How Work Overload Affects Occupational Stress Levels and Job Efficiency

Introduction 

Contemporary human resource management is premised on the concept that the human resource corps is the strongest bearing factor to the success of any enterprise. This is the basis for the continuous research on how to motivate and encourage workers to work hard, smart and with commitment (Mawritz et al., 2014) . The traditional philosophy under which personnel management was based mainly focused on hard work. It evaluated the productivity of employees based on work volume and employed formulas that ensured that employees worked as hard as possible for as many hours as possible. The issue of smart work and productivity, however, resulted in the overhaul of this philosophy. This is based on the realization that overworking employees was eventually counterproductive for any enterprise. In the first place, overwork encourages stress among employees which has major negative ramifications to an employer. Further, overwork enhances work-family conflict for employees thus reducing productivity. Overwork also exponentially reduces the motivation of employees which makes hard work not result in smart work and/or innovative work (Mawritz et al, 2014) . Finally, overworking results in a high employee turnover which is extremely expensive for an organization. This research paper evaluates how giving too much work for employees is counterproductive to the company. 

The Stress Factor 

Work overload causes an employee to always operate under pressure while wary that the work may not be completed on time. Further, this employee will more often than not be fatigued both physically and mentally (Mawritz et al., 2014) . The combination of pressure and fatigue will act as a stress factor for employees which with time will occasion the development of actual clinical stress and even depression. Research has shown that stress-related illnesses are among the largest causes of days off work in America as well as the developed world. A day off has major adverse ramification for any enterprise since it entails wages paid for no work done. Further, when an employee calls in sick, it creates an instant vacuum in the team that management had not factored. This will either cause work disruptions or costs the enterprise highly in seeking for a speedy replacement of the employee for the time taken ill. Further, the company will also incur costs for the treatment of the employee with psychological intervention being extremely expensive (Mawritz et al., 2014) . It, therefore, follows that any advantage that the company may have incurred through giving employees a heavy workload is lost through the days that the employees stay off work due to stress related illness. This makes work overload counterproductive for employers. 

The work-family and/or work-social life conflict 

Employees are human beings who have a life outside their workplaces. Therefore, at any moment in time, employees seek to balance between their work and their social life be it family-based or otherwise (Allen et al., 2013) . A reasonable workload enables employees to have a good balance between work and social life. The employee is, therefore, able to manage the workload and also cater for social obligations kindred to family and the society. However, when there is a work overload, the employee is overwhelmed by work and will not find time for family and social obligations. Further, seeking to combine the work overload and social obligations will lead to fatigue due to over-exertion. The results are family-work conflict, which is one of the most disruptive concepts in today’s workplace. Due to inability to spend enough quality time on social issues, more so family, domestic problems will arise and severely affect the ability of the employee to focus at work (Allen et al., 2013) . Work-family conflict is also a major cause for stress among employees leading to the adverse effects outlined hereinabove. 

The Work Quality Factor 

Work quality is gradually taking precedence over work quantity in today’s workplace. The ability to perform a task in the right way today takes precedence over the ability to perform a high amount of work. An employer can force an employee to work hard but it is almost impossible to compel the employee to work well. With working wel being fundamental as aforesaid, human resource management has developed the concept of employee motivation (Anitha, 2014) . Employee motivation can be informally defined as making the employee want to work as opposed to making the employee work. When employees are overworked, they will not enjoy their work and will also have the feeling that the employer is abusing them. This will exponentially reduce employee motivation and cause the employees to only work because they need to not because they want to. The compulsion to work will have a high negative impact on the quality of work thus countermanding the high quantity of work done (Anitha, 2014) . 

