Stress can be resulted from poor employment relations and affect staff productivity tremendously. No matter you are employees or employers, effective stress handling will be a good asset for you to manage your life or your organization. Learn below about what work-induced stress is and how to handle it with care!

What is work-induced stress and how can we handle it?
Pressure is part of our work and helps to motivate us to a better working performance. However, excessive pressure can lead to stress, which undermines our performance at work and even our life. Stress can make people ill as stress can cause changes in one's physical, emotional or psychological status.

We can be stressed at any time, when we feel that all things become too much or when we feel as though we are unable to cope with. The amount of stress we can handle varies, making it difficult to identify employees who are under stress.

So what are the symptoms that one can recognize when the stress begins to exceed our capacity to handle?
We can roughly divide the stress symptoms into four categories: physical, behavioural, emotional, and cognitive:

Physical symptoms:
- Chronic Headache
- Indigestion
- Stomach pain
- Cold Sweating
- Sleep disturbance
- Tiredness
- Back, Neck and Shoulder pain
- Restlessness
- High Blood Pressure
- Palpitations

Behavioural symptoms:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Anger and hostility
- Excessive smoking
- Alcohol Abuse
- Grinding teeth at night time
- Compulsive eating
- Inability to finish things

Emotional symptoms:
- Crying
- Nervousness
- Boredom
- Feeling powerless to change things
- An overwhelming sense of pressure
- Loneliness
- Get upset easily

Cognitive symptoms:
- Trouble thinking clearly
- Forgetfulness
- Lack of creativity
- Memory loss
- Inability to make decisions
- Constant worry
- Loss of sense of humor

Different gender may have different issues:
In men:
decreased sperm count, decreased sexual performance
In women:
Infertility, and menopausal hot flashes made worse by stress

This is what employers can do in order to reduce the work-induced stress of their employee:
- Try to assess the risk and potential causes of stress within your organisation - for example by looking at sick leave absence records.
- Use these to assess how the organisation is performing in relation to the six risk factors of work-induced stress:
- the demands of job
- the employees' control over their job
- the support the employee receive from managers and colleagues
- the relationships at work
- their role in the organisation
- any change and how it's managed

Although work-related stress can be handled by working with your employee to find out the precipitating issues and work accordingly. It is still far more important for employers, or even their organisations to prevent any medical and psychological symptoms by means of an earlier assessment.