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EFFECT OF STRESS MANAGEMENT ON EMPLOYEES COMMITMENT

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Excessive stress is considered to be one of the main factors affecting employees‟ performance and commitment (Paul, Elam & Verhaut, 2007). Work-related stress is considered to be the product of an imbalance between environmental demands and individual capabilities (Rees & Redfern, 2003). Rees (2001) indicates that occupational stress is the inability to cope with the pressures in a job because of a poor fit between someone‟s abilities and ones work requirements and conditions. According to Schermerhorn, Hunt and Osborn (2008), stress is a state of tension experienced by individuals facing extraordinary demands, constraints, or opportunities. It is a mental and physical condition which affects an individual‟s productivity, effectiveness, personal health and quality of work (Holmlund-Rytkönen & Strandvik, 2005). Stress may results in high portion of absence from work and loss of employment (Meneze, 2005). Stress can be defined as a physical, mental, or emotional response to events that causes bodily or mental tension. Stress in general can be defined as the reaction of individuals to demands (stressors) imposed upon them. It refers to situations where the well-being of individual is detrimentally affected by their failure to cope with the demands of their environment (Erkutlu & Chafra, 2006).

Lately, there is a problematic increase in cases of occupational stress related problems among employees, which have led to declining interest in their jobs, less commitment and growing impatience among the top managers (Pflanz & Ogle, 2006). This is mainly due to the competitive nature of the job environment, shift in work demands and economic hardship owing to the economic recession. This is perhaps the general trend which indicates declining performance/productivity. People differ dramatically in the type of events they interpret as stressful and the way in which they respond to such stress. Stress is also an inevitable component in human life. Some stress is essential and promotes personal growth but excessive stress or an inappropriate way of coping with stress brings about negative results hence burnout.

Brynien (2006) posit that stress has a positive effect on employees of any organization but up to a certain extent which an employee can cope with, in most cases if it exceeds the bearable limits it results in negative results on employee‟s performance.

Lynn and Corbidge, (2004) highlights that stress globally costs business around 7 billion a year, this sum include sick-pays, missed deadlines and poor performance. According to WHO (2005) in the 15 Member States of the pre-2004 EU, the cost of stress at work and the related mental health problems were estimated to be on average between 3% and 4% of gross national product, amounting to €265 billion annually. Studies estimate that work-related stress alone costs the businesses and governments of those countries about €20 billion in absenteeism and related health costs, in addition to the price of lower productivity, higher staff turnover and reduced ability to innovate. In the United Kingdom during 2000, one in five workers was „extremely‟ or

„very‟ stressed as a result of occupational influence. Stress-related disease is responsible for the loss of 6.5 million working days each year in the United Kingdom, costing employers around €571 million and society as a whole as much as €5,7 billion. The healthcare expenditure in the USA is nearly 50% greater for workers who report high levels of stress at work (Kortum- Margot, 2002).

According to Vinassa (2003), work stress and other psychosocial factors are recognized worldwide as a major challenge to workers‟ health and the health of organizations. Work stress has been proved to adversely impact on individuals‟ psychological and physical health, as well as organizations‟ effectiveness. Workers who are stressed are more likely to be unhealthy, poorly motivated, less productive and less safe to work with at work. Organizations whose workers are stressed are also less likely to be successful in a competitive market. The pressure of change, as well as challenges such as financial constraints, increased workloads, the information and technological revolution, changes in employees‟ demographics and employees‟ levels of preparedness, changes in management styles and structures and the merging of institutions, tended to become stressors and taking their toll on many employees (Olivier, De Jager, Grootboom & Tokota 2005).

1.1.1 Stress Management Strategies

According to Agrawal (2001), stress management strategies refer to the interventions designed to reduce the impact of stressors in the workplace. These can have an individual focus, aimed at increasing an individual‟s ability to cope with stressors. Stress Management programs can also have an organizational focus and attempt to remove the stressors in a role. Organizations have adopted various strategies to curb stress in the workforce. Common strategies used to alleviate stress include exercise, social resources, avoidance, reading, hobbies, movement, and meditation (Gulwadi, 2006). These strategies used by employees affect their outlook on the situation, thereby altering the perception of stress (Griffith, Steptoe, & Cropley, 2002). To alter the perception of stress, employees may invoke inward or outward stress management strategies. Inward strategies, such as concentrating on something narrow in the field of stimuli around oneself, include seeking stillness and focus. Outward strategies, such as exercise, involve seeking connections, distractions, and movement (Gulwadi, 2006). Although there are many common coping strategies available, most employees rely on social support, active planning, restorative experiences, and suppression of competing behaviors.

However, there are also some stress management strategies that are negative in nature. According to Gulwadi (2006) negative stress management strategies can include unhealthy behaviors, distractions, violence, and withdrawal. Unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, excessively over/under eating, and drug abuse are sometimes used to relieve stress. Distractions such as television, computer, and filling up schedules to avoid facing problems are common ways to avoid stress.

1.1.2 Employees’ Commitment

According to Jaros (2003) employees‟ commitment refers to the degree to which an individual is psychologically attached to an employing organization through feeling such as loyalty, affection, worth, belongingness, pleasure and so on. McElroy (2001) defines commitment as a force that binds an individual to a course of action of relevance to one or more targets. However, employees‟ commitment is seen in three different perspectives; affective, continuance and normative commitment. Employees with affective commitment continue service with organization because they want to do so. Kanter (2001) describe cohesion commitment as the attachment of an individual‟s found of affectivity and emotion to the group; to the goal and values and to the organization for its own sake. Meyer and Allen (1999) correlates affective commitment with work experiences where employees experience psychologically comfortable feelings (such as approachable managers), increasing their sense of competence (such as feedback). Beck and Wilson (2000) indicates that the development of affective commitment involves recognizing the organization‟s worth and internalizing its principles and standards.

