Stress can be painful and performance limiting for the most junior recruit to the most experienced senior executive in an organization. When employees perceive that their efforts are not matched by rewards they are found to be at risk of a host of stress related illnesses, including cardiovascular disease. Stress audit practices create awareness about the employees’ physical and psychological status and help to focus on providing employees with strategies and tools that can lead to personal as well as professional growth and development, better workplace relationships and less conflict and stress. The following real case study of Ms.Nanthini implies the need to have stress audit practices in organizations.

As people spend a large part of their time at work, the workplace is a crucial setting for action. It has been observed that interventions to improve individual capacity and to reduce stressors in the work environment increase population health and economic development. Employees tend to display a variety of emotional reactions regarding management decisions and behaviour that, in their perception, have robbed them of a known way of life and work place security, and cast uncertain shadows on their future careers. While many of the external aspects of change happen according to schedule, the internal transition of an individual happens in a non- scheduled manner. For most people, the journey seems long, uncertain, tiring and very stressful.

Devastating Effects of Work Stress

We always emphasize the emotional impact of work stress and underplay the devastating effects it can have on cognitive functioning and on physical health. Recently, in a presentation at the University of South Australia, Professor Dick Dienstbier, University of Nebraska, stated that exposure to chronic work stress over time without sufficient opportunity for recovery leads to degradation of the hippocampus. This is a major problem not only for individuals but for knowledge organizations/ industries and especially knowledge economies, because the hippocampus is required for higher level cognitive functions.

Workers can be relied upon to know what local stressors are, and hearing others raise similar issues validates these concerns. Once identified, action needs to be taken to reduce the stressors, followed by feedback, and by evaluation to confirm reduction or to arrive at improvements in the process that need to be made. In the field this is referred to as the risk management approach (identify, assess, control).

When employees perceive that their efforts are not matched by rewards (including the old fashioned ‘you are doing a good job’) they are found to be at risk of a host of stress related illnesses, including cardiovascular disease (Seigrist, 1996). The following case is a typical example.

– Vasuki Mathivanan,

Care Provider at SeekSpark