Effects of occupational stress on employee performance

Stress can be described as the negative emotional experience connected with elements such as depression, fear, anxiety and sadness ("Research in Occupational Stress and Well-being," 2009, p. Occupational stress is the form of stress felt due to activities at the work place. The primary focus of most studies on the effects of occupational stress has been its effects on health, highlighting areas such as blood pressure and heart disease (In Perrewe, In Rosen, In Halbesleben, & Cunningham, 2014, p. This article delves into the less explored area of the relation between stress and an individual’s performance at the workplace Stress leads to states of information overload since they compel people to pay special attention leading to cognitive fatigue and consequently drain the energy required for job performance.

His model states that once an individual experiences workplace stressors such as bureaucratic frustration, their effectiveness in tasks which demand avoidance of distractions, clerical accuracy and tolerance for frustration is greatly reduced. There also exists a correlation between self-esteem and stress. Most people naturally crave for social approval therefore events which might lead to social rejection lead to stress among people with low self-esteem. Similarly, the fear of negative evaluation is a trait which makes individuals avoid events which might lead to them being evaluated negatively and get stressed in such events (Perrewe, Halbesleben, & Rosen, 2012, p. To understand the correlation between emotions and motivation and performance, this article looks into two different studies on the effect of occupational stress on an employee’s job performance Research No.

1 The first research studies empirically the correlation between conditions at the workplace, individual characteristics, frequency and intensity of stressful events and job performance ("Occupational stress: Its causes and consequences for job performance," 1986, p. Additionally, depression, subjective stress, anxiety and hospitality were also included. Three hundred and thirty six nurses from five hospitals participated. For rating, the questionnaire had a nine point rating scale containing behavioral illustrations. These were; concentration, perseverance, composure, morale, personal warmth, team work and cooperation, sensitivity to patients, adaptability and caring for uncooperative patients. These procedures gave seven performance scores consisting of ratings from either a supervisor a workmate for the nurses. It must be noted that this research undertook exploratory path analysis while assuming that the various variables are arranged in the causal sequence of job conditions and individual characteristics, perception of stressful events, subjective stress, affect and lastly job performance.

Path analysis however is prone to specification error. Moreover, even though models proposed in this research seem to agree with observed correlation patterns, other models too might be in sync with the data. Finally, the use of goodness-of –fit tests to theory trimming derived models is controversial. Research No. 72 followed by lack of motivation to achieve the desired results at 3. 67 and loss of interest in what they do at a mean of 3. Others were job dissatisfaction, lack of initiative and absenteeism. While most researches including the first one in this article find a negative correlation between stress and job performance, using adjusted R-square value, this study found that with a 1% increase in stress, 11% increase is observed in job performance. This is a positive correlation between stress and employee job performance and is in line with (Blumenthal et al.