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by Arshad Husain

People react to stress in different ways. Some coping much better than others and suffering fewer of the harmful effects of stress. Just as stress differs as a function of the individual, it also differs as a function of one’s type of occupation. Some occupations are, of course, inherently more stressful than others. All of the stress-strain-health relationships have an obvious impact on the organization and industry. Both physical and mental illness renders the employee unfit for work, and combine both to lessen the satisfaction obtained from work and reduce job performance and productivity levels. There are various ways that stress symptoms or outcomes are reflected in the workplace. Evidence from a growing body of research suggests that certain individuals, in a variety of occupations, are increasingly exposed to unacceptable levels of job-related stress (Schultz & Schultz, 2002). Occupational stress is any discomfort which is felt and perceived at a personal level and triggered by instances, events or situations that are too intense and frequent in nature so as to exceed a person’s coping capabilities and resources to handle them adequately (Malta, 2004).

Occupational stress can be defined as the “harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when the requirements of the job do not match the capabilities, resources or need of the worker” (Sauter and Murphy. 1999).

Performance is defined as the outcomes and accomplishments valued by the organization or system that one works in.

Each individual is exposed to a range of stressors both at work and in their personal lives which ultimately affect his or her performance. Pressure at work can be positive leading to increased productivity. However, when this pressure becomes excessive it has a negative impact. The individuals perceive themselves as being unable to cope and not to possess the necessary skills to combat their stress. Stress is acknowledged to be one of the main causes of absence from work (Mead, 2000). The occupational stressors can be categorized into four major groups. Firstly, the working conditions, including shift and week-end work, inadequate remuneration, hours of work, discrimination and safety at the work environment. Secondly, relationships at work including quality of relationships with peers, subordinates and supervisors. Thirdly, role conflict and ambiguity including ill-defined role, functions, expectations, and duties. Fourthly, organization structure and climate which includes communication policy and practice, major changes in the workplace, culture of the organization, and lack of participation in decision-making. Another cause is career development including under utilization of skills or failing to reach full potential. Another contributing factor is the nature of the job which might amount to an immense amount of physical and emotional exhaustion (Parikh & Taukari, 2004).

The main objective of this research is to identify role of different contributing factors of job stress and to investigate level of stress on those factors among different departments of Wall’s Unilever Pakistan. And also to find that how job performance is affected by job stress. There are different factors of job stress i.e. work overload, work under load, supervision role conflicts, career development, physical environment repetitive work, work family conflict and coworkers.

Research Hypotheses

 1. There is difference in level of occupational stress among the employees of different departments of Wall’s Unilever Pakistan.

 2. High level of stress adversely affects the performance of the employees.

Method and Procedure

This research is conducted to assess the level of Occupational stress among employees of different departments of Wall’s Ice Cream Factory, Unilever Pakistan Limited and effects of stress on employee performance. Sample Consists of N = 65 employees having different levels of jobs e.g. managers, assistant managers, junior managers, senior supervisors, supervisors, machine operators, and technicians working in five different departments of Wall’s ICF. Random sampling technique is used for the selection of departments. After randomly selecting five departments of the organization, again random sampling technique is applied for the selection of workers. The variables on which participants are matched are of an age range between 25 – 45 years; education level and occupation level (designation). Stress is operationally defined as the total score of individual on “Occupational Stress Scale (OSS) “. Job performance is operationally defined as “The rating of the employee’s job performance by his supervisor on a 7 point scale ranging from outstanding to unsatisfactory. Three assessment tools are used in this research. Demographic Information Questionnaire (DIQ) consisting of 10 questions is used to get information about the participants. Occupational Stress Scale (OSS) consisting of 9 factors i.e. work overload, work under load, supervision, co-workers, physical conditions, monotony and boredom, work, family conflict, career development barriers and role conflict/ ambiguity, is used to assess the level of stress. Employee Performance Rating (EPR) is a single item scale on which the line manager rates the performance of the employees. This single item assessment is based on detail employee skill assessment which is done after one to one discussion of Line manager and employee. The supervisor rates the performance of the employee on A, B+, B, C+, C, D and E. The key of the rating is A for outstanding performance, B+ for very good, B is good, C+ for good satisfactory, C satisfactory, D marginal and E for unsatisfactory.

Pilot study is conducted to finalize the tool and taking suggestions from the participants. All the suggestions are incorporated and irrelevant items are excluded from the scale. The researcher administrated the questionnaires after brief instructions. The total time taken to assess a participant is between 40 to 50 minutes. The participant completed demographic information questionnaires and occupational stress scale in researcher’s presence. After collecting the whole information data is analyzed and quantitative and qualitative interpretation is done.