Meyer & Allen (1990) proposed that continuance commitment develops on the basis of two factors: (1) number of investment (side – bets) individuals make in their current organization and (2) perceived lack of alternatives. When employees enter into the organization, they are bound to maintain a link with the organization or committed to remain with the organization because lack of alternative opportunity or awareness of the costs associated with leaving the organization. The cost associated with leaving includes attractive benefits, the threat of wasting the time, effort spends acquiring, disrupt personal relationship. On the other hand, normative commitment develops on the basis of earlier experiences influenced by, for example family-based experiences (parents that stress work loyalty) or cultural experiences (sanctions against “job-hopping”) (Allen & Meyer, 1999). Normative commitment can increase through beliefs that the employees have that employers provide more than they can give.

Employees‟ commitment leads to several favorable organizational outcomes. It reflects the extent to which employee‟s identify with and organization and is committed to its goals. Dordevic (2004) stated that the commitment of employees helps predict employee‟s performance, absenteeism and other behaviors. Rajendran and Rose (2005) opined that the organizational commitment is the subset of employees commitment, which comprised to work commitment, career commitment and organizational commitment and also added greater the organizational commitment can aid higher productivity. Mowday, Porter, and Dubin (2004) suggest that high committed employees may perform better than less committed once.

Bhatti and Samina (2011) said that stress has a high impact on high employees‟ commitment and productivity. They indicated that stress impacted directly on employees‟ performance and job satisfaction and as a result lead to reduced employees‟ commitment.

1.2 Problem Statement

Kathie and Lingle (2007) emphasis that workers rank stress as a top reason why they would leave their company. This therefore indicates that stress lead to lower employees‟ commitment. Elovainio et al. (2002) highlights that occupational stress inadvertently leads to low organizational commitment by the employees and therefore results to increased labour turnover. Willingham (2008) notes that employees respond to stress at work in a variety of ways; many employees show up for work, but do not work to their full capacity; other employees decide that the stress is too much and quit voluntarily. The American Psychological Association (2007) reports that “fifty-two percent of employees report that they have considered or made a decision about their career such as looking for a new job, declining a promotion or leaving a job based on workplace stress” (p. 11). Some former employees start their own businesses and remove themselves from the employees‟ workforce population altogether (Hewlett & Buck Luce, 2006). This therefore indicates that stress may lead to reduced employees‟ commitment.

The ability to manage stress in the workplace can make the difference between success and failure of an institution. According to Roger (2001), increased labour turnover, an indication of low organisational commitment, robs the organisation tenured and valuable workforce. Job stress is considered rising and has become challenge for the employer and because high level stress results in low productivity, increased absenteeism and leads to other employees problems like alcoholism, drug abuse, hypertension and host of cardiovascular problems (Meneze 2005). Roger further highlights that employees are the most important resource to an organisation and therefore stress depletes organisations their valued resources. Lynn and Corbidge, (2004) further highlights that stress costs business billions of dollars each year, this results from loss of business, absenteeism, failure to meet deadlines, low employees‟ performance and low employees commitment.

Stress and its causes have been studied a lot; in fact, Agrawal (2001) indicated that stress nowadays is not something new, not anything unknown. However, stress is still causing havoc in work place, reducing employees‟ commitment and therefore organizational performance. Kathie and Lingle (2007) notes that only 50% of employers offer stress management programs to employees primarily because they are perceived to have low impact on employee attraction and retention. In Kenya, companies employ a number of stress management strategies which include, paying their employees on time, role modeling, good communication channels, welfare programs, training and development among others. However, despite all these efforts, there are still reported stress related issues at this difficult economic times for example, absenteeism, high labour turnover, frequent illnesses, conflicts, unexplained looses, sluggishness among others posing challenges in service delivery. This highlights ineffectiveness of the stress management strategies to curb labour turnover and therefore enhance employees‟ commitment. It is against this background that this study seeks to establish the effects of stress management on employees‟ commitment in GTBank.

Previous researchers have focused on the effects of the various stress management strategies on employees‟ performance globally (Van der Stede, 2000; Zietlow, 2001;

Kleiman, 2003 and Robbins, 2005). To the best of the researcher‟s knowledge, none of these local and international studies have been done to establish the effect of stress management strategies on employees‟ commitment in GTBank.

1.3 Objective of the Study

To establish the effect of stress management strategies on employees‟ commitment in

GTBank

1.3.1 Specific Objectives

The study will be guided by the following specific objectives;

i).	To establish the effect of psychological support on employees‟ commitment in GTBank
ii).	To assess the extent to which job redesign influences on employees‟ commitment in GTBank
iii).	To determine the effect of training and development on employees‟ commitment in GTBank
iv).	To find out the effect of employee welfare programs on employees‟

commitment in GTBank

1.4 Research Questions

i).	What effect does psychological support have on employees‟ commitment in GTBank?
ii).	To what extent does job redesign influences employees‟ commitment in GTBank?
iii).	How does training and development influence employees‟ commitment in GTBank?
iv).	What are the effects of employees‟ welfare programs on employees‟

commitment in GTBank?

1.5 Significance of the Study

The results of this study would be important to the Human Resource personnel in companies in making strategic decisions relating to formulation of stress management strategies that will ensure enhanced employees‟ commitment for better performance. The management at GTBank will also use results from the study to review policies to incorporate stress management measures and therefore improve on employees retention and therefore avoid loosing employees with potential who the bank have trained to other organizations.

This study will also be of importance to academicians and scholars as it provides useful material for reference and future research since stress management is a continuous phenomenon that still requires more studies. Further, this study will also be significant in that, academically it would add to the existing knowledge on stress management and its effect on employees‟ performance and thus forming part of academic reference.

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