Stress and Violence in Workplace - Research Paper Example

? Stress and Violence in Workplace Stress in Workplace Introduction Stress in Workplace is even recognized as occupational stress and is defined as response that is exhibited by individuals when they come into contact with different stressors in the work place due to which employees end up making extra effort, but fail to cope with. The term occupational violence is described as attacks that are both physical and emotional in nature and are carried out against a set of workers or an individual worker and may risk the physical and mental wellbeing of the workers. This writing will focus on the contributing factors of both workplace violence and stress and even pay emphasis to the legal as well as moral duties of the employers in relation to mitigation of both stress and violence. Body There are various factors that contribute heavily towards work related stress experienced by employees; one of these factors is the demands of the work that are levied on the employees. Individuals have varying abilities in regards to the amount of work they can perform and the time they can spend on work. When work demands exceed the capabilities of the workers, workers feel stressed out due to their failure to meet work demands and the extra effort they put in to meet these demands. According to Virtanen, employees who worked for more than 55 hours on weekly basis were more likely to experience symptoms of depression as well as anxiety as compared to employees who worked around 35 to 40 hours on weekly basis and this was specifically found to be true among working women (Virtanen, 2011, p.92). Work stress can even be caused due to lack of control experienced by the employees. When employees perceive that they have little say in the decision making of the tasks they perform and higher level of surveillance is levied on them, they feel that they are not important for the organization and may fear that they might lose their position and this leads to work related stress. Another major factor that contributes to work stress is lack of relationships with the organizational environment. When employees perceive that they are in a conflict over a long period of time with their peers, they end up feeling stressed out and left alone. There are various factors that can contribute to the occurrence of workplace violence, these factors include: individual factors as well as environmental factors. Individual factors are related to individuals working in the organization and environmental factors are related to the work environment of an organization. Individuals within an organization may have a history of being involved in violent activities such as aggressive and deviant behaviors may become a source of violence in the organization he/she is working for (Curry, 1996, p.35). Individuals may even hold prejudiced opinion against certain population of the society and having such individuals working in an organization can result in violent activities conducted by an individual towards the group or individuals who belong to the portion of the population against whom an individual may have biased attitude. It is quite difficult to identify that workplace violence exists in an organization as certain people of the organization may regard certain activities as violence against them, while others may regard same activities as routine business and not harmful. Certain individuals may perceive that managers who are authoritarian in nature are conducting violent activities against them, while others may perceive such behavior of the managers as simply part of the working environment. Workplace violence may even occur in those working environments where aggressive behavior and hostile acts are ignored and preventive measures are not in place. Workplace violence even occurs in organizations where employees feel that they are competing against each other and may become frustrated and conduct violent activities out of aggression. Employers are both ethically as well as legally required to mitigate both the violence as well as stress experienced by employees at the workplace. According to the OSHA Act that came into operation during the period of 1970, it has been made obligatory for the employer to treat the issue of violence at workplace under the section of General Duty Clause (Curry, 1996, p.40). According to this clause an employer has to ensure that employees work in an environment that does not comprises of risk factors that can physically or emotionally harm employees. Employers can be legally as well as ethically held responsible for conducting the act of negligent hiring. The theory of negligent hiring states that employees need to take all necessary steps in order to ensure that the people he/she is hiring are not a threat to other employees. An employer may be held responsible for being involved in negligent hiring if he/she hires an individual without conducting proper background checks and the hired individual ends up hurting other individuals within the workforce. For example in the case of Whalen the court held an employer for being responsible for the act of negligent hiring since the employer had ignored his duty of exercising care during the selection of a particular employee (Schneid, 1997, p.211). According to shareholder value theory, the main duty of an organization is to enhance the profitability of the shareholders (Crane, 2009, p.55). If organizations do not counter workplace violence and stress, the cost to conduct increases and this leads to decrease in shareholder value. Conclusion Stress in the workplace is experienced by employees as a result of various stressors in the environment they are working and violence in the workplace is experienced by employees when they are physically and emotionally tormented by other individuals as well as the environment. There are various contributing factors that can cause work related stress, these include: job demands, perceived lack of control and relationships. Work related violence can occur if employers hire employees who have a history of aggression and violence, if certain employees hold discriminatory views against people belonging to certain section of the community, if employees perceive that the environment they are working in is hostile and if preventive measures are not in place to curtail violence. Employers have a legal as well as ethical duty of mitigating stress as well as violence in the workplace. References Crane, A. (2009). The Oxford handbook of corporate social responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Curry, R. R., & Allison, T. L. (1996). States of rage: emotional eruption, violence, and social change. New York: New York University Press. Schneid, T. D., & Schumann, M. S. (1997). Legal liability: a guide for safety and loss prevention professionals. Gaithersburg, Md.: Aspen Publishers. Virtanen, M., Ferrie, J. E., Singh-Manoux, A., Shipley, M. J., Stansfeld, S. A., Marmot, M. G., Ahola, K., ... Kivima?ki, M. (January 01, 2011). Long working hours and symptoms of anxiety and depression: a 5-year follow-up of the Whitehall II study. Psychological Medicine, 41, 12, 2485-94. Read More