Job Stress Management and Employees’ Job Satisfaction Among the National Bank of Ethiopia Employee’s

Introduction

Background

This study discusses about the relationship between job stress and employees job satisfaction. And also personality type is one of the variables that will be examined it’s relations with job stress.

Job life is one of the most important part in the our day to day activities. It assumed to be one of the huge areas in life in which people’s spent most of their time and energy.

Stress have been defined by numerous scholars in which each scholar has tried to understand it in several ways. Syle classified two types of stress. These are eustress and distress (Selye, 1987). Both types of stress employ different faces of stress. While eustress supports the employees or leads to no harm because of the awareness and competency among the employees to cope up during stress (Keshavarz & Mohammadi, 2011). On the other hand, distress is understood as the type of stress that negatively affects a workers for the reason that the lack of awareness and lack of skills that help to deal with up with stressors (Ismail, et. Al., 2010).

Clegg (cited in Cecil, 2010) stated that job stress as the understanding of stressors in the work place that changes a person’s day to day effectiveness. Moreover, Gill (2006) defined stress by way of the undesirable or negative feeling which seems as a result of the nature of the job. Others have also asserted that stress occurs when what the worker offer and what is expected from the worker in the work environment is not balanced (Rode, 2004).

Although stress is a personal feeling and the influence of a given stressor might not have the same effect across different people. And this is because different people vary in their skills to cope up with stress. Studies claim that personality as the main aspect that influences for such difference; for instance, those who are grouped under neuroticism are found to be more exposed and more likely to be affected by stressors (Ghorpade et. al. 2007). And aslo There has been much research done on the issue of personality traits and perceived stress, specifically that those who are high in neuroticism are more likely to perceive life events as highly stressful while those high in extraversion are less likely to perceive life events as stressful (Ebstrup, et. al., 2011). Mroczek & Almeida (2014) have supported this idea in their research finding. Extraversion personality trait was significantly negatively correlated with perceived stress.

In terms of job satisfaction, a person’s who have extravert personality type are more likely to face positive emotional state (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and positive emotional state likely generalizes to job satisfaction. On the other hand, a person’s who have neurotism personality type are for the reason that of his/her basically negative predisposition, he/she faces more negative life events than other people (Magnus, Diener, Fujita, & Pavot, 1993).

Regarding the issue of stressors Selye, 1974 (cited in annamarie, 2003) in simple terms the incidence of any variation in the lives of the workers can be taken as stressor for the reason that in order to adapt the new situation huge effort and hard work is required. Lazarus and Folkman (1984) have noted that regular hassles lead to mental and physical problems.

According to Ilies and judge (2004), job satisfaction can defined as the person’s natural behavior to assess ones job in terms of the work environment and it’s reward. Armstrong (2006) identified two kinds of job satisfaction which are positive and negative. A person might have positive or negative attitude towards the job and this determines the job satisfaction.

As it is stated above job satisfaction has evaluative attitude component towards ones job, Mullins (2005) asserted it is related to personal feeling of accomplishment, and disappointment. Moreover cognitive, emotional and behavioral elements are found in job satisfaction.

In addition, Bernstein & Nash (2008, cited in Pham) identified the components that describes job satisfaction in different way. The first one is Emotion. It describes as a person’s feeling that associated with his specific task. This feeling can be unhappiness, anxiety or a happy feeling of willingness and passion. The second components is called cognitive element. It related to a person’s beliefs towards his or her work. For example, one person might feel that his work requires much mental abilitie or challenges. In the third, tha behavioral component includes the activities that accomplished by a person’s who responsible.

Employees job dissatisfaction have clear effects in the efficiency of the work force and high likelihood in organizations in terms of turnover, abseentism (Dupre and Day, 2007). Chandraiah, et.al. (2003) stated that a worker’s satisfaction and dissatisfaction can be determined by the level of the stress that he/she faced. Therefore, it can be concluded that job stress and workers job satisfaction have negative relationship. In which the increase in the levels of stress harms the levels of the workers job satisfaction and vice versa (Cooper, 2013; Rehman, Irum, Tahir, Ijaz, &Salma, 2012).

