1. INTRODUCTIONNowadays, workplace stress is increasingly recognized as a contributing factor to employee absence, turnover and poor performance. It has been widely recognized as a major managerial and economic issue (Miller et al., 1990). There are many factors that can contribute to this matter such as contribution among workers, environment of workplace, and also behaviour or characteristic of co-workers. When we are too stress at our workplace, our interest of doing our job will disappear.
We will lost our tendency to finish our job before the due date. Furthermore management attitudes, cultures and styles have been found to have significant impact on levels of stress (Mikkelsen et al., 2000). If the management have issue toward their workers, problem will arise. As we can see, culture in an environment also can be a huge impact pf employee’s effectiveness and their job performance. If the culture of an organization is stressful and the employee is not getting along well with each other, it could affect the organization’s growth.
Initiatives aimed at reducing and preventing stress that have focused onimprovements to the work and organizational environments seem to have met some success (Clarke, 2000; Cox and Cox, 1991, 1996; Cox and Flin, 1998).Besides, Valle and Witt (2001) found that negative perceptions of organizational effectiveness were strongly related to job dissatisfaction among individuals who perceive low levels of teamwork. If employee have poor job performance, it could affect the management also. This is because it would be hard to train employee who had already have negative perceptions towards organization’s effectiveness. In this case study, they make a several questions that need to be answer by employee of two department of a medium size company of ICT in Australia. The two department is Enterprise Department and Service Department. The data was part of an employee opinion survey conducted in October 2002.
2. MethodologyUses survey data from a medium size company in the ICT industry operating in Australia. There were 397 respondents to the survey.3. Issue In WorkplaceThere are several issue that happens in workplace such as difficulty to have communication with manager, level of job satisfaction and stress and cooperation. This issue can cause stress in the workplace. As we can see, stress and cooperation are related and it is not clear where they should fit in overall framework. This issue also are the strong factor that indicates that job satisfaction, communication and the organizational contributors to workplace stress.
In this case study, there are 5 factors that leads to the impact of job satisfaction, communication and culture such as 1) Communication with manager2) Overall job satisfaction3) Perceived positiveness of company culture4) Clarity of organizations objective5) Reduced stress and increase cooperationBut the most factor that have different score is 1) Communication with manager2) Overall job satisfaction3) Reduced stress and increase cooperationThe fact that this 3 factor became the most important factor is because there are different score for this 3 factor from the two department. The Services department employees appear to be rating communication with managers, job satisfaction and the degree of cooperation and reduced stress in a much favorable way than their counterparts in the Enterprise department. Thus, one would assume that cooperation is much more encourage in the former department. The lack of significant differences across the two departments on ”perceived positiveness of the organization” and ”clarity of the organization objectives” is understandable and in fact reinforces an important point. We have to remember that this two department had different management styles, goals and backgrounds.
All of this may contribute to the observed differences between their employee’s score. i) Communication with managerOne of the most important factor that leads to stress in workplace is communication with manager. Many employee find that it is difficult to have communication with manager. This is because some of manager is not easy to approach. Some of them are practising As a manager, they should spend their time communicate with their employee. They must heard their employee’s concern, trouble at work and do some catch up with employee about project that they are working on.
If a manager show their concern to employee, employee will feel they are appreciated by manager and eager to work harder. Manager should explain to employee about the goal of company and ensure that their employee are understand the goal. Manager also should be able to translating the company goal into functional and individual goals.
This is because with this way, employee should be able to improve themselves and also their working performance. In this case study, they make analysis based on two department such as Enterprise Department and Service Department. The result of this two department are different based on their employee answer on a questionnaire.
In this issue, the Enterprise department have scored 21.76 meanwhile the Services Department have score 20.62. The Service Department employees appear to be rating communication with managers, job satisfaction and the degree of cooperation and reduced stress in a much favorable way than their counterparts in theEnterprise department. It shows that Service Department have better communication with their manager. We can assure that several question such as “my manager develops and encourage a sense of purpose and unity in our team”, “my manager sets clear objectives, outlining requirement and expectation” and “my manager motivates team members to set and achieve high performance standard” have been the top three with the high score based on employee’s selection.Because employees assume that support should just happen; lack of it would cause them to experience isolation, frustration and therefore stress (Miller et al., 1990).
Manager have to coaching and developing existing employees so that they could improve themselves. If manager shows them the eagerness to train them, employee would be more enthusiasm improving their skills. Furthermore, some of manager have been firm and not friendly towards their employee.
Managers have put a barrier so that they would not be friendly with employee. This kind of manager tend to have employee that did not have clear goal about their company mission and vision, dealing about performance problems and termination. As we can see, we can linked a that a manager based on their score is leader who have drive traits of personality. This manager must have achievement, sense of responsibility, ambition, energy, tenacity and initiative traits. We also can assure that their manager have leadership behaviour focus such as task orientations leader.
This leader have personality like setting performance goals, planning and scheduling work, coordinating activities, giving directions, setting standards, providing resources, and supervising performance. We can see this as we go through questions in this case study. ii) Job SatisfactionFor many years, both scholars and practitioners have recognized that cooperation is crucial to the success of organizations (Chen et al., 1998; Jones and George, 1998; Olson et al., 2001).
