The Leader’s Guide to Managing
Workplace Stress
Scope of Stress in Today’s Workplace
This briefing is designed to help executives understand, recognize and effectively deal with stress in the workplace. As a senior executive, it will help you:
1. Raise your awareness of the causes and effects of excessive stressors
2. Encourage and support the use of good practices and preventative measures by supervisors
and employees
3. Provide tools and techniques for assessing and managing stress within a workgroup
4. Help learners recognize signs of stress in themselves and others, and take appropriate
measures.
Important Definitions
•‘Stress’is commonly used to describe the external exposures, pressures and demands that
we face; the coping mechanisms that we use to deal with them; and the consequences of
our coping mechanisms. Furthermore, job stress can be defined as the harmful physical and
emotional responses that occur when the requirements of the job do not match the
capabilities, resources or needs of the worker. To avoid confusion, the term ‘stress’ will be
used as the overall descriptor, while ‘stressor’ and ‘distress’ refer to the causes (exposures,
input), responses and outcomes (effects, outputs), respectively.
•‘Stressor’refers to pressures, challenges or demands that produce adaption responses.
Stressors are known to have the potential to cause distress and health problems.
•‘Distress’refers to negative emotional, behavioral or physical reactions.
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