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SUMMARY
Reviews workplace stress research and the ineffectiveness of popular stress-control methods Recommends that technical communicators increase their influence, education, and decisionmaking latitude to counter the effects of stress
INTRODUCTION
Technical communicators can suffer all kinds of jobinduced stressors. High workloads, staff cutbacks, and job insecurity are general problems that the communicators deal with, which are made worse by recessions and swiftly changing business environments. Communicators also routinely face tight schedules, last-minute changes, limited access to products and expertise, and insufficient time for projects (Singer 2004). The demands of the technical communication profession have been well-described and almost certainly lead to physical and psychological stress.
Yet remarkably few articles in technical communication journals cover workplace stress. A search of a half-dozen journals in the field found no articles on this topic, despite its relevance for the technical communication community. While popular articles on job stress can be found in magazines or corporate publications, they may fail to report the results of workplace stress research, even though this research area has, in the last 20 years or so, become a virtual sub-specialty of organizational psychology. This lack of reporting may help maintain certain misconceptions about workplace stress, namely that it can be managed by focusing on employees, either through extra training or employee assistance programs. The reporting deficiency may also perpetuate a bias noted by researchers, in which employees and companies see those who suffer from stress as professionally inadequate (Burchell, Lapido, and Wilkenson 2002).
The purpose of this article is to give technical communicators an overview of workplace stress research and to discuss its implications for their profession. The article will do so in three parts: the first part discusses general concepts and findings of workplace stress research. The cost of the stress will be considered, as will the influence of economic forces on workers. The second part will review the effectiveness of employee- and company-centered techniques for controlling workplace stress. The third part summarizes the debate over how technical communicators can gain the influence that is likely to reduce their stress. The article concludes by considering how stress research endorses the communicators' attempts to acquire more influence, education, and decision-making latitude, as these factors are associated with lower levels of stress.
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