The effect of occupational stress on employee performance

Abstract

The study investigated and sought to establish the effect of occupational stress on employee performance at Nican Resort Hotel. Occupational stress was looked at from the perspective of role conflict, role ambiguity, physical environment, and workload and on the other hand, employee performance focused on employee retention, interrelationships (cohesion) and health as the measures of employee performance. The Researcher set out to establish the causes of persistent poor employee performance from the view of stress. A case study design was adopted and data collected from a sample of 48respondents. Self-administered questionnaires, interview guide and documentary review guide were used in the study. Data was analysed using SPSS Version 16 and findings were presented in a tabular format showing frequencies and percentages. Qualitative findings were presented in themes in a narrative form. The findings were as follows; Employees are clear about their duties and responsibilities and they are happy with the working environment, satisfied with the chances for salary increases and this avails them with a choice in deciding how to do work, able to complete tasks during an average day and can be in position to have achievable deadlines. The study further revealed that employees seem to be in high energy due to the work environment and they feel less tense or do not have nervous indigestion because they have adequate information of roles at work, employees do not over eat/drink/smoke because of the good relationship with their colleagues and therefore they do not have tension or migraine headaches, or pain in the neck or shoulders at work, they find it easy to concentrate on what they do because they aware of the various work responsibilities and they do not take pills, medicine, alcohol or other drugs to relax due to adequate work load, employees have ease in finding enough time to relax because of the realistic deadlines and they do not feel pressured to work for long hours. The Study therefore concludes that organisations should ensure involvement of workers in decision process, opportunity to openly share ideas especially negative ideas, clarify their roles and responsibilities, provide a good working environment, and ensure to give necessary feedback, control their bad habits like over drinking, smoking and excess drinking and provide enough time for the workers to rest plus realistic deadlines.