Stress Management free essay sample

Informatics College of Science and Technology. Faisalabad, Pakistan. E-mail. [emailprotected] com ABSTRACT Stress is a universal element and individuals in every walk of life have to face it. The employees working in different organizations have to deal with stress. Especially Bankers are under a great deal of stress due to many antecedents of stress. These stresses contribute to decreased organizational performance, decreased employee overall performance, decreased quality of work, high staff turnover, and absenteeism due to health problems such as anxiety, depression, headache and backache. Six components of job stress: Lack of administrative support, excessive work demand, problematic customer relations, coworker’s relationship, family work life balance and risky ness of job were examined in this study. The objective of the study is to explore the stress related problems of bankers and examine the relationship between stress and performance. And finally the impact of stress on employee performance. For this purpose 150 questionnairs were filled by the bankers from the district Faisalabad. We will write a custom essay sample on Stress Management or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The results show that all the components of stress cause great stress in bankers and then decrease their performance. The previous study on banking sector of Pakistan conducted by Usman Basher and Muhammad Ismail showed that job stress signifincently reduce the performance of an individual. Another study on banking sector by jamshed, et al also showed the same results. Keywords: Job performance, Stress, Banks. INTRODUCTION Stress is a Common element in any kind of job and persons have to face it in almost every walk of life. Stress has been defined in different ways over the years. According to Robbins and sanghi (2006) â€Å"A dynamic condition in which an individual is confronted with an opportunity, constraints, or demand related to what he or she desires and for which the outcome is perceived to be both uncertain and important. † stress is an increasing problem in organizations and often cause adverse effects on performance. According to Kahn and Quinn (1970) â€Å"stress is the outcome of facet of the assigned work role that caused harmful effect for individual. Occupational stress is considered as harmful factor of the work environment. † It also has unpleasant effects on health of an individual as David (1998) contributed â€Å"it can also be labeled as the harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when the requirements of the job do not match the capabilities, resources, or needs  ©Society for Business Research Promotion | 38 www. ajbms. org ISSN: 2047-2528 Asian Journal of Business and Management Sciences Vol. 1 No. 7 [38-47] of the workers. Job stress can lead to poor health and even injury. According to ILO (1986)â€Å"It is recognized world-wide as a major challenge to individual mental and physical health, and organizational health. † Although stress includes both good and bad aspects but it is not necessarily bad. Robbins and sanghi (2006) also contributed â€Å"stress is typically discussed in a negative context, it also has a positive value. It is an opportunity when offers a potential gain. † Rubi na et at. , (2008) contributed the same â€Å"Stress is not always negative or harmful and indeed, the absence of stress is death. † But it still has destructive impact on employee performance. According to Usman and ismail (2010)â€Å"One of the affected outcomes of stress is on job performance. †so it needs to be studied. The purpose of study is (a) To explore the stress related problems of bankers. (b) To examine the relationship of stress and performance. (c) To suggest the measures for stress tolerance and to enhance work performance. LITERATURE REVIEW An individual in his or her job in bank face stress as Jamshed et al. ,(2011)suggested â€Å"The workplace is potentially an important source of stress for bankers because of the amount of time they spent in their respective banks. And that stress often decrease their performance. â€Å"Therefore occupation of individuals could be a major source of stress in the given circumstances. When individuals face stress due to various conditions of their occupation and fail to cope with stress, it results into burnout,† (ibdm). Basically in banking sector lack of administrative support from boss(manager), work over load time pressure, risky ness of job, poor relationship with customers coworkers, and work family balance cause stress which in turns decrease employee performance. The same was contributed by Materson (1980) â€Å"Causes of stress are many like work load, cuts in staff, change at work, long work hours, shift work, lack of supervision, inadequate training, inappropriate working conditions, too heavy responsibilities and poor relations with colleagues. † The same was identified by Ganster Loghan, (2005) â€Å"huge and multi fields literature points a lot of key factors such as work