Johanna Burgos
Harrisburg, PA- From a young age we are instilled that we must take time for what is study, work, and other tasks that represent a task in our daily lives, but have you ever wondered if the excessive work, what you are doing can have any side effects in the past?
However today society and low wages, force us so that apart from being responsible we are people who have to work more than 10 hours even sometimes up to 12 hours a day. Why do I say society? It is because every year governments have an increase in the family basket and fuels, because workers are forced to work more than their corresponding schedule to generate more money in overtime, where they inadvertently can fall into a stress, and over time can have high consequences where you can lose your life.
We call stress “ignored camouflage” because most of the time we are the ones responsible for causing stress and we see the problems that arise when we overwork, but we ignore it because we need our job and use it to support others. Our family, or for any particular situation. Therefore, we are forced to have an excessive routine in fear of losing our job and we ignore all the signs of problems that overwork causes us and we camouflage it by saying words like: “If I don’t work, my family doesn’t eat”, “if I work a few more hours, I can get that money to buy a car, or something else” and so goals are set beyond work.
It is proven that our workplace is one of the organizations where our adult life takes place and where we mostly find the socialization of new friendships and where our personal relationships develop, but within this workplace there can be various common cases that can lead to a bad environment causing job stress. Among these are situations, these are the ones we most commonly face: Not feeling integrated into the group, discrimination, harassment, feeling undervalued at work, among others.
As for the consequences of this, we see ourselves wanting to do our job perfectly, and overwork sometimes to get the attention of our supervisors. And as we know that each action has consequences, it brings us different problems and ailments caused by high work stress, such as predicted heart attacks where it even causes death, routine migraine. Diseases and pathologies, motor and cognitive problems, varied disorders, from immunological even sexual, serious psychological disorders that can sometimes lead to suicide.
Bearing in mind that health and environmental prevention mentions that, fortunately, there are well-known measures that work when it comes to preventing and even alleviating work stress, some of them are:
● Balanced diet. This is a must.
● Regular physical exercise.
● Completely disconnect from work once we leave the office.
● Try to always go to bed at the same time and not sleep less than six hours.
● Whenever possible, take a break, through a vacation. They can be short; it can be a getaway from the city any weekend.
Writer Jeffrey Pfeffer claims that “work is killing people and nobody cares”, he doesn’t mean it in a metaphorical sense, he claimed in an interview conducted by BBC news in 2019.
According to the evidence compiled by Pfeffer, in the United States, 61% of employees believe that stress has made them sick and 7% say they have been hospitalized for work-related causes. In fact, his estimates suggest that stress is related to the annual death of 120,000 American workers and the number is unknown worldwide and from an economic point of view, highlights the academic, stress has a cost for employers of more than US$300,000 million a year in that country.
He also assures that when he talks with companies, nobody argues that the data is not correct, because the data is quite overwhelming. But this is like the game of “hot potato”: people see the problem, but nobody wants to take charge. In fact, health costs are enormous. Working conditions cause chronic diseases such as diabetes or cardiovascular problems. “Regarding data from the World Health Organization (WHO), Mexico ranks first worldwide in work stress, with 75% of its workforce under this condition. They are followed by China (73%) and the United States (59%)”.
As we could see above the high risks and consequences that for companies can represent that a percentage of employees suffer from work stress. Therefore, it is essential that you as a worker feel satisfied with the work you are doing. However, employers must be alert to any problem presented by an employee, because your company depends on their work. It is the obligation of managers to take care of the occupational health of their workers. And work stress is a much more common and dangerous reality than we think.
Author: Amaury Abreu