Job satisfaction is important to employee. Based on this case study, it shows that positive job satisfaction most likely to affect stress reduction in the Enterprise Department. In contrast, employees in the Services department are more likely to experience reduced stress as the resultant of positive company culture.
The differences between the two departments, in terms of their reward systems, seem to support this finding. The Enterprise Department employees, with a relatively less advantageous reward system, are more likely to respond to job-related characteristics in experiencing levels of stress. In contrast, Services Department employees, with greater concerns for the overall company culture, are more likely to respond to cultural determinants in experiencing stress levels. iii) Reduced stress and increase cooperationStress is not always bad. A little bit of stress can help us to stay focused, energetic and also be able to meet new challenges in the workplace. It is what keeps you on your toes during a presentation or alert to prevent accidents or costly mistakes. But in today’s hectic world, the workplace too often seems like an emotional roller coaster.
Long hours, tight deadlines and ever-increasing demands can leave you feeling worried, drained, and overwhelmed. When stress exceeds your ability to cope, it stops being helpful and starts causing damage to your mind and body as well as to your job satisfaction. It can be bad for our reputation at work. It might be a factor that we did not want to do our job and end up we did not do our job properly.
We always think that as long as we finished our task, the job is done. However, we did not do the job full heartedly. Cooperation among workers are the most important thing in organisation.
This is because we need a harmony and peaceful environment to work with them. If we do not have a good communication with another workers, we could not enhance a perfect teamwork. Thus, our job would be a mess.
When we do not have a good relationship with our colleagues, it could lead to stress. This is because stress and cooperation are somehow related. In this case study, it stated that having regular meeting could help with discussing customer problems and came out with solutions.
But the most important thing is while having regular meeting to overcome customer’s problem, it has led to have greater job satisfaction and stress reduction. In addition these meetings clearly provide the opportunity for increased communication with both managers and the team members of other competency groups, possibly leading to better team cooperation. It also stated in this case study that it have be an increased understanding of each person and their role would be expected to assist cooperation.4. RecommendationThe first recommendations is managers should make environment friendly space towards workers. In an organization or company, they should have a relax space for employee. For example is Fashion Valet company. They have an open space which is employee can hung out together, make a small meetings and also brainstorming ideas together.
The space felt so lively so that employee felt safe and have eagerness to work hard. If a company have a place like this, they will make employee felt at home. They heart will be filled with love toward their job, teammates, colleague and company. They would feel to work hard and love their job so much. A bright environment office space will make employee feel free to express their ideas and feeling. It would lead to employee’s competency.The next recommendation is individual training.
Training is important in a company. This is because we have to glaze our workers potential. They have to be trained so they are keep on track and also to ensure their effectiveness toward their job. Based on this case study, there are many votes on “there are sufficient opportunities for me to receive training and development that helps me be more effective in my current job” questions.
This shows that some of the employee would seek for training. This is because with training, they would know what they are lacking, which part of their job that they need to improve and also it help them to build up their sale esteem. This is because while training, they could meet many people and they could polish their skills in communicate with other people and also their soft skills. They could shares their experiences and also idea.
This is a good opportunity for a company to have a training for their employee so they could have a good and skilled employee. The last recommendation is having a family day. I recommend that all company should have their own family day. For example, the family day would be held at a beach and also a park.
If a company is going to have a family day, they should choose a place with open space and big. Beach is a good example because they could play some game, have a barbeque and also relaxing and mingling together a long beach’s breeze. It is a good chance for all employee to know other colleagues well as well as their family. They could feel like a family.
It is also a good opportunity for managers or top management to be friendly toward their workers. Manager are able to know the inner side of their employee. They would know a little bit of their employee real personality because maybe at office, their employee have to stick to formality and not being their self.
It also a good opportunity for workers to know their managers well.5. ConclusionIn conclusion, work-related stress is indeed an important phenomenon in organizations and is increasingly recognized as a contributing factor to employee absence, turnover and poor performance (de Croon et al., 2004). The causes of stress are multiple and pertain to an array of individual and organizational characteristics (Cooper et al., 2001).
As a manager, we must concern about our employee in order to have a great employee. If a manager does not concern about their employee, they will felt like experience isolation, frustration and stress will arise. As a manager, they should avoid this matter. Furthermore, in order to have great communication between manager and employee, both parties should be more considerate and respect toward each other. This could make a harmony environment at workplace.
Besides, there are several issue that happens in workplace such as difficulty to have communication with manager, level of job satisfaction and stress and cooperation. This issue can cause stress in the workplace. As we can see, stress and cooperation are related and it is not clear where they should fit in overall framework. This issue also are the strong factor that indicates that job satisfaction, communication and the organizational contributors to workplace stress.
However, in order to make win-win situation between managers and employee, they should have some time together off work such as potluck party and also having a company’s family day. This could ensure the good relationship between manager and workers and also between employee and their colleague. 6. ReferenceRachid Zeffane, Dominic McLoughlin, (2006) “Cooperation and stress: Exploring the differential impact of job satisfaction, communication and culture”, Management Research News, Vol.
29 Issue: 10, pp.618-631
