Stress, Wellness, and Performance Optimization

Book excerpt: This volume examines the intertwined concepts of stress, performance, and wellness and offers insight and strategies for providing support to individuals and organizations for effective performance optimization. The book considers new constructs in the area of organizational stress and provides a comprehensive review of wellness as well as performance aspects, offering unique perspectives and empirical findings. The book first discusses organizational constraints and summarizes the many factors within workplaces that negate effective job performance (disruptions, lack of supplies, equipment, or training, etc.). It discusses well-being interventions, giving practical examples that combine theory and practice. The moderating effect of situation-specific support is considered as is the role of family and spirituality in creating resilience in leadership and organizations in different cultural contexts. New technology, such as wearable devices and computer-based software applications, are considered, highlighting their potential to provide employers with guidance as to how they can enable their employees to self-manage their wellness and productivity. Other topics include anxiety habit loops —how they are formed, their debilitating impact, and various strategies that can break these dysfunctional habit loops and replace them with more functional and constructive habits, better leading to reduced anxiety, stronger mental well-being and resilience; measuring work-life balance and life satisfaction; the effects of perceived organizational justice and generational cohort on burnout and self-efficacy and the association between burnout and self-efficacy; and more.