ABSTRACT
The study mainly focuses on the empirical evidence on the nature and its effects of some selected occupational stress indicators and their impacts on some Human Resource Management practices (HRM) in relation to employee’s job satisfaction of various organization like Sainsbury, Morrison’s, Asda, Aldi and Lidl.
The analysis will be done by collecting data through the novel survey on reliable & selected occupational Stress Index (O. S. I) and HRM practices that are related to employee’s job Satisfaction which has to be based on a representative random sample of employee from the entire population (employee) of the organizations. The empirical evidence will be provided by conducting various statistical methods like correlation and regression, chi-square, percentage etc. and in the end its conclusion and required recommendation based on the findings of this study will be formulated and presented.
Research Questions
While formulating research questions, the link and causes should be taken into account very carefully and so will be done in this research as I’ll try to explain occupational stress and HRM practices of working environment and this study will be directed at testing a Hypotheis and try to create a link and relationship between occupational stress and HRM practices of organizations in respect to employees job satisfaction.
This study will address the following questions:
1. To identify HRM practices in the organization which are related to employee’s health.
2. To measure the employees occupational Stress in the organizations
3. To develop and determine the level of relationship between occupational stress and employees job satisfaction.
Brief Literature Review
There are various pressures in almost everyone’s life each day which is subjected to be coped up through wide ranges of resources and strategies but sometimes it’s an individual who copes well sometime while other individuals have some difficulty in coping with the pressure and this situation can be said as a stress for an individual. This field has been researched for several years now and found that work or occupational stress has become a major issue for organizations as this factor has many effects such as lost productivity to burnout and from burnout to the increased absenteeism that for sure can hinder the organizations ability to accomplish its laid objectives and goals.
Occupational stress is any uneasiness which is felt and perceived at a personal level and activated by instances, events or situations that are too intense and frequent in nature so as to surpass a person’s coping competences and resources to handle them adequately (Malta, 2004). Stress is recognized to be one of the main reasons of absence from work (Mead, 2000). Work stress can be defined as an incompatibility between the individual and his/her environment surrounded and dependent on various factors (Anderson, 1991). Coping is one of the important factors when we discuss stress, its factors and implications on the organizations goals and there are various approaches to the concept of coping. According to Osipow in 1998 Coping is an interactive orientation that assumes that coping has man integral role in the effect that stress has upon a certain strain. It’s a cognitive and behavioural efforts which helps in managing the specific external or/and internal demands that are appraised on the individual which exceeds the resources of an individual (Folkman & Lazarus, 1998).
Ryan (1996) described coping by giving four strategies that an individual can employ to respond to the work stress and that are changes in individual’s psychological condition, physical condition, behaviour and the work environment. Coping with stress depletes psychological energy that is when the individual gets more stress from any sources then he feels less energy for empathy and caring (Cherniss, 1980). Now researchers have proposed a third group of coping resources that can be identified which are mainly perception focussed coping (Perlin and Schooler, 1978). If the employer- employee relationship is not restored quickly then it is likely that the long term outcome for the employee is bound to be negative due to occupational stress which he is not able to cope up with and in this case the employees work related roles and relationships can worsen the psychological condition of the employee and that makes the task more complicating when it’s not diagnosed at time (Keilhofner, 1995).
There are various new and different management techniques have been developed to diagnose work related stress such as Human Resource Management, Business process reengineering (BPR), Total Quality Management (TQM) and Lean production (Work stress, 2010). The Common Management practice assumes that when reasonable amount of pressure builds up on the employees work environment leads to higher level of performance and the competency level increases among the employees (le Ferre, Matheny and Kolt, 2003). There is an old belief that stress at low level leads to increase performance and the relationship is curvilinear in nature but however beyond certain level of work stress the performance of an employee decreases.
This above stated relationship may be true under some conditions but recent researchers have found evidences and suggested that stress even at low levels may distort employee’s job satisfaction and may have some negative effects on performance of the employee. The occupational stress represents a actual risk to the excellence of task and satisfaction of the employee while performing the task (Danna and Griffin, 1999).
The health and safety executive, 2010 shows that around 5 lac employees in U. K experience work related stress at the certain level that is believed to be enough to make employees ill and more recent studies have shown that more than 5 lac people feel very or extremely stressed while being on work and estimation has been done whish shows that it costs more £ 3. 7 billion each year to the U. K society (Johnson, Cooper, Cartwright, Donald, Taylor and Millet, 2005). The effects of stress can be both physical or/and psychological and therefore it has been defined as ‘ silent killer’. Some of the medical experts claim that there may very strong relationship between stress and personal health (Greenberg, 2002).
