{"id":47297,"date":"2024-05-04T12:24:07","date_gmt":"2024-05-04T06:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leverageedu.com\/learn\/?p=47297"},"modified":"2024-05-04T12:24:07","modified_gmt":"2024-05-04T06:54:07","slug":"ielts-daily-reading-task-summary-completion-on-stress-of-workplace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leverageedu.com\/learn\/ielts-daily-reading-task-summary-completion-on-stress-of-workplace\/","title":{"rendered":"IELTS Daily Reading Task- Summary Completion (Stress of Workplace)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Stress of Workplace<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A<\/strong>. How busy is too busy? For some it means having to miss the occasional long lunch; for others, it means missing lunch altogether. For a few, it is not being able to take a \u201csickie\u201d once a month. Then there is a group of people for whom working every evening and weekend is normal, and frantic is the tempo of their lives. For most senior executives, workloads swing between extremely busy and frenzied. The vice-president of the management consultancy AT Kearney and its head of telecommunications for the Asia-Pacific region, Neil Plumridge, says his work weeks vary from a \u201cmanageable\u201d 45 hours to 80 hours, but average 60 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

B.<\/strong> Three warning signs alert Plumridge about his workload: sleep, scheduling and family. He knows he has too much on when he gets less than six hours of sleep for three consecutive nights; when he is constantly having to reschedule appointments; \u201cand the third one is on the family side\u201d, says Plumridge, the father of a three-year-old daughter, and expecting a second child in October. \u201cIf I happen to miss a birthday or anniversary, I know things are out of control.\u201d Being \u201ctoo busy\u201d is highly subjective. But for any individual, the perception of being too busy over a prolonged period can start showing up as stress: disturbed sleep, and declining mental and physical health. National workers\u2019 compensation figures show stress causes the most lost time of any workplace injury. Employees suffering stress are off work for an average of 16.6 weeks. The effects of stress are also expensive. Comcare, the Federal Government insurer, reports that in 2003-04, claims for psychological injury accounted for 7% of claims but almost 27% of claim costs. Experts say the key to dealing with stress is not to focus on relief \u2013 a game of golf or a massage \u2013 but to reassess workloads. Neil Plumridge says he makes it a priority to work out what has to change; that might mean allocating extra resources to a job, allowing more time or changing expectations. The decision may take several days. He also relies on the advice of colleagues, saying his peers coach each other with business problems. \u201cJust a fresh pair of eyes over an issue can help,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

C. <\/strong>Executive stress is not confined to big organisations. Vanessa Stoykov has been running her own advertising and public relations business for seven years, specialising in work for financial and professional services firms. Evolution Media has grown so fast that it debuted on the BRW Fast 100 list of fastest-growing small enterprises last year \u2013 just after Stoykov had her first child. Stoykov thrives on the mental stimulation of running her own business. \u201cLike everyone, I have the occasional day when I think my head\u2019s going to blow off,\u201d she says. Because of the growth phase, the business is in, Stoykov has to concentrate on short-term stress relief \u2013 weekends in the mountains, the occasional \u201cmental health\u201d day \u2013 rather than delegating more work. She says: \u201cWe\u2019re hiring more people, but you need to train them, teach them about the culture and the clients, so it\u2019s actually more work rather than less.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

D.<\/strong> Identify the causes: Jan Elsnera, a Melbourne psychologist who specialises in executive coaching, says thriving on a demanding workload is typical of senior executives and other high-potential business people. She says there is no one-size-fits-all approach to stress: some people work best with high-adrenalin periods followed by quieter patches, while others thrive under sustained pressure. \u201cWe could take urine and blood hormonal measures and pass a judgment of whether someone\u2019s physiologically stressed or not,\u201d she says. \u201cBut that\u2019s not going to give us an indicator of what their experience of stress is, and what the emotional and cognitive impacts of stress are going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

E.<\/strong> Eisner\u2019s practice is informed by a movement known as positive psychology, a school of thought that argues \u201cpositive\u201d experiences \u2013 feeling engaged, challenged, and that one is contributing to something meaningful \u2013 do not balance out negative ones such as stress; instead, they help people increase their resilience over time. Good stress, or positive experiences of being challenged and rewarded, is thus cumulative in the same way as bad stress. Elsner says many of the senior business people she coaches are relying more on regulating bad stress through methods such as meditation and yoga. She points to research showing that meditation can alter the biochemistry of the brain and actually help people \u201cretrain\u201d the way their brains and bodies react to stress. \u201cMeditation and yoga enable you to shift the way that your brain reacts, so if you get proficient at it you\u2019re in control.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

F. <\/strong>The Australian vice-president of AT Kearney, Neil Plumridge, says: \u201cOften stress is caused by our setting unrealistic expectations of ourselves. I\u2019ll promise a client I\u2019ll do something tomorrow, and then promise another client the same thing, when I really know it\u2019s not going to happen. I\u2019ve put stress on myself when I could have said to the clients: \u2018Why don\u2019t I give that to you in 48 hours?\u2019 The client doesn\u2019t care.\u201d Over-committing is something people experience as an individual problem. We explain it as the result of procrastination or Parkinson\u2019s law: that work expands to fill the time available. New research indicates that people may be hard-wired to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


G.<\/strong> A study in the February issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology shows that people always believe they will be less busy in the future than now. This is a misapprehension, according to the authors of the report, Professor Gal Zauberman, of the University of North Carolina, and Professor John Lynch, of Duke University. \u201cOn average, an individual will be just as busy two weeks or a month from now as he or she is today. But that is not how it appears to be in everyday life,\u201d they wrote. \u201cPeople often make commitments long in advance that they would never make if the same commitments required immediate action. That is, they discount future time investments relatively steeply.\u201d Why do we perceive a greater \u201csurplus\u201d of time in the future than in the present? The researchers suggest that people underestimate completion times for tasks stretching into the future, and that they are bad at imagining the future competition for their time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. Complete the following summary. Use NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Statistics from National Worker\u2019s Compensation indicate stress plays the most important role in 22 …………….. <\/strong>which cause time losses. Staffs take about 23 ……………..<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 for absence from work caused by stress. Not just time is our main concern but great expenses generated consequently. An official insurer wrote sometime that about 24 ……………..<\/strong> of all claims were mental issues whereas nearly 27% costs in all claims, Sports Such as 25 ……………..<\/strong> as well as 26 ……………..<\/strong> could be a treatment to release stress; However, specialists recommended another practical way out, analyse 27 ……………..<\/strong> once again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Answer Key<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

22. Workplace injury<\/p>\n\n\n\n

23. 16.6 weeks<\/p>\n\n\n\n

24. 7%<\/p>\n\n\n\n

25. Golf<\/p>\n\n\n\n

26. Massage<\/p>\n\n\n\n

27. Workloads<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tips to Remember<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n