Preventing occupational stress: job crafting and psychological strengths

What causes occupational stress? What are the consequences of it, both on a personal and a professional level? And most importantly: how can it be prevented in everyday life?

We will talk about quite new terms such as "job crafting", and psychological strengths among others.

What is occupational stress?

Stress is a set of reactions to a situation. They can be emotional, cognitive, physiological, or behavioural reactions, for example:

- Emotional reactions: fear, confusion, irritability.

- Cognitive reactions: difficulty concentrating, feeling worried, excessive self-criticism.

- Physiological reactions: sweating, muscle tension, dry mouth.

- Behavioural reactions: crying, freezing, smoking, or binge eating.

These reactions usually occur together, although it is not necessary for all of them to happen. For each person, it will be different and often, we are not even aware that we are suffering from it.

Simply knowing these components can help us recognise the situation, know how to face it, and manage it appropriately.

Causes of occupational stress

Occupational stress causes are multiple. It depends on the individual and their ability to adapt to stressful situations.

A situation can be seen as stressful if you feel that you do not have the skills to cope with it. This ability is influenced by personal characteristics, like your personality, and the mental and physical conditions at the time.

Some professions that involve direct and continuous dealings with people may be more at risk of work-related stress. For example, the prevention of occupational stress in nursing is essential.

What is burnout syndrome?

When occupational stress is prolonged, we speak of "burnout", also known as occupational burnout syndrome or feeling burnt out by work.

Burnout is a chronic stress condition characterised by:

- Severe emotional exhaustion of the person.

- Negative, apathetic, and inappropriate responses, with irritability.

- Low self-fulfilment. The person who suffers from it ends up reducing their work performance, seeing themselves as inefficient and incompetent in their work.

This condition even appears in the ICD-11 (International Classification of Diseases), a system used in the clinical field.

Preventing occupational stress

To prevent occupational stress, it is necessary to understand it. To do this we will use the Jobs Demands – Resources Model (JD-R).

According to this model, working conditions are characterised by demands and resources.

Work demands are physical, psychological, social, or organisational aspects that require effort on the part of the worker, for example, workload, time pressure to deliver tasks, or emotional demands when dealing with other people.

Resources can be work-related or personal:

- Work resources are the physical, psychological, social, or organisational aspects that serve to achieve professional accomplishments, reducing work demands and stimulating our personal and/or professional growth and development.

- Personal resources are beliefs about the control one can have over one's environment, such as optimism or self-efficacy (feeling capable of achieving something).

If there are high work demands, there may be a deterioration of health (burnout, immune disorders, difficulties in resting, etc.) and a decrease in work performance.

On the positive side, however, high levels of personal and work resources increase motivation and employee engagement, which positively affects health, performance, and the desire to continue working in the same company.

If sufficient resources are available, the negative effects of work demands can be moderated.

The JD-R model is very generic and flexible, applicable to any organisation. It allows us to analyse which situations cause work-related stress and how to deal with it in a team or an organisation.

Some preventive psychosocial risk measures to manage occupational stress are related to "job crafting".

By practising job crafting, each person at work plays an active role, making proactive changes to their demands and resources, either in their work tasks (task crafting), in their relationships with other people at work (relationship crafting) or in their subjective view of the meaning of their work (cognitive crafting).

How can we prevent occupational stress?

We can start in our private lives with a healthy diet, physical exercise, and sleep with a certain routine, maintaining good sleep hygiene habits.

Digital disconnection from work is essential, especially with working from home. In other words, we should switch off the computer when appropriate and limit the telephone and e-mail to working hours.

Flexible working hours make it easier to reconcile work and avoid, for example, going in or out at rush hour, so that we can organise our personal agenda more comfortably.

Encouraging autonomy at work makes the person do job crafting themselves, for example by increasing their job resources by asking for help, feedback, comments, or opinions.

Challenging job demands are also an option, for example being able to start a project, learn new skills, undertake training, and develop professionally.

Job demands can be reduced by reducing workload or bureaucracy, and readjusting our work so that it is more suited to the individual.

Job crafting improves the work atmosphere, employee engagement and job satisfaction. It also minimises the occurrence of burnout and helps to be more resilient and able to cope with situations.

Psychological strengths at work

Job crafting encourages the use of strengths at work for optimal performance and growth.

By doing something in which the person feels comfortable, so that the time passes quickly, and they feel at ease, they will be making use of their strengths. Each person has their own strengths and must go through a process of self-knowledge.

Some examples of strengths are creativity, critical thinking, analytical skills, generosity, perseverance, teamwork, self-control, and assertiveness.

Gratitude at work

Gratitude is another example of psychological strength. It is the ability to feel grateful, to appreciate, and to show esteem. Gratitude does not necessarily require an outward expression (replying "thank you" to another person), but we can also feel gratitude inwardly, without verbalising it.

This strength increases job satisfaction and life satisfaction, allows us to reinterpret situations more positively, facilitates sleep, and is related to patience and even to prosocial behaviour (helping other people).

Gratitude is associated with active coping with stress. It can decrease and reduce the effects of stress and enhance a person's subjective well-being in life in general.

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