Health and Wellness in the Workplace

RUNNING HEAD: Health and Wellness in the Workplace

Health and Wellness in the Workplace

Kenathius Finch

University of Phoenix

Health and wellness in the workplace depends on stress level and how comfortable you feel at work. Stress in the workplace can be anything that cause strain on your mental, emotional, or physical well-being and can manifest itself in many forms; it can come from the physical work environment, the organizational structure, the job demands, interpersonal relationships, and job roles. Stress can even come from outside the job, but affect you at work. While job stress can affect your health, there are ways to cope with stress inside and outside of work. When you ca reach certain level of stress management, there can be joy in the workplace.

The physical environment can be very stressful, the stressors could be noise levels, temperature control (too warm or too cold), poor use of space, crowding, lighting, or lack of privacy. Some jobs themselves are safety hazards. Some people work with hazardous materials, worry about being hurt by someone, or even exposure to chemicals. Stress from the physical environment is different from other stress because it directly affects the body, such as hazardous materials or chemicals can cause damage to the respiratory system.

The organizational structure of the company can be stressful. Some of the main stressors of organization are power struggle within management, organizational policies, unfair pay, inconsistent work shifts, or even the structure of the company itself. Sometimes the structure of a company does not allow room for growth and some people feel stagnate as if they will be in the same position forever. In addition, some people fear termination or lay offs. Employees struggle with inconsistent and inadequate trainings, poor delegation of management, and poor coworker relations. The organization of a company can have such a positive or negative affect on how comfortable an employee feel, thus affecting job performance and causing stress.

The job demands are one of the most influential if not the most influential factor to health and wellness in the workplace. Some jobs require very little skill, which may make for an easy workday, but some employees may feel that what they are doing is meaningless. In contrast, some jobs are so demanding that the employees never feel like they quite do enough to satisfy their employers. Some jobs deal with rude customers such as a waiter or server, some deal with life and death situations such as nurses or doctors, and some deal with time pressures and or unfair deadlines, such as lawyers. The repetitiveness of some jobs can be stressful. A high level of boredom can result from doing the same thing day in and day out, driving a person insane. Other job stressors could be doing a job that you are not qualified to do. You may have the education, but not the experience or skills to handle the workload. Job demands can pose an incredible amount of stress, so a prospective employee has to know what they are getting themselves into.

Another stressor that affects health and wellness are the relationships that from in the workplace. In just about every job, employees have to deal with coworkers and or a supervisor. The characteristics of these relationships play a major role in determining a certain level of stress. Some supervisors can minimize the level of stress by the use of their knowledge and whether or not they value your work. Coworkers can minimize stress by being supportive and trustworthy. On the other hand, supervisors can increase the levels of stress by being overly aggressive, unappreciative of your work, or treating employees like children. Coworkers can be unsupportive, selfish, and inconsiderate. Stress can also come from not feeling accepted or unrecognized for their quality of work. Some things that may be beneficial to working relationships can be teambuilding, doing some activities away from work such as forming a softball team. Get to know your coworkers on a personal level and build trust in that manner

Job roles can affect stress levels. One of the biggest stressors is an employee that does not necessarily know what role they play in the company or what they are supposed to be doing. This can be affected by a being put into a new and unfamiliar position, a position change, or a new supervisor. Responsibilities may increase or decrease along with those changes and some employees do not feel that they are kept abreast of the situations causing more anxiety and stress. Sometimes when employees feel that they are out of place they lack motivation, become dissatisfied with their positions and want to move on.

Along with stress within the workplace,