Stress at the workplace - Current community awareness and concern about the issues of stress and violence at work have increased recently due to more reporting of cases and more attention given by the media to several dramatic and sometimes tragic workplace incidents perpetrated by disturbed individuals.
The problems of stress violence at work are slowly but surely emerging as a new challenge requiring the attention and resource of employers and manager. Taken together stress and violence could be responsible for a great number of occupational accidents and diseases leading to death, illness and incapacity. In many countries the related problems have been shown to affect all sectors and all categories of employees.
Stress and violence incur considerable cost to an employee if viewed from the angles of physical and mental health problems, employment implications and the risk of job loss. For the enterprises, these problems results in direct costs, such as increased absenteeism, staff turnover, reduced productivity, training and retraining. Taken together with the indirect cost, such as reduced motivation, satisfaction and creativity and public relations problems, their overall impact will reduced the competitiveness of the enterprise.
What is known probably represents only the tip of the iceberg. The costs relating to these problems are only beginning to be understood and quantified. There are three basic questions that need to be answered. What is the nature of stress and violence at work? Does work stress and violence affect health and well-being and, if so how? And the third question is what can be done to eliminate or reduce these problems?
