- The lack of digital disconnection or the absence of clear instructions is two factors that cause work stress.
- The alternate breathing technique to overcome moments of crisis and anxiety
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| Mental well-being is reduced when you experience stressful situations at work too often. / Pixabay |
The news came to light at the end of last May: the social court number 5 of Madrid recognized as an occupational accident the mental health leave of a worker after an episode of anxiety. In the sentence, the magistrate Ángela Mostajo maintains that the worker was not subjected to "normal work stress", but to an "increase in work and stress caused by a constant failure of the machinery", which forced him to " work under constant pressure.
Unfortunately, situations of stress and anxiety caused by work are becoming more frequent, but how can we recognize and redirect them? For the psychologists at ifeel, a platform specialized in supporting companies and workers, the main thing is to recognize, first of all, what work stress is and how it can affect mental well-being if these situations are experienced too often.
“Stress is the psychological experience that occurs when the demands of the environment exceed our coping resources. When this happens, there is an imbalance between the level of difficulty of a specific task and our ability to solve it, which leads to certain wear and tear on our bodies. Stress is a normal and adaptive experience, which occurs both inside and outside of work, and is our way of adapting to a relatively demanding circumstance.
However, if these stressful episodes are repeated with too much frequency, intensity or duration, “stress becomes a problem for our physical and psychological health. For this reason, it is so important that companies take measures to prevent excessive stress among their staff members”, they add.
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These are, according to specialists, ten situations that can cause work stress:
Excess of homework
Or what is the same, the obligation to carry out a certain volume of work in an insufficient period of time for it. “It can be a single very demanding task or several affordable things, but too many in number. The disproportion between the work to be done and the resources we have for it, in this case, time, generates stress at work”, they indicate.
The excessive difficulty of the tasks to be performed
If the tasks are frequently too difficult for the worker's knowledge or skills, he or she could also experience stress at work since, as psychologists explain, "there is an imbalance between what the situation demands and our resources to respond to it."
Environmental noises
And in general, all the distractors can hinder or hinder performance. “If they didn't exist, we would concentrate better and be more efficient, but, being present, they pose a difficulty that ends up manifesting in stress”.
Lack of help
According to the experts, this happens because the worker is very lonely performing his task, either because he has no one to share it with or because the work environment and corporate culture are not geared towards cooperation and are more geared towards competitiveness. "Not having the support and advice of others in carrying out our task when we need it can be a source of stress at work."
Lack of digital disconnect
For psychologists, technological devices and their use both inside and outside of work can end up saturating our “system”. "If we don't take adequate breaks from digital, we don't allow our processing capacity to rest, which will lead to more fatigue and, therefore, a greater probability of stress at work," they say.
Lack of clear instructions
On other occasions, the work is not done uphill due to excessive tasks or lack of time, but because the worker is not properly explained what to do because the instructions are not clear or are very variable. "That hinders efficiency and generates a concern that has to do with stress at work."
Poorly planned pauses
Experts insist on the importance of the worker taking breaks to balance and refresh the system. "If in our day-to-day we cannot take the necessary breaks, or we are required outside of working hours or on our vacation days, we do not finish adequately compensating for stress peaks."
Excess responsibility
As explained by ifeel “the level of responsibility of our position can be very high and that, in itself, is stressful, although both things are in harmony. It is all the more stressful when we have a responsibility that does not correspond to us because of our position or for which we are not trained”.
Poor organization of tasks
Psychologists point out that sometimes distractions, fatigue, or overload are caused by a poor organization of tasks according to their urgency, importance, or difficulty. "If we don't make good use of time if we leave the most difficult for when we are tired of the rest if we pick at different tasks at the same time... it is more likely that we will not be able to use our coping resources efficiently."
Lack of motivation
Since when we don't like a task, we don't know very well how to approach it or it seems useless to us, "our energy is more directed to enduring the difficulty of performing the task than to doing it itself" and giving rise to that work stress.