stress.
Lack of necessary teaching materials, underfunded schools that make it hard for the teachers to
deliver in their capacity also contribute greatly.in such a sticky situation using teacher A and
teacher B as illustrations. (Hon, Chan, & Lu, 2013). A teacher may see the lack of proper
teaching materials as a challenge and opt to find a solution, he/she may opt to find alternative

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options to manage and still deliver by improvising the available materials and this approach
won’t take a toll on him/her, Teacher B may choose to whine about the administrations
incompetence and lack of proper funding making hi/her work a nightmare. This approach to the
teacher won’t be beneficial at all as it results to a pile up of stress levels to the teacher.
Criticism of the research methodology
Surveys
This partakes the obtaining of information from large numbers of people, for our case study
phoning, questionnaires and interviews may be used to source out information from our teachers
(Kivimäki & Kawachi, 2015). This type of research is very helpful as it seeks to source out
information from large numbers of people as such it comes in handy and its easily documented
for future references .its major downfall is that taking in mind administration of questionnaires it
is restrictive as users don’t actually get to say what the really think but are guided by simple
yes/no .most of them also fail to capture the body language of the correspondent and this is a
major cue in this type of information analysis.
Questionnaires
This is very helpful when seeking to obtain information from a large number of
correspondent’s .it gives the correspondent the ability to take time think about what is being
asked and formulate answers that he/she deems correct in their capacity as the respondent
(Marek, Schaufeli, & Maslach, 2017). The major setback to this type of analysis is that
correspondents fail to answer many of the questions and provide half information, a large
number of people also find it hard to answer questions they see as not socially correct and in our

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study the teachers may fail to tell certain things that they think will negate the image of the
school (Yu, Wang, Zhai, Dai, & Yang, 2015).
Interviews
This is entails close interaction between the respondent and the administrator. Its pro is that it
gets to capture the body language which is very important as a respondent gets to study more
other than the word of mouth, it’s also easily documented since most interviews are done on
camera (Mustafa, & Sharif, 2011). The major drawback for this type is that it is time consuming
since the staging of an interview isn’t an instantaneous act and that its only viable when low
numbers are being accessed it does not offer the wide range of information to sufficiently state
for a given niche (Shultz, Wang, Crimmins, & Fisher, 2010). One teacher cannot be used as the
standard to speak for all the teachers and this is what interviews lack in diversity delivery.
Participating and non-participating observations
This involves the researcher to put his/her self into the shoes of the correspondent. This has a
major boost as it makes them get to feel the actual stage in the ground as they get exposed to all
environment conditions that their correspondent are exposed to (Szabo, Tache,& Somogyi,
2012). The con in this type of analysis is false impression as majorly the correspondents tend to
set up a false image and won’t act normally as they are under scrutiny, this may result with false
data that won’t help in analysis of the situation they are exposed to thus misleading the survey.
Case studies
They entail the detailed study of a individual case, this is advantageous as it channels all the
energy onto the project of analysis and date obtained from such can be dependable on its very
accurate in every sense (Steinhardt, Smith Jaggars, Faulk, & Gloria, 2011). Its major setback is

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that it focusses on a narrow source of data and although it offers qualitative information it cannot
be depended on for quantitative data reviews as it may give misleading information.
Part 2
As a nurse my possible source of burnout could be the common cases in the work stress causes.
The emergency unit is very demanding and at times I am forced to work long times past the
normal working hours just because a case that demands all hands on deck trying to help out a
new emergency case that has arrived. Pressure at work could be another cause the main task of
being a nurse means precision at all times and no clumsy work as any error could be fatal to the
patient and would result to a major crisis to the hospital and a compromise of my career.
Emotional attachments towards certain patient’s health result to a drag.as we take information
and get stressed as an operation to rescue the patient proves unsuccessful, letting this heavy heart
to carry on will definitely be a great contribution to the burn out (Szabo, Tache, & Somogyi,
2012). Lack of control on how I should carry out my work is a major factor to the burn out,
trying to fit in the standards that have been setup by the institution trying to work in a way that
isn’t very helpful to my style of work is a thing that will make my work drag. Trying to meet the
standards and work style that has been setup.
The best ways to cope with the work stress would be developing a healthy response to the stress
created. This entails that I develop ways that aren’t the traditional taking alcohol to wipe it all off
but rather adopt methods like yoga ,physical classes or even pick up a hobby. This would provide
a relatively better way to suppress the normal stress that piles up during working hours (Szabo,
Tache, & Somogyi, 2012).

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Taking time to recharge, this entails basically taking time to switch off all about the work
activities and getting that you alone time .this is often advisable when you get that space you
truly desire and can express yourself fell free and this will entail cutting off all communications
work related just to get that recess .this helps a lot to replenish all the energy lost during work
and recharge in preparation of a new day.
Conclusion
As stated above research would be beneficial if they really valued the quality rather than quantity
of data obtained. The methods should really encourage more and more user to analyst interaction
with a suitable environment that would serve as a boost to the quality of response received
(Szabo, Tache, & Somogyi, 2012). For the questionnaires being administered there should a mix
between closed end questions and open end questions as this allows to get the real response
rather than a simple yes or no .As stated above stress on a person is mostly as a result of pile up
in the normal work pressure and through early detection it can be managed and curbed before it
get out of hand (Tsai, & Liu, 2012). The various methods of analysis come in handy in helping
our case study but are not proof to error as some are biased and thus can effectively conclude that
the methods have a great impact on the outcome.

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