Effect of Stress on Employee Performance and Job Satisfaction: A Case Study of Nigerian Banking Industry

Abstract

Stress is a universal and common challenge to organization and employee productivity, it is the reality of modern day workplace.

Employees working in different sectors and organizations have to deal with stress. Bank workers are among the group of workers under a great deal of stress due to many antecedents of stress. Stress contributes to decreased organizational performance, decreased employee overall performance, high error rate and poor quality of work, high staff turnover, and absenteeism due to health problems such as anxiety, emotional disorder; work life imbalance; depression and other forms of ailments such as frequent headache; obesity and cardiac arrests.

This paper aims to examine the impact of job related stress on employee performance and job satisfaction. A sample of 150 employees from the Nigerian Bank industry of Nigeria was used for this survey.

Components of job stress namely: Lack of administrative support; excessive work load and work demand; problematic customer relations; co-worker’s relationship; family & work life balance and associated job risks were examined in this study.

The objective of the study is to explore the stress related problems of bankers and examine the relationship between stress and performance and the impact of stress on employee performance. The results show that all these factors of stress cause great stress in Nigerian bankers and negatively impacts their performance.

The findings of this study support the findings of a similar study on banking sector of Pakistan conducted by Usman Basher and Muhammad Ismail which showed that job stress significantly reduce the performance of an individual. Job stress is considered rising and has become challenge for the employer and because high level stress is results in low productivity, increased absenteeism and collection to other employee problems like alcoholism, drug abuse, hypertension and host of cardiovascular problems (Meneze 2005). Personality factors have shown inclination towards stress, anxiety, and other occupational health outcomes in different areas of medicine, and these factors may contribute to feelings of job dissatisfaction and stress (Michie and Williams 2003).

Thus it was recommended that employer should proactively minimize stress by providing adequate administrative support to employees; Optimize work load, effectively manage customer expectations, minimize relationship and role conflict, deploy adequate reward system and provide adequate training and counseling to employees in order to improve their job performance and job satisfaction.

Keywords: Job performance; Nigerian banking sector; Stress; Job satisfaction; Work Load; Role Conflict; Monetary Reward