According to Sousa-Poza & Sousa-Poza, (2000) claims, on the fulfillment of employees needs are determinant of job satisfaction and emphasized on the balance between what an employee provides for the organization (work role inputs) and what the employee get ( work role output). Moreover, a prominent figure in the issue of stress is Hans Selye and he assumed as founder of contemporary stress theory. Selye has developed a model of stress that is named generalized adaptation syndrome. A model that consists three stages which are Alarm Reaction, Resistance, and Exhaustion (Selye, 1976).

At the first stage, named Alarm Reaction involves active defense mechanisms. In the second stage, the stage of maximum adaptation and should ideally characterise a return to equilibrium for the person. If the stress endures and defense mechanisms do not work, the individual faces the exhaustion stage. And also in the last stage (Exhaustion), the adaptive mechanisms will be downfall.

Regarding the sources of stress, Aswattappa (1990) stated that there are personal, group and organizational factors that lead to stress. Based on the classification personal traits and characters were taken as individual stressors. While behaviours influenced by a group assigned to group stressors and finally less payment, overwork, were organizational stressors. As studies show that stress and job satisfaction determine the achievement and realization of the goal of organization (Obiora & Iwuoha, 2013).

One of the model that explains stress is called Job-demand control model. It developed by Karasek (1979). He stated that the relationship between the load of the work, the ability to control the specific task and unwanted psychological and physical consequences. This theory described that a person’s inability to manage his task can be lead to work stress. And also a person’s ability to manage his work positively related with his emotional states. This assumption was well-known as the strain hypothesis. Most studies that support this model have shown that stress occurs when there is demand is weighted than of the control.

On the other hand, job dissatisfaction might occur due to the negative emotional state of stress and aslo job satisfaction and motivation will be increased when stress occurs (Herzberg, 1959). This model also proposes the so called strain hypothesis which means a particular job could be the cause either for satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

Job satisfaction, job stress and gender

Studies that have been carried out on the issue of the difference between males and females in the case of job stress and satisfaction have shown that females are more likely to show satisfaction than males. The reason was assumed to be females were more likely to work with others friendly in work setting regardless of the payment they receive (P. K. Mishra, 2013).

In another study, females were found to be more vulnerable to stress and also actively involved in the process of handling it than males (Samira et. Al., 2015). Furthermore, Kifle and Desta (2012) in their study came up with several findings that in regard to the time that they spend in work, upgrading in status, and different chances that related to their work males are more satisfied than females. However, in their interaction with others and making important role to the community females were found to be better.

Job satisfaction, job stress and age

Studies have shown also the relation of between satisfaction in one’s job and age and found younger employees are dissatisfied when compared to the others. The reason for this is assumed to be incongruence between the expectation of young employees during entry and what they got (Schultz and Schultz, 2006).

Statement of the Problem

As mentioned the background section, job satisfaction is the most important factor in the organization. Much researches have been conducted regarding stress and job satisfaction of employees. The researcher have assessed these different research findings that conducted in our country. But there is no available research findings related to this issue.

Studies show that stress can lead to dysfunction in mental and physical health and performance in the organization (Iglehart, 2000). This research finding supports that the organizational effectiveness can be considered as the result of the workers stress in a particular task or work. In addition to this, if a stress occurs in the organization, it helps the organization in terms of improving the existing employees performance and creating a new safe environment that helps them. And also, the existed stress has several results on the workers perforformance and organizations productivity.

As Soleimanpour (2015) claim, workers stress in work place influences the organization productivity. He explained that stress might be useful leading the workers to focus on the everyday jobs, however, high levels of stress hurt and influence productivity in the organization negatively. In some studies it is found that several factors tend to influence job satisfaction in a positive or negative way. Ganapathi (2013) conducted a study and identified that work overload and role conflict as main aspects that influence job satisfaction undesirably.

This shows that the inconsistency of the research findings. Because of this, the student researcher is interested to study about stress and job satisfaction among our community. Another vital study that was accompanied with different finding is the recent study carried out by Dilruba (2016) on bank employees and found that the presence of no relation between job stress and satisfaction. Such inconsistency in some studies makethe researcher more curious to investigate this area.

For this reason, the researcher is interested to study the relationship between workplace stress and employee job satisfaction among the National Bank of Ethiopia.

