EXPLORING OCCUPATIONAL STRESS ACROSS INCOME CATEGORIES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EMPLOYEES IN GUWAHATI CITY.

Abstract

Stress is an inevitable part of modern life which affects individuals belonging to all walks of life. Stress exists in day-to-day small tasks and carries to workplace with varying complexity. Urbanization, industrial development, increasing competition and modernization in the society are contributing to increasing stress. People perceive stress when they fail to meet up to the environmental expectations and find the situation threatening or challenging. Unwaveringly, an alarming rise in psychosomatic and psychological disorders of individuals and feeling of frustration and dissatisfaction with life in general reflect the high stress being experienced by the people in the present-day world. There can be multiple reasons or causes of stress like past traumatic events, future uncertainty, increasing competition in different walks of life, role conflict etc. Employees experience moderate to high level of stress in workplace due to work deadlines, feeling of powerlessness, excessive workload, conservative company policies, composite lifestyle of people, rigorous government policies etc. Employees in both public and private sector experience stress and respond in different ways.

Stress manifests in various forms of emotional disorders. (Singh and Singh 1992) found that stress gets its reflection in the form of anxiety, depression, helplessness, hopelessness and anger. The stressful people with the slightest provocation are easily induced to anger and anxiety and become unable to relax. Employees’ responses to work demands and pressures are largely influenced by their personality characteristics, and psychological and behavioural patterns, such as beliefs and values, aspiration and expectancy, need structure, attributions, locus of control, personality traits, coping skills, cognitive patterns, etc. An important personal characteristic which influences the experience of stress is “sense of control.” Control refers to the perception by the individual worker that his or her action results in expected outcomes, particularly those which are important for the workers. Sense of control has been found to have significant effect on people’s response to stress. Personality traits also play an instrumental role in building stress among employees. Traits such as perfectionism, competitiveness and agreeableness lead to more stress among teachers (Anwar S. et al. 2021)