Researchers have argued that challenge stressors—or stressors associated with workload, pressure to complete tasks, and time urgency—operate quite differently from hindrance stressors—or stressors that keep you from reaching your goals (for example, red tape, office politics, confusion over job responsibilities). Although research is just starting to accumulate, early evidence suggests challenge stressors produce less strain than hindrance stressors.53

Researchers have sought to differentiate the effects of challenge and hindrance stressors. When challenge stress increases, those with high levels of organizational support realize higher role-based performance, but those with low levels of organizational support do not.54 There is also evidence that challenge stress improves job performance in a supportive work environment, whereas hindrance stress reduces job performance in all work environments.55

Typically, stress is associated with demands and resources. Demands are responsibilities, pressures, obligations, and uncertainties individuals face in the workplace. Resources are things within an individual’s control that he or she can use to resolve the demands. Let’s discuss what this demands–resources model means.56

When you take a test at school or undergo your annual performance review at work, you feel stress because you confront opportunities and performance pressures. A good performance review may lead to a promotion, greater responsibilities, and a higher salary. A poor review may prevent you from getting a promotion. An extremely poor review might even result in your being fired. To the extent you can apply resources to the demands on you—such as preparing for the review, putting the review in perspective (it’s not the end of the world), or obtaining social support—you will feel less stress. In fact, this last resource—social support—may be more important on an ongoing basis than anything else. According to recent research, people with emotional support may experience lower stress levels, feel less depressed from stress, and be more likely to make lifestyle changes that may reduce stress.57 Overall, under the demands–resources perspective, having resources to cope with stress is just as important in offsetting stress as demands are in increasing it.58

So far, what was discussed may give you the impression that individuals are seeking a steady state in which demands perfectly match resources. While early research tended to emphasize such a homeostatic, or balanced equilibrium, perspective; it has now become clear that no single ideal state exists. Instead, it’s more accurate to talk about allostatic models, in which demands shift, resources shift, and systems of addressing imbalances shift.59 Through allostasis, we work to find stability by changing our behaviors and attitudes. It all depends on the allostatic load, or the cumulative effect of stressors on us given the resources we draw upon.60 For example, if you’re feeling especially confident in your abilities and have lots of support from others, you may increase your willingness to experience strain and be better able to mobilize coping resources. This would be a situation where the allostatic load was not too great; in other cases where the allostatic load is too great and too prolonged, we may experience psychological or physiological stress symptoms.

Environmental uncertainty not only influences the design of an organization’s structure, it also influences stress levels among employees in that organization. Indeed, uncertainty is the biggest reason people have trouble coping with organizational changes.62 There are three main types of environmental uncertainty: economic, political, and technological.

Changes in the business cycle create economic uncertainties. When the economy is contracting, for example, people become increasingly anxious about their job security. Political uncertainties don’t tend to create stress among North Americans as much as they do for employees in countries such as Haiti or Venezuela. The obvious reason is that the United States and Canada have more stable political systems, in which change is typically implemented in an orderly manner. Yet political threats and changes in all countries can induce stress. Because innovations can make an employee’s skills and experience obsolete in a very short time, keeping up with new computer programs, robotics, automation, and similar forms of technological change are a further challenge to many people at work that cause them stress.

There is no shortage of factors within an organization that can cause stress. Pressures to avoid errors or complete tasks in a limited time, work overload, a demanding and insensitive boss, and unpleasant coworkers are a few examples. We’ve categorized these factors around task, role, and interpersonal demands.

1. Task demands relate to a person’s job. They include the design of the job (including its degree of autonomy, task variety, and automation), working conditions, and the physical work layout. The single factor most consistently related to stress in the workplace is the amount of work that needs to be done, followed closely by the presence of looming deadlines.63 Working in an overcrowded room or visible location where noise and interruptions are constant can also increase anxiety and stress.64

2. Role demands relate to pressures placed on a person as a function of the particular role he or she plays in the organization. Role conflicts create expectations that may be hard to reconcile or satisfy. Role overload occurs when the employee is expected to take on too much. Role ambiguity means role expectations are not clearly understood and the employee is not sure what to do. Unfortunately, individuals who face high situational constraints by their roles (such as fixed work hours or demanding job responsibilities) are less able to engage in proactive coping behaviors, like taking a break, which can reduce stress levels.65

3. Interpersonal demands are pressures created by other employees. Some pressures are expected, but a rapidly growing body of research has shown that negative coworker and supervisor behaviors, including fights, bullying, incivility, racial harassment, and sexual harassment, are especially and strongly related to stress at work.66 Interpersonal mistreatment can have effects at a physiological level, with one study finding that unfair treatment in a controlled setting triggered the release of cortisol, a hormone involved in the stress-reaction process.67 Furthermore, individuals who believe they are experiencing a social climate of discrimination from multiple sources over time have higher levels of psychological strain, even after accounting for differing baseline levels of well-being.68

The typical individual may work between 40 and 50 hours a week. But the experiences and problems people encounter in the other 120-plus hours in the week can spill over to the job. The final category of sources of stress at work includes factors of an employee’s personal life: family issues and personal economic problems.

National surveys consistently show people hold their families dear. Family issues, even good ones, can cause stress that significantly impacts individuals. Family issues are often closely related to work–life conflict.

The personal economic problems of overextended financial resources create stress and siphon attention away from work. Regardless of income level, some people are poor money managers or have wants and needs that exceed their earning capacity. People who make $100,000 per year seem to have as much trouble handling their finances as those who earn $20,000, although recent research indicates that those who make under $50,000 per year do experience more stress.69

When we review stressors individually, it’s easy to overlook that stress is an additive phenomenon—it builds up.70 Each new and persistent stressor adds to an individual’s stress level. A single stressor may be relatively unimportant in and of itself, but if added to an already high level of stress, it can be too much. To appraise the total amount of stress an individual is under, we have to sum up all of the sources and severity levels of that person’s stress. Since this cannot be easily quantified or observed, managers should remain aware of the potential stress loads from organizational factors in particular. Many employees are willing to express their perceived stress load at work to a caring manager.

In Chapter 6, we demonstrated that employees react in response to their perception of reality, rather than to reality itself. Perception, therefore, will moderate the relationship between a potential stress condition and an employee’s reaction to it. Layoffs may cause one person to fear losing a job, while another sees it as an opportunity to get a large severance allowance and start a new business. So stress potential doesn’t lie in objective conditions; rather, it lies in an employee’s interpretation of those conditions.

Experience on the job tends to be negatively related to work stress. Why? Two explanations have been offered.71 First is selective withdrawal. Voluntary turnover is more probable among people who experience more stress. Therefore, people who remain with an organization longer are those with more stress-resistant traits or those more resistant to the stress characteristics of the organization. Second, people eventually develop coping mechanisms to deal with stress. Because this takes time, senior members of the organization are more likely to be fully adapted and should experience less stress.

Social support—collegial relationships with coworkers or supervisors—can buffer the impact of stress.72 This is one of the best-documented relationships in the stress literature. Social support acts as a palliative, mitigating the negative effects of even high-strain jobs.

Stress symptoms expressed on the job may originate from the person’s personality.73 Perhaps the most widely studied personality trait in research on stress is neuroticism, which we discussed in Chapter 5. As you might expect, neurotic individuals are more prone to experience psychological strain.74 Evidence suggests that neurotic individuals are more likely to find stressors in their work environments, so they believe their environments are more threatening. They also tend to select less adaptive coping mechanisms, relying on avoidance as a way of dealing with problems rather than attempting to resolve them.75