Impact Of Occupational Stress On Aspet’s Australian Franchise

Organisational Background

Analyse the impact of occupational stress on the Australian franchise of Aspet.

Introduction

Organisational Background

This report discusses the impact of occupational stress on employee’s performance of Aspet A. Company in Australia. This is a company of African origin with the largest stretch of its Asian franchise being situated in Australia. The Australian franchise of the company have about 2500 employees working currently (Vanhove et al. 2016). Job security is a conce3rning factor for the employees of Aspet A. in Australia. The employees are forced to work under physical and mental job stress. The company showed a trend of increase in its revenue collection since 2008. In 2012, the news about extreme job stress in the company came into open. In the literature review section, the factors that compels the average Australian employees to face extreme work stress have been discussed. Moreover, using descriptive quantitative research, an elaborate research work have also been conducted upon the employees of the company.

Research Problem

A lot of resr4ch work have been carried out to examine the reason and outcome of the excessive job stress that Australian companies face. In this regard, the macro economic factors have been described in detail. However, a further detailed study is required to analyse the factors of stress on the employees. In spite of low organisational performance, the management of the company have not reduced occupational stress that the employees face (Van De Voorde & Beijer, 2015). This study aims to find out the reasons why the employees of Aspet. A company face stress. Further, the outcome of the working under extreme stress have also been analysed in the report.

Research Rationale

This assignment sheds light on an elaborative research plan aimed at conducting a quantitative research in order to investigate on the research problem highlighted in the introduction section. Australian companies on an average impose excessive occupational stress on their employees. As an impact, there have been a slight increase in the productivity rate. However, the employee morale and the rate of job satisfaction have been extremely low in Australia. This report focuses on discussing the kind of stress that the employees of the company face in their organisational context.

Organisational Demand and Job Stress

Occupational stress is fostered out of the excessive organisational demand on the human resources of the organisation. This is compounded by the distress that the employees of the Australian companies experience subjectively. According to the ideas of (Abbas & Raja, 2015) organisational stress stem out of the interaction between interval micro environment and the individual employee. The stress faced in the workplace directly impacts the mental as well as physical condition of an employee. As an impact, the job performance of the employees is affected and in turn the productivity of the companies is hampered (Sonnentag, & Fritz, 2015). It is noteworthy that organisations stress is not a normal phase that employees. It is a condition of disequilibrium where the organisational demands are extremely high and high production targets and tight deadlines are compulsorily thrust upon the employees (Bakker & Demerouti, 2014).

Research Problem

According to the ideas of Baranik,et al. (2017), the Australian companies employ an effective strategy of reducing operational cost, as the scale of production is low in most of the companies. On the contrary, Baron, Franklin & Hmieleski, (2016), states that this is the patent culture of the start-up and SMEs of Australia. Small franchise companies also replicate the business model of the successful start-up companies. The small production unit is expected to produce more units of produce. However, the individual capacity of productivity is severely impacted due to this work culture of the companies.

According to the findings of Bhave & Glomb, (2016), there are five major sources of job stress. The most important of the factors are the intrinsic factors of the organisation. These are as follows:

Poor working conditions

The physical surrounding of the workplace might be a major factor of stress at times. Issues like high noise level, fumes, and poor ventilation of the rooms, poor lighting and other such factors can cause stress. Besides, as per Breevaart et al. (2015), if the office is poorly built and hence incur communication problem, it would also cause stress among the employees.

Long and strenuous working hours

Many job roles in Australia require long working hours from its employees. Many of the employees are unable to endure the stress of this tenure and fall prey to it. In organisations that amount of high level of produce, employees are expected to work in overnight shifts also. This incurs adverse effect on the health of the employees (Brough, Drummond & Biggs, 2018).

Risks and danger in the workplace

High level of stress is associated with other dangers also. Job roles that involve high stress level owing to exposure to potential threats might result in adrenal rush, high blood pressure, unsystematic respiratory processes and so on (Chan, Song & Yang, 2015). Employees of companies pertaining to chemical manufacturing, iron smelting and others such industries are exposed to such threats.

Role Overload

Role overload is the formal name of the job stress that arises out of working constantly under tight deadlines. (Dawson, O’Brien & Beehr, (2016), posited that in Australian companies, the perceived inability to execute and accomplish a definite task within the assigned deadline evokes stress. In this stressed situation, the individuals tend to accept some assignment and reject some other. The tension of losing the job owing to the inability to perform as per the requisite criteria creates immense psychological stress in the employees (Ford et al. 2014).

Relationship at work

The way in which people relate to each other in a workplace also evokes stress. An environment where the employee’s know each other very well, helps to foster confidence in the employees. The employee who have smooth relationship with the seniors, colleagues and the subordinates, belong to a comfort zone. However, as per Hülsheger, Feinholdt & Nübold (2015), inability to perform as per the organisational criteria makes the employees lack self-confidence and gradually his or her relations with the others in the company tends to decline.

Research Rationale

Impact of organisational stress on the employees’ performance

The impact of physiological stress

High stress level impact the mental health of the employees. This however leads to physical symptoms like anger, nervousness, irritability, boredom and aggression and anxiety in the workplace and gradual breakdown in the mental health impacts the self-esteem of the employees along with power of concentration, decision making capacity and the job satisfaction also declines (Hwang et al. 2014).

Behavioural and physiological symptoms and allied effects

The behavioural symptoms of workplace stress are irregularity in food consumption and increase in the rate of smoking and consumption of alcohol. Nervous fidgeting and absenteeism follows (Wang, Lu & Siu, 2015). The metabolism rate of an employee fluctuates as a consequence of stress and strain.

