Office stress is a very common occurrence. Office stress comes about because of the pressures of the work, which is frequently not so simple to define, particularly in a small firm. In a big office, jobs are fairly clearly defined and everyone knows what they are responsible for.
In a small office though, the couple of members of staff often have to cover half-a-dozen or so different jobs and so office stress can build up. Office stress can build up quickly if the boss is unsympathetic or a member of a small office team goes off pregnant or sick whether a temporary replacement is employed or not.
Office stress is a very real phenomenon particularly in a small business. For example, it is not uncommon for a company with $1 annual turnover to be run by a staff of two – the office manager and a secretary. This means that the office manager has to be able to do every job and it is hoped that the secretary will be able to do most of them too. This creates office stress.
The secretary-cum-assistant will have to understand filing, typing, word-processing, data entry for book-keeping software, how to read job sheets, time sheets and invoices. The secretary will also have to welcome visitors, but keep sales people at bay, while staying polite.
The secretary will also need to have good phone manners and be able to reply to enough questions to be able to protect the manager from time wasters and handle serious questions if the manager is not in. These jobs are hard enough on their own, but office stress builds up if you find yourself trying to do three jobs at once and that is not unusual.
You could be keying in time sheet data the manager has gone to visit site, when the phone rings with an enquirey and a potential client comes in asking for a quote. This is enough to make office stress soar.
The manager will also have to be able to carry out these tasks, but the office supervisor will also be responsible for management accounts, pay, job costing, pricing, writing letters and keeping up with the law as the Company Secretary, which means that he/she will need to know enough about employment law to advise the directors.
This leads to terrific office stress. Besides all this, the office manager is usually responsible for paying and collecting taxes and keeping up with regulations and employment law. In these days of litigation and government claw backs, mistakes in any legal field are punished with expensive fines or compensation claims. This degree of responsibility also just raises the level of office stress.
The difficulty is that office stress, like most kinds of stress, leads to tension and irritability and irritability can lead to a short fuse and flashes of temper, which only goes to worsen the situation and raise the level of office stress another notch.
The levels of office stress soar if an vital article of office apparatus breaks down, because it is always just when you want it. Because it can take hours or even days to have it repaired, you are expected to be able to carry out small repairs yourself. And then if the employer is an unsympathetic or only unlikeable person then the degree of office stress can be even worse.
Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently concerned with First Aid trainer courses. If you have an interest in RC vehicles, please go over to our website now at First Aid Courses Online.
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