EFFECT OF WORK STRESS ON ORGANISATIONAL PRODUCTIVITY

ABSTRACT

The issues of stress and poor health at work have become the focus in several work places; as these have resulted in many dramatic and sometimes tragic incidents perpetrated by troubled or disturbed individuals. The problem of stress at work is slowly emerging as a new challenge requiring attention and sources of employers and employees.

Taken collectively, stress could be responsible for a great number of occupational hazards and health conditions leading to death, illness and incapacitation. There are considerable costs for the individual employees with regards to these problems in terms of physical and mental health and the risk of loss of job, for the organization; these problems result in more direct costs such as staff turn-over, absenteeism, reduced productivity as well as indirect costs such as low staff morale, reduced motivation, job satisfaction, creativity and human resources problems.

This research work will dwell or examine these basic areas or questions:

1.      The nature of stress at work.

2.      How does work stress affect the individual’s health or wellbeing?

3.      How can these be remedied? Or how can work stress be managed in an organization?

CHAPTER ONE

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Organizations exist in all areas of life as many people spend a good deal of their lives in these organizations. Hodge and Anthony (1984) said an organization can be thought of as a two or more people working co-operatively towards a common objective or set of objectives. The organization therefore exists to be productive and contribute to human development and benefits making. Productivity according to Ikechukwu (1995) is the ratio of useful result obtained to the resources expended in obtaining them. It is common knowledge that the productivity of an organization can be improved through greater incentives such as monthly reward, promotion bonus and a conducive work environment which will enable employees attain to greater psychological and physiological needs.

The term “work” in an employee’s consciousness brings about deteriorating consequences and the introduction of the above mentioned incentives will check these deteriorations. In the absence of these incentives to balance deterioration, work stress sets in; a by-product of work.

The concept of stress has an established place in a wide range of disciplines: banking, teaching, politics, law, nursing, criminology and psychotherapy. According to these disciplines, stress is understood to be the outcome of any number of innumerable potential stressors that affects an individual. Stress can be defined as perceptual phenomenon arising from a comparison between the demand placed on the person and his ability to cope (Cox, 1978). Palmer (1989) defined stress as the psychological, physiological and behavioral response by an individual when they perceive a lack of equilibrium between the demand placed upon them and their ability to meet those demands which over a period of time leads to ill health.