Stress and Burnout Essay Example for Free

Stress and Burnout Essay Companies and organizations deal with issues in their business life cycle. All companies share the same issues, successes, and dilemmas, but one of the issues that seem to be more prevalent in high-stress jobs, such as sales or other fast-paced jobs, is that of stress and the burnout associated with it. Stress is something that affects different employees in different ways, from getting depressed to not eating and can be detrimental to their well-being and to the company also. Companies are also affected negatively with how employees perform, the rise of absenteeism is higher and the work performance takes a huge dip financially and with negative outcomes. There are many things that can be done to try and assist with this issue and try and help employees. How does stress and burnout come to happen? Many times individuals are placed into different types of roles in their company or organization that they work at and that sometimes comes with different jobs that need to be completed by a certain date or they are placed in an environment that is just stressful for them. Individuals can find stress in many things in their daily lives. It can be the individuals you work with, the daily traffic in the morning or after work, the manager or director that heads your department, and also the relationships you have with co-workers, to name a few. The unfortunate result from dealing with these stressors is how it affects the individual and those around him or her. They can be depressed, angry all the time, full of anxiety and those sometimes translate to physical changes also, like weight gain or loss and other issues that may arise from this. Companies eventually are greatly affected by this also because they deal with these employees and their work on a daily basis. Healthcare for those employees also goes up, which means that the companies will tend to spend more on individuals which are not healthy as supposed to those that feel better and are well-off. â€Å"A study of 46,000 employees concluded that health-care costs of high-stress workers were 46% higher than were those of their less-stressed coworkers†(Dessler, p. 309, 2011). As previously stated, many type of jobs or careers are more prone to stress and burnout. Everyone usually tries and associate successful, high paying jobs with stress, like someone working in a high-paced market like the stock market or sales. Although any type of job can be stressful, from being a teacher to working in healthcare, there have been studies of how some healthcare fields are more stressful than other, such as working a social work environment as supposed to a pediatrician. Social work tends to involve those works in certain situations that can weight a lot on individuals. â€Å"Such empirical research as is available suggests that social workers may experience higher levels of stress and resulting burnout than comparable occupational groups. † (Lloyd, King, and Chenowth, p. 1, 2002) One of the trickiest issues with identifying stressors is to actually see what it is that if affecting certain individuals, it can be tough to pinpoint an exact issue and try to fix it as soon as possible. Burnout stems from being stressed out to the point where the individual feels like he has no strength anymore, both physical and emotional from always working too hard and striving to do the best and it eventually catching up to those individuals and they shutting down. Unlike stress, where it can affect someone immediately, when someone burns out, it happens gradually over time, things building up and stacking more and more upon the last thing. It eventually will hit the individuals, even though to get to that point is gradual, people shut down suddenly. It is most seen in high-stress jobs and companies involved in such industries will look out for signs to not let individuals fall through that issue. Companies and organizations are trying to find ways in order to deal with these issues because it helps the employees feel better, it provides a more positive outcome for the company and the employees, and healthcare cost can go down because of this. Companies have started implementing different things for employees to help assist with stress and burnout prevention. There are many things companies can do to assist, from providing on-site gyms to help relieve some stress to providing workshops on teaching individuals how to work around stress and burn out and make sure that they are taking care of themselves. Specialist and other say that it is easier to prevent burnout and stress than to come back from it cleanly. Stress-related work leaves comprised 49% of all disability claims in 1999, twice the number recorded a decade earlier† (Elizabeth, p. 2, 2002). There are many ways to be able to assist in preventing burnout and stress. Like previously stated, companies provide many things to be able to make sure that the employees are the main priority in making sure that they are healthy, physically and emotionally, because this eventually translates into good performance in the work environment. Workshops are also held to be able to assist individuals on helping them organize their lives better and implementing things like exercise, building better relationships at work, and other things to help alleviate the stress of the daily life and prevent burnout from happening. Companies have to deal with their employees to make sure that they do not go through any issues, because they are identifying those issues that affect them and understand that the employee is the main component of any company. It saves money, helps with employees feeling better about themselves and ultimately it produces good things for the company as a whole.