PROGRESS REPORT Company:Red Ribbon Inc.

Service Learning: STRESS MANAGEMENT As of September 2, 2008, the team has gathered a quantity of data from the Operations and Human Resource departments of Red Ribbon Inc. Based on a general overview of the organizational diagnosis of this company, the team decided on delving into the aspect of STRESS MANAGEMENT within the company for the teams service learning. But first, an overview of what stress is, is needed. Most of us are aware that employee stress is an increasing problem in organizations. Employees are stressed out from greater workloads and having to work longer hours because of downsizing at their company. We read surveys in which employees complain about the stress created in trying to balance work and family responsibilities. Stress is a dynamic condition in which an individual is confronted with an opportunity, demand, or resource related to what the individual desires and for which the outcome is perceived to be both uncertain and important. For Red Ribbon Inc., it is notified that there are many kinds of stress for such a workforce as dynamic as this. Some stress can be good, and some can be bad. There is the presence of challenge stress (stress associated with challenges in the work environment), and hindrance stress (stress that keeps you from reaching your goals). Although challenge stress has many fewer negative implications than hindrance stress, they are still both present within the work area. There is no shortage of factors within the organization that can cause stress. There is the pressure to elude making errors, in a time constrained task completion, work overload, demanding managers, and disagreeable colleagues are a few examples. Task demand factors are related in causing stress in jobs. These comprise the job design of an employee, including autonomy, task variety, and degree of automation, working conditions, and the physical work layout. Increasingly, as customer service becomes ever more important in this company, emotional labor is a source of stress. Role overload and role ambiguity also causes stress. Since each and every employee is given specific role demands, and the company is dealing with high customer service, there is the possibility of resulting to role conflicts when expectations are created that may be hard to reconcile or satisfy. Roles should be maintained specific and known to the employees at this rate. For this service learning on Stress Management, the team decides on employing a nonexperimental field inquiry on stress research for the company. Nonexperimental as the research will not make use of controlled groups for research, although the variable employees will be random. Field inquiry will be utilized to maximize generalizability and external validity

of data to be collected. The team establishes a list of measurement criteria for the types of measure to be used. The most important is reliability and validity. Reliability refers to the consistency of any measurement or diagnostic instrument, or the absence of random error of measurement. As random error increases, the reliability of the measure decreases. Validity of measurement, on the other hand, refers to whether valid inferences can be drawn from scores on a measure. In this case, if we ask people to complete a measure in which they indicate those stressors they actually experienced from a list of job stressors, the measure list should include all relevant stressors. A detailed exposition of measure should be attained. For the paper, the team will utilize self-report measures such as surveys, questionnaires and interviews from employees. Self-report measures of stress have a high degree of face validity. The team plans on suggesting a stress audit survey for the company to identify chronic stressors of its employees. To investigate the more specialized stressors, a self-report inventory may need to be developed that focuses on potential stressors unique for the job. In developing stress audit survey scale, it is useful to follow a defined three-step process. First, a task-based job analysis and an ergonomic analysis must be conducted. This task-based job analysis involves identifying key job tasks performed on the job under consideration. To obtain this information, the team suggests examination of existing job descriptions, observations, interviews and questionnaires. Analysis should uncover frequently performed job tasks. The ergonomic analysis should focus on the physical work environment. The second step is to conduct separate structured interviews for performing employees and supervising individuals. The last step is to select the potential stressors for the inclusion in the self-report inventory, decide on a response format, and develop schemes for rating (scoring) and interpreting the data to follow. The result of the stress audit will be used to develop specific action plans to either eliminate or at least control and attenuate the identified stressors. These action plans may include individual approaches in managing stress such as the understanding and utilization of basic time-management (making daily lists of activities to be accomplished; prioritizing activities by importance and urgency; scheduling activities according to the priorities set; knowing your daily cycle and handling the most demanding parts of your job during the high part of your cycle when you are most alert and productive). These action plans may also incorporate organizational approaches such as developing new selection and placement systems, goal setting, redesigning jobs, increasing employee involvement, and developing organizational communication and introducing wellness programs to optimize leadership performance. Introduction amendments within the physical work environment may also be the end result. After action plans are developed and executed, the team suggests that an evaluation of the

interventions should take into place through a systematic process of program evaluation. The results of this research may bolster claims of success, suggest the need to improve existing interventions, or develop new action plans.