Stress as a Compensable Factor in Job Evaluation

Together with such factors as training required, degree of initiative, responsibility for product or service, supervision of others, safety, working conditions and other considerations weighed in the evaluation of jobs, is the possibility of assessing relative job stress. But we seldom see stress per se considered in the design of job evaluation plans. There have been myriad conceptual and measurement problems involved in explicating what stress is. Thus stress has not been ignored in the social sciences and business. Morever, it is possible to build ad hoc job stress scales; and there is good reason for companies and agencies to experiment with them. A way of exploration and measurement of perceived stress in the job is proposed and suggested as a worthwhile beginning for interested scholars, companies, agencies, and other work organizations. Such endeavors would also generate studies of individual job performance in organizations and their connection with occupational stress research.