Organisational communication and its relationships with occupational stress of primary school staff in Western Australia

Abstract

Occupational stress is an important issue for most occupations and often arises when the demands of the workplace become excessive or aspects of work are unpleasant. If left unmanaged occupational stress can lead to a range of outcomes that can cost organisations dearly, including burnout, physical sickness, absenteeism and turnover. Some aspects of organisational communication have been identified as potential mediators of stress. However, there have not been many empirical studies involving a comprehensive set of communication variables and their relationships to occupational stress, and nothing much has been done in schools. This means our knowledge of how occupational stress might be reduced through school communication practices is extremely limited. This article reports the results of a quantitative study of the relationships between occupational stress and a range of aspects of organisational communication. Participants were 358 staff members from government schools in the state of Western Australia. Quantitative data was obtained through questionnaire surveys. Results suggest that certain aspects of communication, and in particular load, openness, access to formal and informal channels, cultural and supportive communication were significantly associated with domains of occupational stress for this sample. The article concludes with implications for schools and future study.