Objectives

General objective

• To examine the relationship between job stress and employee job satisfaction among National Bank of Ethiopia employees.

Specific objectives

• To examine the relationship between neurotism personality trait and stress
• To examine the relationship between extaversion personality trait and stress
• To examine the relationship between neurotism personality trait and job satisfaction
• To examine the relationship between extraversion personality type and job satisfaction
• To examine the level of stress of participants

Methods

Research Design

In order to achieve the objecitive of the study, the design of this study is correlational research design. The purpose of correlational research design is to examine the relationship between two variables. In this research, it examines the relationship between stress and job satisfaction, stress and personality trait, and job satisfaction and personality traits.

Population

The target population for the study will be all employees’ at national bank of Ethiopia.

The total populations of this study consist 800 employees.

Sampling

In order to achieve the goal of the study, the study participants will be selected by propability and random sampling technique. All of the bank employees give equal chance and the student researcher selects 300 participants through lottery method to achieve the required sample size. To achieve this method the researcher randomly assign numbers to the total participants and select numbers randomly. The sample participant consists 300 employees (150 male and 150 female employees). Because, due to the financial problems of the researcher 300 participants are enough.

Data Collection Instrument

The quesionarraires includes the participants demographic informations. These are gender, age, Educational status, and Economic status. The questionnaire of the measuring instrument of job stress called general stress measurement. This scale consists nine items (de Bruin & Taylor, 2003) and it measures the employees general level of job-related stress. The sample items are “Do you get so stressed at work that you want to quit?” and “Do you find it difficult to sleep at night because you worry about your work?” participants response on a five-point Likert-type scale where the ordered answer choices are: Never (1), Rarely (2), Sometimes (3), Often (4), and Always (5). It shows that good reliability. The reliability of the scale is 0.91.

And also to measure job satisfaction the researcher will used The 4-item Brief Index of Affective Job Satisfaction scale (BIAJS). It developed by Thompson and Phua (2012). This 4 items are a measure of overall affective job satisfaction about the existing affairs of staff. Consistency reliability was reported between 0.81 and 0.87 (Thompson and Phua, 2012).

A five - Likert scale was designed for 4 items of overall affective job satisfaction, recorded from 1 (disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). participants with high scores or positive on the affective overall satisfaction will think positively of their work and are generally satisfied with their current job. Finally, Big Five personality trait questionnaire will be administered by the Big Five Inventory (BFI), it developed by Benet-Mart?´nez& John, 1998). It Consist 44-item BFI to efficient assessment of five personality dimensions extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness (Benet-Mart?´nez& John, 1998).

Data Collection Procedure

The student researcher will ask a written letter from the school of psychology to National Bank of Ethiopia management board. If the management board gives permission to conduct the study the student researcher will asks informed consent from the participants to participate in this study. The the researcher will distribute the questionnaire of job stress, job satisfaction and big five personality type and gives general instruction regarding the questionnaires for those who agreed to participate in the study. It includes, how they respond for each statements and if there is any question regarding the statement they could ask the researcher. After they completed questionnaire the researcher will collect from each participants. Both job stress and job satisfaction questionnaire will be distributed to the participants those agreed to participate in this study. After the data is collected the researcher gives the code to all completed questionnaires.

Data Analysis

The quantitative data will be analyzed by using SPSS version 21. descriptive statistics will be used to summarize data, including frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation. The independent sample t-test will be used in this study to examine the mean difference between male and female participants in terms of workplace stress and job satisfaction. And also the student researcher will use Pearson moment correlation coefficient to examine the relationship between workplace stress and employees’ job satisfaction, stress and personality trait, and aslo job satisfaction and personality traits. The data will be analyzed by statistical package for social science (SPSS).

Ethical Consideration

Before conducting the data the student researcher will ask the willingness of the participants to participate in the study. Only those agreed to participate in the study will be enrolled. They will be protected from any kind of psychological harms and they are not exposed to any harmful things.. And they have also the right to withdraw from the study at any time if they are not interested. Confidentiality of the subject will be maintained. The student researcher will give a code to all questionnaires after the participants completed. In addition, the data will be secure using password by the researcher to protect them from unauthorized access.

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