Strategies and Challenges for Management Dealing with Organizational Stress Management

Stress affects employees at all levels and types of jobs. Stress is the "wear and tear" that the body experiences, as it adjusts to the continually changing environment. It has physical and emotional effects and can create positive or negative feelings. As a positive influence, stress can help compelling one to action; it can result in a new awareness and an exciting new perspective. As a negative influence, it can result in feelings of distrust, rejection, anger and depression, which can lead to health problems.

The concept of Organizational stress has gone from being a 'buzzword' to becoming a norm among many corporations globally. The presence of occupational stress has devastating effects on work culture, individual and organizational productivity and has led to the losses of many potential giants.

In an organization stressors can be categorized as: administrative responsibilities, administrative policies and strategies, organizational structure and design, organizational processes, and working conditions. Keeping in view the day to day increase in organizational stress and ignorance about coping strategies by individuals. A Mix of Managers and Executives were selected for the study. The primary data was collected through questionnaire method by distributing and collecting data from the executives and managers of manufacturing and service sectors in Pune city. The researcher was proactive enough to spend some time with the selected respondents before the questionnaire and could gather some information and reactions of the respondents which very important and vital for stress research.

It is difficult to find out the exact cause/reason of stress and then administer stress reduction techniques like Yoga and Meditation and other organizational interventions like relaxation and counseling etc. Employees are going through severe competition and bench marking and hence are leading towards a suffocating environment. It is difficult to survive in highly competitive environment, cut throat competition within the organization, which is more suffocating since status and designations do matter a lot for working professionals and hence the stress.

The research is a highly focused on to study the Stress causes and related consequences, on organizational workforce especially the management level. It is also aimed at assessing and evaluating the interventions by the HR department to manage/reduce stress. Management and HR departments did intervene in stress reduction by creating type of counseling and awareness among the employees, motivating them to participate in decisions involving changes in work conditions, reducing Work Overload and Under load, and creating provisions for stress management programs as part of their welfare activity - Indian Yoga& Meditation, relaxation techniques, and other related recreational activity.