A South Korean court recently ruled in favour of employees who complained that surveillance TV cameras installed by bosses caused them excessive stress at work. Though this is a case from a fellow Asian country, the scene is not very different closer to home.

Businesses are in it for the money and productivity counts. If a company is putting in money, they expect returns and when they hire people, they expect them to perform. It’s pretty simple. However, the means some employers use to ensure that their goals are met, are quite intrusive. Some companies have chosen to instal surveillance cameras on their premises, leading to mixed reactions from some employees. "At times it is very stressful because most of the offices have this camera to protect their important matters but instead they land up monitoring the personal life of the employees," said Cassie Futardo who works at a BPO.

Nobody knows where the invasion of privacy line can be drawn but Meera Das, feel that it increases efficiency. "We have these cameras in different classrooms in our school. While it is easy for the management to monitor whether or not the students are being taught properly, it does get a little uneasy for a teacher. You have to be on guard always this way," she said.

In some cases, it is very impractical to have surveillance cameras in the workplace. Employers can be insistent on having them but Myron D’Souza feels that in his profession, surveillance cameras will just get everyone fired. " I work in advertising where the stress levels are extremely high because the deadline is always yesterday. So employees need to have some space away from the administration or the owners, maybe some time away from their bosses, to de-stress which includes playing games, hanging out and taking breaks," he said. He also believes that doing a job fast and in the presence of cameras can make them compromise on quality. Sonam Kaul, an executive, doesn’t mind the cameras but she definitely would mind if they picked up sound.

But who is going to judge the misuse of these devices? Especially since complaining against them could get you in some trouble. "Cameras are only for official purposes, but the management did not know what to monitor, I guess. According to my past experience, majority of reasons where employees were reprimanded either had to do with eating, talking, gossiping or joking."

It is important to keep an open mind in a situation like this. Nobody likes to be monitored and questioned about the work they are putting in. But if you feel like you can’t take the stress involved, then maybe you should be speaking out. And remember to smile for the cameras.

Usually I’m very laid back, so when the stress comes, I channel it to achieve my goals. Without stress I would be a lazy bum. The women in my life, mom and my sisters, stress me out the most.  Not having a job is way more stressful then any stress produced while working. I balance my public life with my normal life by pretending to be invisible most of the time.

My passion for my music is such that even when I try my best to get away from it, it lovingly captures my full attention, irritating anyone who I’m trying to spend time with. I love jumping on a trampoline. It really gives me wings. Plus, I’m awesome with double tucks and twists, so I always have a blast bouncing on the trampoline. I used to have a German Shepard, my baby Booba, but she passed away. Thoughts of her does relax me. My family keeps stressing me to get married and my friends keep stressing me to go out and get laid.

Being stressed out during the first half of pregnancy may be unhealthy, but it won’t increase a woman’s risk of developing a serious complication known as preeclampsia, Dutch researchers have found.

Stress also didn’t influence a woman’s likelihood of developing a related condition known as gestational hypertension, in which blood pressure climbs to dangerous levels during pregnancy.

"Of course too much psychosocial stress is not good for a woman’s health. But women who have a lot of work stress or other kind of stress should not be afraid of getting preeclampsia or gestational hypertension," Dr Karlijn C. Vollebregt of the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam, the study’s lead author said.

Preeclampsia and gestational hypertension, known collectively as hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, can harm the mother and fetus, Vollebregt and her colleagues note in their report, published in BJOG, an International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. Established risk factors include obesity, high blood pressure, and older age.

While the cause of these disorders remains unclear, the researchers note, some have suggested stress as a factor. To investigate, they followed 3,679 women who were pregnant for the first time, 3.5 per cent of whom developed preeclampsia and 4.4 per cent of whom had gestational hypertension. All filled out a questionnaire measuring their stress levels before 24 weeks of pregnancy.

The researchers found no relationship between a woman’s level of job stress, anxiety, anxiety related to pregnancy or depression and her risk of developing preeclampsia or gestational hypertension.

"Women who have or have had preeclampsia, and especially those women with a baby that was born too early because of preeclampsia or a baby that died, often feel guilty," Vollebregt noted in an email interview. "They think that if they had less stress at work or at home that this could have saved the baby or this would have prevented preeclampsia."

"This is not true," she added. "Preeclampsia can be a severe disease but for a woman there is nothing she can do to prevent it during her pregnancy."