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Managing Human Element at Work

Notes
Figure 12.3: Consequences of Stress

Physiological consequences
Increased blood pressure, increased heart
rate, hot and cold spells, breathing problems,
muscular tension, and gastrointestinal
disorders.

Psychological consequences
Stress Boredom, anxiety, dissatisfaction, depression,
tension, irritability, and job burnout.

Behavioural consequences
Sleep disorders, changes in eating habits,
increase in smoking and alcohol consumption,
nervous mannerisms such as rapid speech,
fidgeting, and rude behaviour.

The cost to the employer can be visualized from three different perspectives. The first cost
could be in terms of health insurance that the employer has to pay for very serious illnesses
such as heart disease. Secondly, the majority of the accidents caused by employees in the
workplace setting could be because of the emotional turmoil the employee is going through.
Thirdly, there could be legal hassles between the employer and the employee because of stress-
related worker compensation claims.
12.7.2 Psychological Consequences

Excessive amount of stress in an organization can cause boredom, dissatisfaction, anxiety,
tension, irritability, and depression. All of these take the feeling of well-being away from the
individual and contribute to poor concentration, indecision, and decreased attention span at
work. If individuals are not able to change or move away from the stressors, they may resort
to psychological substitutes such as anger, feeling of persecution, displacement, criticism,
negativism, denial, apathy, fantasy, hopelessness, withdrawal, forgetfulness, and procrastination.

Job Burnout
Excessive and unmanageable amount of stress depletes the individual’s effort to combat stress,
resulting in job burnout. Job burnout refers to the adverse effects of working conditions in
which the ability to confront and manage stress reduces significantly and job satisfaction and
relief from stress seem impossible. According to Lee and Ashforth, the burnout phenomenon
typically contains three components:
1. A state of emotional exhaustion
2. Depersonalization of individuals
3. Feeling of low personal accomplishment

A state of emotional exhaustion occurs most commonly among individuals who have both a
high frequency and a high intensity of interpersonal contact. This kind of interpersonal contact
may lead to emotional exhaustion, a key component of job burnout. Most vulnerable to this
problem are teachers, police officers, and social workers. Depersonalization refers to the treatment
of people as objects. When a teacher refers to her student by roll number and not by name, she
has actually dissociated herself with the student as a person. The student is, then, treated not

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