Impact on Job performance

Occupational stress is primarily of two kinds. They are direct stress and indirect stress. Direct stress is caused by the imposition of task load and physiological stress factors are not associated with it. The physiological stress factors cultivate indirect stress. According to (Laschinger & (2014), stress applies to any form of organisational demand. In contrast, (LePine et al. 2016), opines that workload is not the proponent of stress. Rather, extreme workload, and the inability to cope up with the load and related nervousness can evoke psychological discomfort.

If it is agreed upon that subjective experience and particularly cognitive appraisal is a crucial factor that defines stress, then it might be assumed that it has a significant role in answering queries regarding whether excess load of work, time pressure or any other putative factor bear direct and indirect effects, both.

Stress management

There are individual approaches that are used by employees to reduce occupational stress. Exercise is a popular approach that entails practices like walking, riding bicycles, aerobic classes, swimming sessions and playing actives ports like tennis. In contrast, () opines that the most popular mod of stress release is relaxation. The prime objective of relaxing is reducing the basal metabolic rate of the employee who is physically exhausted and mentally retarded. Relaxation relieves the heart rate by 5 to 7 bpm. Blood pressure and kinds of psychological stress is relieved as an outcome of relaxing activities.

According to the findings of (Mulki et al. 2015), employees who are victims of occupational stress do not feel comfortable to talk about the stress before other colleagues or family members. It brings about a sense of subjugation in them. However, Petrou, Demerouti & Schaufeli, (2015), opines that self-disclosure can decrease stress to a good extent and also provide a positive outlook towards life.

Person Environment Fitness theory

The P-E fit theory makes it evident that a constant interaction between the individual employees and the workplace environment helps to reduce stress. Accumulation of stress compounds the job pressure on the employees and thus makes them disoriented to the workplace environment. However, this theory states that a constant interaction in the workplace can help to reduce the stress by 30 to 40%. Disorientation to the organisational goals makes the job feel like a burden (Ruotsalainen et al. 2014). However, if the employees maintain subtle relations with the peers and seniors in a company and make a mapped progress towards the individuals’ goals, the stress level might reduce.

Literature Review

H0: Occupational stress have adverse impacts on the job performance of the employees

H1: Occupational stress immensely impacts the job performance of the employees

Q1. What is your level of education?

Q2. What is the tenure of your career at this company?

Q3. Are you dissatisfied with your job at the present?

Q4. What is the cause of your dissatisfaction?

Q5. What mitigation strategies have you undertaken?

Target Population

The target population for this research constituted of the employees currently employed in the Aspet. A. company in Australia. A sample size of one hundred and ten employees were selected for this research study. The time frame allocated for this research justifies the selection of this time frame (Lewis, 2015).

Sampling Frame

The sample frame of the research study includes the employees of the production and marketing team of Aspet. A. company in Australia. Other than that, 10 employees who have recently retired from the organisation were also included in the sample frame.

Sampling Technique

Convenience sampling process have been followed for the conduction of this research. This sampling technique have been used so that the entire research sample population is available to the researcher throughout the tenure of the whole research. Primary data collection has been done by means of administering questionnaires (Lewis, 2015).

Data Collection Methods

The researcher have used both primary and secondary data sources. Primary data collection has been done by means of survey conducted among the employees of the company working in Australia. Again, secondary research has also been done in this research study (Lewis, 2015). Sources like online journals, press releases and other available online publications have been used for extraction of information for doing this project.

Methods of Data Analysis

Quantitative data analysis method have been followed in this report. Survey based on common set of questionnaire have been used as the research tool for the data collection.

Ethical Implications of Research

In the course of this research the researcher has followed the Data Protection Act 1998. This is why the names of the employees or their job roles have not been disclosed in the survey report. Besides, the entire research have been conducted in an ethical manner. None of the respondents have been forced, threatened or bribed to respond to the survey questions. The researcher has collected information from each of the members of the sample population with their individual consent.

Most of the employees employed by the company are diploma holders (Schmitt, Den Hartog & Belschak, 2016). Only 3.6% of the sample population had completed education up to Masters Level. Interestingly, most of the employees confirmed that they have been working in this company for a tenure of below 5 years. Less than 5% of the employees of this company have been working here for over 11 years. This evidently shows that the employee retention rate of the company is low. In turn it can be said that the job satisfaction level of the employees of the company is low.

The maximum mean of the employees who replied that they suffer from the work overload and feel mental pressure to work under tight deadlines is 3.482, which is the highest. Lest number of employees (mean 3.01) reported that they have been victim of odd relationship with seniors or poor working conditions.

Organisational Demand and Job Stress

Other factors that influence Employee’s performance at the company

The other factors influencing employees’ performance as evident in the survey are lack of motivation, poor knowledge of the organisational orientation, working environment and so on.

Recommendations and Conclusion

This section of the report uses the analysed information for ascertaining the impact of occupational stress within the employees of the Aspet. A. Company in Australia. The multiple reasons of stress among the employees is evident. Various stressors that affect the employees physically, mentally or psychologically have been hard for them to bear. Analysing the various issue in the organisation it can be concluded that although stress is very harmful for employee performance and also towards organisational performance in the future, various methods can be implemented to cope up with the stress.

Based on the research findings, the following recommendations can be provided.

It is true that the company has increased its production by 3% approximately by thrusting job pressure on the employees. However, considering the age and the educational qualities of the employees, it can be recommended that the company should implement acute and immediate measures to reduce the stress level of the workers. This is essential to ensure employees’ engagement with the organisational goals. The workforce us capable and possess the necessary practical skills to boost production. However the excess job pressure is making them disoriented to the organisational contexts.

Secondly, it is recommendable that the company start a cash appraisal policy. This would strategically reduce the impact of the high level of stress on the employees.

Thirdly, the organisation can alternatively also invest in expanding the workforce. As such the stress due to excess workload on the present employees would decrease automatically.

Reference List

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