environment, management support, workload etc in determining how stressful the work can be and its effect on employee physical and mental health. In banking sector particularly higher management doesn’t realize the impact of stress on employee performance which ultimately results in critical managerial dilemmas as Subha and shakeel (2009) described â€Å"Higher level of stress existed with no managerial concern for solution consequently lowering the employee performance, staking organizational reputation and loss of skilled employees, these situations call for immediate concern from organization management for employing effective stress management practices to increase employee satisfaction and overall employee performance. Work overload time pressure to complete too much work in short span of time is big source of stress which decrease the performance of employees as Babak et al. ,(2010) studied â€Å"With excessive pressures, the job demands cannot be met, relaxation turns to exhaustion and a sense of satisfaction replaces with the feelings of stress, motivation sheds away and the workers start losing interest in the work and hence performance chart shows a negative trend. The performance of individuals also decreased when stress is caused by inability of individual to maintain a reasonable balance between family life and work life as he/she has to spend a lot of time in his/her working. McCubbin Figley (1983) suggested that â€Å"Job related stress can be mostly immobilizing because of its possible threats to family functi oning and individual performance. Job related stress can create a difference between demands on families and the ability of families to provide material security for them. † And that nability to maintain a reasonable balance between family life and work life results in work to family conflict which in turn cause stress and ultimately decreases the employee performance. According to Anderson ( 2002) â€Å"work to family conflicts is also a predecessor which creates stress in employees of an organization. †In banks the poor relationship among employees often cause stress and have adverse effects on the performance of employees. Lack of social support from colleagues and poor interpersonal relationships can cause stress especially among employees with a high social need. Margot Shields( 2006) suggested. different sources of work stress do not occur in isolation but indeed interact with one another. † Stress caused by degree of involvement in decision making is a big  ©Society for Business Research Promotion | 39 www. ajbms. org ISSN: 2047-2528 Asian Journal of Business and Management Sciences Vol. 1 No. 7 [38-47] source of decrease in performance of individual as Meneze (2005) described â€Å"Misfit with organization, no part in decision making, were reported main causes of stress as well no control over work environment, personality traits, lack of relaxation along with ambiguous rules affect employees performance. The nature of job in banking sector is too much risky. There is operational risk involved in transactions which always put pressure on employees to avoid wrong entries. The employees in return feel job insecurity which cause great stress on them. jungwee park (2007) contributed â€Å"Physical exertion and job insecurity can also cause stress. † so job insecurity is also a major cause of stress on the job that negatively affect the performance of employees in the banking sector. Moderating variables are lack of administrative support, excessive work demand, problematic customer relations, coworker’s relationship, family work life balance and risky ness of job. And job stress has been taken as independent variable. The main purpose of the study is to identify the factors contributing job stress and the relationship between job stress and employee performance. Bank employees in this study refer to Brach level Managers, operational managers, supervisors and officers (credit officers, remittance officers, customer services officers and relationship officers). To achieve the objectives of the study 150 surveys were sent(through questioners) to 10 larger banks having branches in district Faisalabad. And all the banking companies are listed at Karachi stock exchange of Pakistan. The data were collected from following banks, The Bank of Punjab, MCB ,HBL, Habib Metro Politon Bank limited, Bank al Habib, Meezan bank, SILK bank, Allied bank, Askari Bank and Bank Alfalah. All the employees were aged between 20 to 60 years. Therefore 144 questionnaires were returned having response rate of 96%. The questionnaire using 5-Scale Likert (1=Highly Disagreed, 2=Disagreed, 3=somehow Agreed, 4=Agreed, 5=Highly Agreed) was design to test the impact of all the variables. For this study the questionnaire is divided into 2 sections demographics and job stress its impact on employee performance. The questionnaire cover all the variables such as lack of administrative support, excessive work demand, problematic customer relations, coworker’s relationship, family work life balance and risky ness of job.