A relationship between stress management and service industry management essay

According to Levi, (1996) ” Stress is cause by a multitude of demand such an inadequate fit between what we need and what we capable of, and what our environment offers and what it demands of us.” In this research, the researcher has focused on occupational stress, which can be defined as a harmful physical and emotional response that may be encountered by the employee if he or she is not capable enough to meet all the job requirements set by the supervisor. In that case, if stress doesn’t be managed in a proper way, it will lead to poor health or even will cause injury in work place. (Cincinnati, 1999) In this research, the researcher will study the importance of stress management in the service industry. For example, the customer service consultants who work in the customer service center will always need to face a lot of customer complaints which will directly lead them to a certain stress level. Hence, stress management skills are very important for them.

Problem Statement

Stress management skills have been neglected in the service industry. Customer service consultants are not getting any proper guidance to manage their work stress. Inappropriate way to release work stress, for example smoking that will cause lung cancer. Fail to manage work stress which will cause both physical and mental suffer which lead the employee falls into depression. Work stress will affect the productivity which will direct bring in negative impact to the company

Research Objective

To study what is the relationship between stress management and the service industry. To understand what are the major factors that cause work stress in service industry. To identify the effectiveness of stress management to overcome work stress. To justify how important stress management need to be implemented in service industry. To find out what are the proper way to manage or release work stress in the service industry.

Research Question

Is there a relationship between stress management and service industry? Does stress management helps to manage work stress effectively? Is it important for a company to guide their customer service consultant the proper steps to manage work stress? Is it compulsory for all customer service consultants to understand what are the proper steps to manage work stress? Should the employer put more attention on stress management?

Research Outcome

According to the results gathered from the questionnaire. It has shown that there is a direct relationship between stress management and service industry. The research result has shown that the effective of stress management doesn’t apply to all individual. As different individual will has its own way to release stress. According to the respondents, company should provide a basic knowledge of how to manage work stress. It is very important for every employee to know what are the proper steps to manage stress. The questionnaire result has shown that customer service consultant should understand the proper steps to manage work stress in order to avoid excessive work stress. According to the respondents, it is employer’s responsibility to make sure the employees are not working in a stressful environment.

Limitation

Stress could mean different things to different people. Hence, the research result may not be accurately reflected to all individual. Each individual will has its own way to release stress. Hence, stress management skills may not be fit enough to apply to everyone. A lot of time has spent in distributing the questionnaire in order to gather all the answers from the respondents. The customer service consultants have no time to response to the questionnaire. The manager in the customer service center does not allow any research done in the work place as it will disturb the other customer service consultants.(Word count: 649)

Task 2: Literature Review

1st Journal

A research conducted by Kimmy Wa and Echo Wen to test how regulatory depletion may affect high-stress employees’ service performance in customer service industry. By using a laboratory experiment and a survey study, the researchers have split the research into three parts. First, they have investigate whether work stress causes a depletion effect, such that high work stress undermines customer service staff performance on tasks requiring self-regulation versus tasks requiring limited self-regulation. Second, they have investigated whether the depletion effect can be overcome by supervisory support or employees’ engagement in perspective taking. Third, they have also investigated on how these moderating effects might be mediated by employees’ feelings of fatigue and intrinsic job motivation. The results have confirmed regulatory depletion high-stress employees feel more fatigue and perform more poorly than low-stress employees in tasks requiring self-regulation. However, the depletion effect from work stress is largely attenuated on employees’ performance on tasks requiring less or limited self-regulation. The mediated moderation tests further show that the extent of the depletion effect is not uniform. Employees who can replenish their resources from supervisory support or enhance their goal focus by engaging in perspective taking are less affected by regulatory depletion. These buffering effects occur because of enhanced intrinsic job motivation. In overall, the research above is very focus and it will help to provide a better accuracy of data from the research questions.

