Fear of work is called Ergophobia. It is a state when a person afraids of approaching the work at workplace due to many reasons. This tends him to refrain from work to the maximum extent.
Fear of work disorder has a tendency to pose many adverse effects on a person and his career in a long run.
There are several causes for anxiety and fear in the workplace.
1. Fear of rejection
Rejection always hurts. People generally do not take up the job they are not comfortable with. For a person, with a half hearted approach, there are extreme chances of being rejected by his higher ups.
Rejection develops fear of work into the person. He does not want to take any chance of being rejected. That’s why, he always shows his willingness to do similar types of jobs by avoiding new ones.
To overcome the fear of rejection, Managers must encourage their subordinates for initiating new and challenging tasks. They should carefully see the efforts made by their subordinates irrespective of results.
There are always a way to correct the mistakes, so a person shouldn’t be afraid of rejection. Instead he should continuously try to improve his performance.
2. Fear of failure
Who loves failure? Perhaps, no one. Still, there are many people who do not work as per their potential due to fear of failure. They think, they have no special skills to perform a new job.
Such feelings and self doubt keep them under fear or work and they do not perform up to the mark. They do not take up any challenging job due to fear of failure.
There is no one in this universe, who has not failed. Everyone has faced failures many times in their life. But they never gave up and tried continuously till success kissed them.
By boosting the morale and killing self doubts, Fear of failure can be avoided at workplace.
3. Fear of bullying
Workplace bullying is very common in almost all the organisations. It is human nature that when a new entrant joins a big group, already settled group tries to intimidate the new person to show their power and existence.
Bullying causes to develop fear of work among new joinees at workplace. They feel insecure and low in motivation to perform assigned jobs. Some people ignore bullying by co-workers and supervisors. But few people feel it very difficult to work in such environment.
Bullying is somewhat behavioural reactions i.e being displayed by existing co-workers over new joinees. Once, time passes it becomes normal and all workers behave to each other with respect and dignity.
4. Fear of criticism
Many people have enormous potential to perform in their best way. But they don’t care about new initiatives. They only like to work on routine jobs.
Belief of definite criticism by other people in the organisation creates fear of work among these employees. And due to the fear of criticism, they do not take interest in any new job and feel happy with limited and routine jobs.
5. Fear of untoward incident
There are many examples of the persons who were once too good in their work. They had capability of speedy work, adherence to time limits, courage to work beyond the expectation of the management. But later on one small incident at workplace changed their view point towards work.
Persons directly or indirectly associated with the incident take utmost care afterwards. They do not want the incident to happen again. This feeling generates fear of work stress among them and they start working with slow pace and with too many checks in each stage. This hinders the progress of work and affect the career of the employees.
Best ways to conquer over the fear of work
- Find out the reason of fear
- Identify obstacles in work
- Eliminate each obstacles one by one
- Be confident, disciplined and free from self doubt
- ‘Knowledge is power’ – So, enrich yourselves with subject knowledge
- Follow Procedures
- Maintain harmonious relationship with your colleagues
Also Read: Finish what you start: Ultimate Key to Productivity