Rlchard Pettlnger

ACCEPTANCE OF STRESS AS A PROBLEM

Barriers to the acceptance of stress as a problem are social, cultural, and prejudicial, and these are compounded by the inability to observe the physical symptoms in the same way as physical illness and injury. These are often reinforced by social, professional, and occupational groups because they themselves do not wish to be perceived as weak or inadequate. Where this is reinforced politically and operationally, the pressure to refuse to address the problem can be overwhelming (see Summary box 5.1).





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The problem can also be quite deliberately misrepresented as an attitudinal or behavioral problem, a lack of motivation, commitment or loyalty. In these cases, organizations transmit the problem to the staff. They are effectively saying: ‘‘if you are feeling stress, it is because you are not up to the job,’’ rather than looking at the shortcomings in policies, processes, practices, and management style. In these cases also, it may be possible to sustain an impression of overtly effective performance (see Summary box 5.2).

44 STRESS MANAGEMENT
out of hours. Restocking shelves, making customer deliveries, going to Saturday morning department meetings, and writing thank you notes are key parts of the job but ones for which they are not paid. Also, to keep up their sales figures, staff do a lot of things to steal customers from each other.

With all this going on, the staff might have little to smile about, but smile they must. To make sure they do, the stores hire secret shoppers who monitor staff demeanor. If they are caught frowning they earn demerits that can lead to termination. As a reward, those who are found smiling the most might win their store’s smiling contest, celebrated by having their picture posted on the staff room wall.

If you are going to smile, you have to do it for quite some time for it is not unusual for staff to work 12–15 hour days for well over a week. This is completely consistent with the company’s top management belief that many staff do not work hard enough. Indeed, official communications have indicated that even one sick day in three months is considered excessive and indicates a lack of dedication.

These tactics have left some staff with ulcers, colitis, and tremors. In the words of one long time employee: ‘‘the girls around me were dropping like flies. Everyone was always in tears. You feel like an absolute nothing working for them.’’

Another said: ‘‘before you know it, your whole life is Nord- strom’s. But you can’t complain because then your manager would schedule you for the bad hours, your sales per hour would fall, and the next thing you know, you’re out of the door.’’ Both these employees, consistently high performers, eventually quit Nord- strom, taking jobs with higher pay and fewer hours – one after developing an ulcer, and the other out of sheer exhaustion.

Now faced with pressure from unions, lawsuits, and lackluster sales, the company is reconsidering its tactics. It is clear that conditions have been improving. It is also clear that without the outside pressure, little would have been done.

Source: Greenberg, J. and Baron, R.A. (1995) Behavior in Orga- nizations. Prentice Hall International.

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The problems inherent in each of the above cases would be avoided if there were agreement to acknowledge the extreme stress present. It is also certain that organizational, collective, and individual performance would improve if, as the result of acknowledging the stress present, attention were paid to enhancing the quality of working life and supervisory style.

While the problems as presented here may be self-evident, it is much harder to get managers to accept them within organizations in practice. It is very easy to become so embroiled in the pressures of the working, commercial, and operational environment that these come to be accepted as facts of life rather than demands for intervention. The first problem is therefore to get managers and supervisors to recognize the potential for stress and to follow this up with attention to specific indicators. These include the following.