Results

One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) is carried out to assess job stress in different departments of the organization. The departments are Human Resource department, electrical and Instrument department, stores, engineering department and production department. There is no significant difference among 5 departments on stress level.

It is hypothesized that high level of stress has adverse effects on the employee’s performance. Correlation analysis is carried out to examine the relationship between job stress and job performance. The results did not support the hypothesis. The results indicated no significant relationship between level of stress and performance of the employee. The results are significant only on the workload factor that contributes to stress. The P-value on workload factor in shows a negative relationship with performance.

Correlation analysis is also carried out to examine the relationship between education and performance of the employees as the performance rating done by the HR executive is based on educational level of the employees.There is strong positive correlation between education received by the employee and job performance of the employee.

Conclusion

Workload, co-workers and repetitive work are identified as the major factors causing stress. It is concluded that there is moderate level of stress with no significant difference in different departments however no affect of stress is found on job performance in the selected organization.

Discussion

The first hypothesis is that there is difference in the level of stress experienced by the employees’ of different departments and the results are not significant. The results did not support the hypothesis as all departments had equal facilities and so, there seemed no difference among different departments in level of stress. So, by the observation that the researcher did during the visit to the Walls factory,  it is observed that the atmosphere is very friendly and people working there are very co-operative to each other. Wall’s Ice Cream factory has a very strong culture. The structure of the organization is very good and the rules and regulations for each employee are equal with there being  no  condition like ‘that of excessive rules and lack of participation of employees in decision making’. The organization’s core values are both intensely held and widely shared. A strong culture had a great influence on the behavior of its members because the high degree of sharing feelings and intensity creates an internal climate of high behavioral control (Robbins, 1996).

All departments are in the same building and interlinked to each other and have same facilities, structure and designation hierarchies. At certain occasions employees of different departments work in teams for the achievement of specific goals. All departments entertain upward and downward flow of communication.

Workload is the main source of stress for employees of this organization. Being a multinational company its production rate is very high so the results are significant on this factor. The results revealed that workload had a negative relationship with performance of the employees. The results are consistent with a 5-year study of 1, 100 factory workers in China that increased pressure on the job led to significant increases in the workers’ blood pressure and cholesterol levels (Siegrist, 1996). Production of this organization is demanding that’s why stress due to work under load is absent.

The second hypothesis is not supported. The results revealed that there is no significant effect of stress on the performance of the employees. From the organization’s standpoint, management may not be concerned when employees experience low to moderate levels of stress. The reason is that such levels of stress might be functional and lead to higher performance. When there is too much work to do, it causes stress but as human beings are adaptive they can manage it and their performance is not affected from it. One reason may be that Unilever’s Wall’s factory is people friendly. They are people oriented as well as task oriented. The wage system is fine and the better performing workers in this organization are paid more. They provide them with health facilities, traveling facilities and family allowances. Majority of the workers in this organization are very satisfied as reported by their supervisor. So it is not strange that their stress level is relatively low which did  not affect their performance.

Insignificant differences in stress in employees from different departments can have various explanations. One possible explanation could be that the researcher measured stress level himself with the help of occupational stress scale while the performance rating is taken from the HR department as performance appraisal is done on an annual basis. Performance criteria is based on education level of the employees as it is indicated when correlations between education and performance of the employee are calculated. But the researcher in this study assumed that performance is affected by the level of stress which is caused by different factors. So the results are not significant and no relationship is found between level of stress and performance of the employees. The researcher has some recommendations in order to improve further research e.g. sample size should increase and may taken from more than one organization so that the finding can be generalized. The researcher should measure performance of the employees himself instead of taking rating from the HR department.

References

Malta. Stress at Work. A Concept in Stress. Human Factors Limited. Business Psychologyand Strategy Development 2004.

Mead R. What is Stress? Roger Mead Associates, Stress Management, Coaching and Training for Individuals and Groups 2000.

Murphy, S. L. Sauter, Occupational Stress Issues & Development in Research. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.

Parikh P, Taukari A, Bhattacharya T. Occupational Stress and Coping among Nurses. J Health Manag, 2004; 6: 115-27.

Robbins, S.P (1996). Organizational Behavior . (International edition) New York: Prentice- Hall, Inc.

Schultz, D. & Schultz, E.S. (2002). Psychology and Work Today. (8th ed.). India:Pearson Education, Inc

Siegrist, J. (1996) Adverse Health effects of high – effort / low reward conditions. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 1, 27 – 41.

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Source by ARSHAD HUSAIN