coping strategies for stress

Coping Strategies For Stress

 

Any high-level stress affects the individual directly and through him, his family and organisation. Therefore, efforts should be made to overcome the negative consequences. Such efforts can be made at two levels: individual level and organisational level.

 

Individual Coping Strategies

Stress may cause within organisational context and outside as discussed earlier. Therefore, coping strategies may be adopted by individuals without reference to the organisation. Individual coping strategies tend to be more reactive in nature. That is, they tend to be ways of coping with stress that has already occurred. Some individual strategies, such as physical exercises, can be both reactive and proactive, but most are geared towards helping the person who is already suffering from stress. Following are the major individual coping strategies.

 

1.         Physical Exercise. Physical exercise is a good strategy to get body fit and to overcome tress. Physical exercises of different types such as, walking, jogging, swimming, playing, etc: are good methods of overcoming stress. The role of Yoga, a scientific technique of physical exercise to keep body fit and to overcome stress, has been recognised in most part of the world. Physical exercise helps people to better cope with stress generally as a side effect, such as relaxation, enhanced self-esteem, and simply getting one's mind off work for a while.

 

2.         Relaxation. Impact of stress can be overcome by relaxation. The relaxation can be a simple one or some specific techniques of relaxation such as biofeedback and meditation. In biofeedback, the individual learns the internal rhythms of a particular 30dy process through electronic signals feedback that is wired to the body area (for example, skin, brain, or heart). From this feedback, the person can learn to control body process in question. Meditation involves quiet concentrated inner thought in order to rest the body physically and emotionally. Transcendental meditation is one of the more popular practices of meditation. In this practice, the mediator tries to meditate for two periods of fifteen to twenty minutes a day, concentrating on the environment of some mantra. Any meditation essentially involves a relatively quiet environment, a comfortable position, a repetitive mental stimulus, and a passive attitude. Meditation has been recognised as a powerful technique for reducing stress. Whether a person takes easy one or specific relaxation technique, the intent is to eliminate the immediately stressful situation or manage a prolonged stressful situation more effectively.

 

3.         Work-home Transition. Work-home transition is also like a relaxation technique. In this technique, a person may attend to less pressure inducing type or routine work during the last 30 or 60 minutes of work time. For instance, during the last hour of work, the person can review the day's activities, list the priorities of the activities that need to be attended to the next day. Thus, he can finish his day's work and come back relaxed manner.

 

4.         Cognitive Therapy. Because of increasing stress, special cognitive therapy techniques have been developed by psychologists. In these techniques, lectures and interactive discussion sessions are arranged to help participants: (i) recognise events at work and what cognitions they elicit; (ii) become aware of the effects of such cognitions on their physiological and emotional responses; (iii) systematicaly evaluate the objective consequences of events at work; and (iv) replace self-defeating cognitions that unnecessarily arouse strain.

 

5.         Networking. Networking is the formation of close associations with trustee _ empathetic co-workers and colleagues who are good listeners and confidence builde Such persons provide mental support to get the person through stressful situatior:

 

Organizational Coping Strategies

Organisational coping strategies are more of proactive nature, that is, they attempt a: removing existing or potential stressors and prevent the onset of stress of individua jobholders. As discussed earlier, there are many organisational stressors. Therefore the organisational coping strategies revolve round those factors which produce 0 help producing stresses. Following are organisational coping techniques Cl.nd efforts

 

1. Supportive Organisational Climate. Many of the organisational stressors emerge because of faulty organisational processes and practices. To a very great extent, these can be controlled by creating supportive organisational climate. Supportive organisational climate, as discussed later, depends upon managerial leadership rather than the use of power and money to control organisational behaviour. The focus is primarily on participation and involvement of employees in decision-making process. Such a climate develops belongingness among people whi£h helps them reduce their stress ..

 

2. Job Enrichment. A major source of stress is the monotonous and disinteresting jobs being performed by employees in the organisation. Through mote rational designing of jobs, as discussed earlier, jobs can be enriched. Improving content factors such as responsibility, recognition, opportunity for achievement and advancement, or improving core job characteristics such as skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback may lead to motivation, feeling sense of responsibility, and utilising maximum capability at the work. Such a phenomenon helps in reducing stress.

 

3. Organisational Role Clarity. People experience stress when they are not clear about what they are expected to do in the organisation. This may happen because either there is ambiguity in the role or there is role conflict. Such a situation can be overcome by defining role more clearly. Role analysis technique helps both managers and employees to analyse what the job entails and what the expectations are. Breaking down the job to its various components clarifies the role of the job incumbent for the entire system. This helps to eliminate imposing unrealistic expectations on the individual. Role ambiguity, role conflict and role overload can be minimised, consequently leading to reduced stress.

 

4. Career Planning and Counselling. Career planning and counselling helps the employees to obtain professional advice regarding career paths that would help them to achieve personal goals. It also makes them aware of what additional qualifications, training, and skills they should acquire for career advancement. A variety of career counselling programmes can be adopted: (i) devices designed to aid the individuals in self-assessment and increased self-understanding; (ii) devices designed to communicate opportunities available to individuals; (iii) career counselling through interviews by managers, counselling professionals and personnel and educational specialists; (iv) workshops and educational activities designed to assist the individuals in goal setting and establishing action plan for change; (v) educational and experimental programmes to prepare individuals with skills and knowledge for new activities and new careers; programmes (vi) programmes for enhancing the individuals' opportunities to make job and career changes. Various career planning and counselling programmes for individuals go a 6 way in providing them satisfaction and reducing the stress.

 

5. Stress Control Workshops and Employee Assistance Programmes. The 5anisation can hold periodical workshops for control and reduction of stress. Such workshops may help individuals to learn the dynamics of stress and methods of overcoming their ill effects. Similarly, the organisation can make arrangement for assisting individuals in overcoming their personal and family problems. This arrangement may include managing personal finance, dealing with family problems, dealing with health problems, and dealing with other kind of personal and family stresses.

 

Both types of coping strategies for stress-individual and organisational-taken together not necessarily guarantee that individuals will not experience stress. However, such strategies may help either in reducing the tendency of occurring stresses or if stresses have occurred, help in minimising their negative impact.