According to Harper and Vilkinas in 2005 considers that Performance Management systems (PMS) has some key elements comprising of Stakeholders, Managers and employees Perspectives. This study focuses mainly on two key points one is that the Managers and Stakeholders argued that the PMS had more positive impact on the Performance and secondly the study highlights the difficulties encountered while evaluating PMS.
Robert Karasek has developed a model for stress known as ‘ the job strain model’ which argues that the work stress and the resulting physical and mental health of work stress results not only from a single aspect of the environment but its due to the chain of pressures coming from the environment which demands a freedom in work but the strain occurs only when the job demands are high and the job decision latitude is low.
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This job strain model states the stress level rise only when demands are high in job and decision latitude is low which eventually leads to negative health outcomes such as Cardiovascular diseases and Hypertension. This model also illustrates the predictions regarding the socialization of personality traits and behaviour pattern of the employees. Job strain model mainly emphasizes on distinguishing features of the work environment which can be further categorized as demands and control which further examines the stress creating factors and not solely dependent on individual perceptions or individual environment fit.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
It is very important that methods and procedures are carefully considered so that Methodology enables the researcher to collect the correct and valid information from all the sources and then accordingly analyse the collected data to find out the proper conclusion and correct recommendations. The research will be mainly focussed on the quantitative approach where different tests will be conducted through correlation & regression and chi-square and percentage methods.
The methods and procedures which I will be following while conducting this research are described below:
Locale of the study
The locale of the research study will be supermarkets like Sainsbury, Morrison’s, Asda, Aldi and Lidl. organization located in Bangor and other North Wales, U. K.
Population and Sample
A unbiased sample will be taken from the whole population will be taken from the employees of Sainsbury, Morrison’s, Asda, Aldi and Lidl. Organization located in Bangor and other North Wales, U. K. An updated list of employees will be collected from the authority and out of all employees 1000 employees (500 men and 500 women) will be selected purposively as sample of the study which will clearly show how stress affects employees job satisfaction.
Instrument for Data collection
In this research study the required data will be gathered from the employees and that will be collected by forming a structured questionnaire which has been designed for getting clean and justified information about employees’ views, ideas regarding Occupational stress and the human resource management practices of the organization and their performance level as well. In my research questionnaire both open and closed ended questions will be which will be Simple and direct questions in accordance with the objectives of the study. These questions will be designed to get the desired result and to ascertain the opinion of the employees regarding a number of aspects involved in this study. The questionnaire will be pre-tested with a few employees over some period of time to get necessary corrections and if needed the questionnaire will be modified and then the corrected questionnaire will be finally used for data collection.
Data collecting procedure
The gathering of the data will be done by the researcher and prior to data collection researcher will request the employees to provide necessary help and co-operation for data collection. The researcher will make all promising efforts to form rapport with the participant so that they could feel free to response the questions contained in the questionnaire and later Data collection obtained from the participant will be complied, tabulated and analysed to reach findings.
Selection of dependent and Independent Variables
The efficacious selection of variables makes the research successful and inappropriate and inconsistent selection of variables may lead to faulty outcomes. Employee performance and job satisfactions while coping with the occupational stress are the main focus of this study and therefore it will be considered as the dependent variables. Therefore, I have selected some Occupational stress index which is related to HRM practices such as Managing diversity, Job analysis, Job description, Job specifications and Recruitment, Selection , Training, and development, Equal employment opportunity, Career planning, Performance Management, Compensation strategies, and lastly employee and Organizational relations as independent variables.
Data processing and Analysis
Compilation of data
After completing the collection of data from the employees of various organization mentioned above, all the questionnaires will be coded, compiled, tabulated and then analysed in accordance with the research objectives and in the due process, all the responses in the questionnaire will be given numerical coded values due to ethical considerations.
Statistical technique
The analysis will be accomplished by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) which is a software which deals in different various descriptive analysis such as range, number and percentage, mean, standard deviation and rank order that will be used when it’s necessary. Pearson’s Product Moment Co-efficient of Correlation will be used in order to explore the relationship between the concerned variables like employees job satisfaction, and occupational stress and throughout this study, probability of at least five-per cent (0. 05) of will be used as basis while rejecting a null hypothesis.
ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
The research will be conducted through obtaining the permission from the due authority to conduct the study with their employee responses and the report will be fully confidential.
To avoid personal biasness, special care will be taken while obtaining opinions of the research participants to ensure fair consideration.
Result of the research work will be accurately and fully represented what is observed based on the actual responses of the respondents.
Reasonable and appropriate samples will be selected to obtain rational result.
Appropriate Conclusions and Recommendations will be drawn on the basis of the results of the research.
