Stress at workplace has many contributing factors like long working hours, redundancy, job insecurity, and miscommunication between the management and employees. The symptoms that can arise from work related stress could range from depression, anxiety, and stress-related diseases/absences. Selye noted that the: “accumulation of stressors whether good or bad, if intense enough, will ultimately cause physical disorders.” If not taken seriously, the effects of stress among the employees can seriously disrupt workplace environment and cause a significant drop in production. In present scenario, the employer of a large corporation (n=500) suspect discrepancy in the structural features of the corporation to be responsible for stress related diseases and absences and blames inadequate management communication channels within the organization that result in poor use of employer sponsored stress relief programs.
Identifying problem- the issue can be categorized into “structural” (underutilization of the available employer sponsored stress relieve programs) and “interpersonal” derived from feedbacks from survey and local employee data. The corporation has 500 employees; which makes it a little difficult to identify the root causes that can differ substantially according to different departments. Exercising a social network analysis to figure out how the coworkers benefit from working with each other could be beneficial. SNA can aid in assessing where most productive patterns of teamwork exist and the potential productivity holdups or obstacles. Survey can incorporate questions asking about relationship with coworkers (the surveys will be anonymous), flexibility of the hours spent in the office, relationship with the boss or immediate supervisor, amount of work that is required from you, job security, health benefits the employer offers, amount of vacation time received and