Further, with the advent of technology, finesse has been introduced in the workplace where a small error can result in great losses for the company (Cox, 2016) . Finally, this is the era of innovation where employees are supposed to come up with smarter and novel ways of undertaking duties. Whereas performing duties is the basic obligation of employees, enterprises are profiting highly through intellectual property generated when employee innovate smarter ways of carrying out ordinary activities. A heavy workload in the first place transforms employees into quasi-robots. When there is so much to do, employees will focus only on getting the job done with a little focus on quality improvement. This, in turn, compromises on the quality of the work done. Poor quality work is an anathema to today’s market and persistent poor quality of work can be detrimental to any enterprise (Cox, 2016) . Further, when an employee is overworked and fatigued, there is little room for creativity. This stands in the way of innovation which not only denies an enterprise an opportunity to perform better in future but also robs the organization of the intellectual benefits of employee innovation. In the long run, therefore, work overload becomes counterproductive for the company. 

The Employee Turnover Factor 

The aforementioned factors to wit stress, work-family conflict, low quality work, and poor motivation are high contributors to employee turnover. Losing employees for any reason and having to hire new ones is an extremely expensive process for any organization. When an employee leaves , they carry with them the specialized skills that they had acquired in the organization which is a big loss (Kwon & Rupp, 2013) . Even in similar job types, the way work is done in particular organizations is unique thus employees have a secondary competence based on working for particular organzaions. When new employees are hired, therefore, they have to be instructed with regard to this secondary competence, an activity which costs money for the company. Further, no matter how academically qualified and experienced an employee is, it takes the time to acquire this secondary competence thus during the initial working period, the employee will achieve a lower quality and quantity of work (Kwon & Rupp, 2013) . This is over and above the extra costs of employee turnover which includes costs of hiring such as advertisements and interviews. Finally, high employee turnover creates a high risk for the exposure of an organization’s trade secret. 

The Contrary Argument 

There is a dying breed of employees who belong to the generation commonly referred to as the baby boomers. To this generation, life and work were so closely entangled that nothing else matters. They had little if any social lives and their families had to make do with the leftover time they got away from work. It has been argued that when this breed of employees was stressed, they would work handle as a means of stress management (Cox, 2016) . Further, when they encountered work-family conflict, they would sacrifice family for work thus work-family conflicts would only create more focus for work. This generation has been advocated by some commentators as the ideal workgroup that should be emulated by today’s workers. Whereas this argument may be seen from a casual perusal to hold water, a careful analysis thereof will reveal its faults. There is a good reason why baby boomers are being compelled to retire and be replaced by the younger generation. This is because the heavy workloads carried by baby boomers and the stress they accumulated along may have created high work volumes but heavily sacrificed on work quality and innovation (Cox, 2016) . As long as quality and innovation are superior to work quantity, work overload will eventually be counterproductive. 

Conclusion 

It is clear from the foregoing that causing the employee to work too hard may seem as good value for wages paid but will eventually backfire for the employer. As carefully elaborated above, overwork will result in a combination of pressure and fatigue which creates stress. The adverse effects of stress will negate all the benefits of the high work volume. Further, high work volume will create a conflict between work and the social life of an employee leading to work-family conflict. Finally, overwork will reduce motivation and eliminate creativity which both affect work quality and stands in the way of innovation. The above also results in a high employee turnover which has major adverse effects for any employee as outlined herein above. The baby boomer argument about the positive effects of work overload fails on the basis of the resultant poor work quality. 

References 

Allen, T. D., Johnson, R. C., Kiburz, K. M., & Shockley, K. M. (2013). Work–family conflict and flexible work arrangements: Deconstructing flexibility.  Personnel Psychology ,  66 (2), 345-376 

Anitha, J. (2014). Determinants of employee engagement and their impact on employee performance.  International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 63 (3), 308-323, doi: 10.1108/IJPPM-01-2013-0008 

Cox, L. V. (2016).  Understanding Millennial, Generation X, and Baby Boomer Preferred Leadership Characteristics: Informing Today’s Leaders and Followers  (Doctoral dissertation, Brandman University)   

Kwon, K., & Rupp, D. E. (2013). High ‐ performer turnover and firm performance: The moderating role of human capital investment and firm reputation.  Journal of Organizational Behavior ,  34 (1), 129-150 

Mawritz, M. B., Folger, R., & Latham, G. P. (2014). Supervisors' exceedingly difficult goals and abusive supervision: The mediating effects of hindrance stress, anger, and anxiety.  Journal of Organizational Behavior ,  35 (3), 358-372