2nd Journal

A research focused on the relationship between job stress and working environment which is conducted by Tomoyuki Kawada and Toshiaki Otsuka. They have distributed their questionnaire to 371 employees from a customer service company, and all the workers have sent back their responses. Among the 57 items graded on a 5-point Likert-type scale to measure job stressors, psychophysical complaints, and support for workers, the researchers studied the influence of quantitative and qualitative job overload, job control, and support port. The job satisfaction score estimated on a 5-point Likert-type scale was also used in relation to job stress determined using a 5-item scale from the questionnaire based on demand-control-support model. The occupational positions were classified into customer service agent and non-customer service agent. There was a significant difference in the score among the customer service agent and non-customer service agent. The score on non-customer service agent is very low whereas for the customer service agent side became significantly high. The result has shown that customer service agent encounter to higher stress level if compare with the non-customer service agent. The researchers have conclude that stress management skills are urgently needed in the customer service industry in order to guide the customer service agent on how to manage stress in order to reduce the stress level they encounter every day. Questionnaire survey is a very useful way for data collection, feedback may be gather from a large number of people but the final result may be concluded with a very limited information which sufficient enough to support the entire research.

3rd Journal

A research done by Philip E. to investigates work stress and customer service delivery has used Kahn et al. (1964) instrument which employs a 15-item Likert scale format. The researcher has reported internal reliabilities in the 0. 88 range (Kahn et al., 1964; Sheridan and Vredenburgh, 1978) and the scale has been used in numerous job stress studies(Ivancevich and Lyon, 1977; Mackinnon, 1978; Schuler et al., 1977; Sheridan and Vredenburgh, 1978). Items revolve around task conflict and job overload. Usable data were collected from 71 service consultants. The mean stress score from the Kahn et al. scale was 37. 75, which approximates national norms reported by other researchers (Mackinnon, 1978). The findings clearly point to a relationship between perceived stressors such as work overload and service delivery. Low performers reported significantly higher levels of job stressors, while workers who saw the work environment as less stressful were evaluated significantly more effective by their supervisors. Likert scale format is easiest way to gather data by measuring respondents’ feedback. It is very useful when there are a lot of researches questions need to be used in order to understand and evaluate the entire research objective.(Word count: 688)

Task 3: Research Methodology

Research Question

In order to understand more what are the direct or indirect relationship between stress management and service industry, the researcher has created 5 research questions which able to cover all the research areas. Is there a relationship between stress management and service industry? To study is there any direct or indirect relationship between stress management and the service industry. Does stress management helps to manage work stress effectively? To identify the effectiveness of stress management to overcome work stress. Is it important for a company to guide their customer service consultant the proper steps to manage work stress? To justify how important stress management need to be implemented in service industry. Is it compulsory for all customer service consultants to understand what are the proper steps to manage work stress? To understand the willingness of the customer service consultant to accept stress management should be as a part of their knowledge. Should the employer put more attention on stress management? To find out why stress management has been neglected in the service industry.

Research Approach

In most of the research, researcher will always refer to two broad methods of reasoning as the inductive and deductive approaches. Inductive ReasoningInductive reasoning works from the specific observations to a broader generalizations and theories. The conclusion made is most likely based on the premises which involve a degree of uncertainty. The research of inductive reasoning is generally obtained within the field known as the informal logic or critical thinking. Deductive ReasoningDeductive reasoning works the other way, it moves from general to more specific. The conclusion made is follows by the logic from premises. Such as arguments based on laws, rules and acceptable principles. (William M. K, 2006)The researcher in this research has used inductive reasoning to conduct the research. Reason being, the research is begin with a specific observation and measure through the questionnaire survey and finally end up by developing some general conclusion.

Research Strategy

Primary research is any type of research that the researcher can go out and collect by the researcher himself. For example like questionnaire survey, interview and observation. In this research, the researcher wanted to understand what is the relationship between stress management and service industry. Hence, a questionnaire survey would be the best research method to use as questionnaire survey will provide a limited amount of information from a large group of people and it’s very useful for data collection.

Research Method

In this research, the researcher has used both quantitative and qualitative research method to do the data collection. Quantitative ResearchThe researcher has used five-point likert scale to generate the information which is concerning about the work stress situation in the customer service industry. Qualitative ResearchThe researcher has used the open-ended questionnaire to gather feedback from the customer service consultants.

Data Collection Method

In this research, the researcher has chosen to conduct a questionnaire survey at the customer service centre. Reason being, questionnaire survey is a great way to discover what a large amount of people think about a particular issue or how a group of people report their behaviour. Questionnaire survey can be done on a large range of topics and can be conducted relatively easily.

