Approaches to reduce occupational stress Research Paper

Approaches to reduce occupational stress - Research Paper Example We will discuss the stress involved in their work. Moreover, we will analyze the situations in which stress arose among employees in Wal-Mart, the programs they initiated to increase productivity and recommendations will be provided to curb its adverse effects on the individual so that there is a minimum impact on productivity. Wal-Mart Wal-Mart is a multi-national retail corporation, which has numerous chains, departmental stores and warehouses in different parts of the world. This company is owned by Walton Family in the United States of America and is operating in 15 countries. The employees at Wal-Mart in retail sales have been subjected to various issues over a span of time due to which the stress among employees is rising and there is a need to initiate such progressive programs through which the working conditions can become conducive and there is a regulation that promotes and projects a fair treatment among employees. Issues at Wal-Mart Employees who deal with sales at Wal-M art are always required to submit a report at the end of the month regarding the percentage of sales, which have occurred during that time. It was seen that the company faced a weak performance and sales were a total disaster. The factors, which were highlighted, showed that the decrease in sales was due to the fact that the economic condition of the United States is affected. It was seen that there was an increase in the Social Security tax due to which the customers could be facing unemployment issues, rise in price of gas etc. Due to these crises the management in Wal-Mart initiated a plan to increase workload but cut hours of employees who were working as retailers which gave rise to a period of lost sales and lower morale of employees (Boyle). The Composition of Stress at the Workplace In organizations, there are certainly outer fields of risk, uncertainty, and challenges which create the inner field of stress for employees at the workplace. Every organization contains this int ernal influential factor of stress which is described as one state of transaction between individual and environment (Dewe & Cooper, 2012). According to the Lazarus model of stress, employees’ needs and wants make them accept the factor of stress in their working environment. They accept stress because of the formal agreement with their organization or workplace which induces the elements of obligation and responsibility on employees. When employees are to fulfill the obligation and responsibility they inevitably catch the element of stress which is associated to work responsibility and obligation altogether. These are some primary causes of how stress gets involved in employees’ lives (Dewe & Cooper, 2012). The Theory of Work Design by Theorell describes stress as an influencing state that originates from employees’ work designs and more specifically from work demands (Aldwin, 2012, p.73). If demands of work are complex and are of burdening nature, stress is mo re prominent on employees at the work time. Karasek proposes Job Demands-Control model to control the demands of work on employees at the workplace. The author describes two levels of work demands- physiological work demands and psychological demands. If these two levels of work demands are controlled by employees, they can control the affect of stress at the time of work. According to Karasek, moderate stress is optimum for