Ethical Issue

PrivacyEvery respondent has the right to keep private the fact that he or she participated in the research, and the right that information given to the researcher should not be linked to them. Research often is based on information obtained from the respondents. The information will be used in the research but it must be done in a way that insures the individual’s anonymity. Violation of the promise of privacy can result in harm to the respondent. To avoid this, the researcher is responsible to store and secure the data safely and use the data truthfully. PlagiarismMost of the researchers certainly will try not to plagiarize. However, it is very difficult as people will always consult to a variety of sources of information for their research and end up mixing it in with their own background knowledge. To avoid this, the researcher has used a proper citation at the end of any paraphrased data.(Word count: 708)

Task 4: Questionnaire Design

Research Question

Is there a relationship between stress management and service industry? Does stress management helps to manage work stress effectively? Is it important for a company to guide their customer service consultant the proper steps to manage work stress? Is it compulsory for all customer service consultants to understand what are the proper steps to manage work stress? Should the employer put more attention on stress management?

Cover Letter

Dear Respondents, My name is Tong Chun Leong, my UOG student number is 000748403. Currently, I am pursuing my Degree program from the University of Greenwich. In this semester, I have a subject named Personal and Professional Development 2. I am required to conduct a research in order to understand the relationship between work stress and service industry. Hence, I have created a set of questionnaire which focuses on it to gather information. I promise all the information given will be kept as confidential data and it’s just for this research use only. Appreciate if you can provide your valuable information to this research. Yours faithfully, Tong Chun Leong

Questionnaire Design

This particular questionnaire is designed to obtain the feedback from the customer service consultants to investigate ” The relationship between stress management and service industry”.

Section A: Personal Particular

Please TICK the most appropriate response for the following items:

1. Gender

Male

Female

2. Age

Below 20

20-30

31-40

41-50

Above 50

3. Race

Malay

Chinese

Indian

Others ………………………

(Please Specify)

4. Highest Education

Certificate

Diploma

Degree

PhD.

5. Occupation

Executive

Managerial

RM3, 001 – RM4, 000

RM4, 001 & above

6. Monthly Income

Below RM1, 000

RM1, 000 – RM2, 000

RM2, 001 – RM3, 000

RM3, 001 – RM4, 000

RM4, 001 & above

7. Years of Working Experience

1 – 2 Years

3 – 4 Years

5 – 6 Years

More than 6 years

8. Marital Status

Single

Married

Divorced

Section B: Information concerning work stress

Please TICK the number which best describe your feeling using a 5-item Likert scale as follows:

Strongly

Agree

Agree

Neutral

Disagree

Strongly

Disagree

1

2

3

4

5

Job Stress

1. Customer service centre is a place which full of work stress.

2. Customer service consultant always needs to deal with work stress.

3. Customer complaint is the major factor that cause work stress in service industry

4. It is very hard to communicate with customers.

5. It is very pressure to work in customer service centre.

6. Fail to manage work stress will cause depression.

7. Work stress is very danger in workplace.

8. Solving more than 100 customer complaints every day is a very stressful job.

9. Work stress is bad for health.

10. It is higher chances for customer service consultant to encounter work stress.

Comment (If any):

1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

6)

7)

8)

9)

10)

Strongly

Agree

Agree

Neutral

Disagree

Strongly

Disagree

1

2

3

4

5

Stress Management

1. It is very important to understand how to manage stress.

2. If follow the proper stress management steps, stress can be easily released.

3. Stress management always relate to service industry.

4. Customer service consultant should study stress management in order know how to release stress in a proper manner.

5. Stress management is very effective as it does help to release stress.

6. Company did provide proper guidance on stress management.

7. It is compulsory for all customer service consultants to learn stress management skills.

8. Employer should put more attention on stress management.

9. Every individual has its own way to release stress.

10. Smoking cigarette is a good to release stress.

Comment (If any):

1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

6)

7)

8)

9)

10)

Section C: Individual point of view

Please answer the following questions:

1)

Have you encountered any work stress before?

2)

What type of solution you will use to manage work stress?

3)

Do you think stress management really can help to release work stress? Why?

4)

Do you think stress management is really important in service industry? Why?

5)

Please suggest one way to release work stress.

Thank You

(Word count: 679)