NUST BUSINESS SCHOOL

Effects of Occupational Stress on Job satisfaction

Banking Sector of Pakistan

Submitted by; Zainab Nasim
Syed Waqas Bukhari
Muhammad Hamza
Mohsin Ali Raza
Mehjabeen Malik

Submitted to: Dr. Faisal Asghar Imam

Organizational Behavior and Design

Submission Date: January 09, 2014

Table of Contents
Page 1 of 16

History...................................................................................................................................................3
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................4
Literature Review..................................................................................................................................5
Organizational Stress effecting Job Satisfaction....................................................................................6
Gap analysis..........................................................................................................................................8
Theoretical Nexus..................................................................................................................................9
Person Environment Fit Theory (Lewin (1935) and Murray (1938)).................................................9
Demand Control Support Model (R. Karasek & Theorell 1980s).....................................................9
Conservation of Resources Theory (Stevan Hobfoll 1989)................................................................9
Recommendations...............................................................................................................................10
By Improving Communication........................................................................................................10
Employee Consultation....................................................................................................................10
Furnishing the Social Environment..................................................................................................10
Time Management Technique..........................................................................................................10
Introduction of Stress Management Program (SMP).......................................................................11
Autogenic Training..........................................................................................................................11
Bibliography........................................................................................................................................12
Appendices:.....................................................................................................................................14
Detailed Interviews..........................................................................................................................14
Meeting Minutes:.............................................................................................................................16
Date.............................................................................................................................................16
Time.............................................................................................................................................16
Location.......................................................................................................................................16
Called By.....................................................................................................................................16
Time Taken..................................................................................................................................16
Agenda.........................................................................................................................................16

History
Throughout the past years, banking sector has seen enormous changes in terms of technology,
policies and rules set by the central banks and government to compete globally and in a
competitive environment. Banking sector of Pakistan has gone through multiple reforms after
the nationalizations of banks in 1974, while in 1994 quite momentous changes were
introduced by privatizing the banks to provide enhanced services to its customers and to react
rapidly toward any change that might occur in this dynamic situation.
It has been witnessing massive change during 21st century due to globalization, liberalization
and other events such as privatization, downsizing, immense mergers, acquisition and
technological advancements that have led to considerable changes in the size, structure and
activity of banks (Hart and Wearing, 1995). In short, the banking sector has undergone a
major transformation. However, this swift progression and development have also laid some
negative impacts on banks and their primary and secondary stakeholders. Most importantly,
banking jobs have become exceptionally demanding. In order to achieve the mission of
enhanced services, bank employees have to exert far more efforts today as compared to the
past.

Introduction

The purpose of this document is to identify the level of occupational stress in the banking
sector of Pakistan and to identify the main variables for this stress. Our focus was mainly on
identifying the most evident stressors between, organizational, group, and individual stressors
in banking sector. As the stress is undoubtedly a big issue in banking sector of Pakistan and it
has certain implications as well so we tried to figure out different implications that may show
up due to job dissatisfaction. In this document we have included some our research work
that we did to identify the major stressors at banks as we conducted formal interviews of
branch managers of 4 different banks .To get more out of it, some informal interviews of
bank employees are also a part of it. Our findings from this report will pour light on the
general thinking of local management of branches of different banks as well as the thoughts
of the banks employees regarding the occupational stress.
In the end, on the basis of our research, we have given some recommendations for the
banking sector of Pakistan on how to reduce stress from workplace and help the employees to
be more content and happy with their jobs and workplace. These would include the
management techniques that can be used by local management as well as the higher
management (Head Office). Some individual techniques would also be discussed that can be
taught to the employees at the time of training to manage stress. And particularly, how banks
can change their organizational environment to reduce stress in the matters of work hours,
work load, job description etc.

Literature Review
Stress has been a big problem in Pakistans Banking Sector for a long time now. And this
stress is causing problems to a lot of areas in employees lives. These areas include the health
as the biggest issue. There are few other areas as well like the job performance of employee
and ultimately the performance of the organization itself. There are certainly differences
between private sector banks and public sector banks. The system in public sector banks is
more autocratic. This bureaucracy in the public sector banks leads to a certain level of stress
as there is no space for innovation. The bank employees have to follow specific orders and
they have to act accordingly and there is no room for participation. The private banking
sector is not all together different. There is a little room of participation but not much and
here also the system is bureaucratic. (Khurram, Faisal, 2012)
Above given reasons indicate that public sector bank employees face more occupational
stress than private sector bank employees. This stress is so severe at times that it leads to
firstly affect the employees performance then it causes the concerning health issues with
them and because of all this ultimately, the overall organizations performance starts to
decline. (Mohd, 2013)
Individually, emotional intelligence (EI) also plays a role when we talk about individual
stressors. The studies show that individuals with more emotional intelligence are more
immune towards work stress. The stress does affect them on a certain level but they somehow
reliably manage it. It does affect their performance but not on a large extent. The individuals
with more emotional intelligence are usually better at handling stress because they find
multiple ways to deal with stress at workplace. (Saddam, 2010)
The individual stressors do play some role but that is minor. Especially in the banking sector
of Pakistan, employees usually dont have much to think and to act. They have to follow
certain rules and procedures. Same is the case in the matters of group stressors as there are
mainly not much of group tasks involved in day to day banking activities. All they have to do
is to work on their desks if they are working in branches or they must work in the fields
individually. Lack of organizational support, work load, extra working hours, negative feeling
caused by downsizing and layoff, lack of feedback and support, threats to financial security
and career development and bureaucratic system in the banks are main organizational
stressors in the banking sector of Pakistan. (Nargis, Saiqa 2003)

Technological problems at work place are becoming very common cause of stress at work
place now a days as the customer is on you and individuals have to deal with it regardless the
limitations on technical side of the bank. (Jamshed et al. 2011)
It is concluded that high rates of mergers, acquisitions, increasing economic interdependence
among countries due to globalization, technological development, and restructuring have
changed the organizational work over the last few decades have resulted in time pressure,
excessive work demand, role conflicts, ergonomic insufficiencies and problematic customer
relationship are causes of stress.The stress at job is proved to be dysfunctional for the
organization as well as the employees. (Rubena, Shehla, Delawar, 2008)
The Hawthorne studies and another research conducted by University of Michigan in 1950
actually reveal that workplace factors have significant effect of human mental and physical
health. In this regard the Job Stress was defined physical or emotional response of an
employee to the unwanted workplace factors which are beyond the abilities of an employee.
There was a negative relationship found between job stress and job performance. (Rosman,
Anwar, Kamram, 2013)
Here stress becomes an alarming caption for individuals that lead to the burnout where
individual cannot take any more stress and this can be disastrous. The employees start to find
a place to hide at workplace, then their individual performance starts to decline and
ultimately they end up to a situation where they quit the job. Stress also has a huge impact on
job satisfaction. More stress will lead to less job satisfaction and the ultimate result of that is
quitting the job. One of the main reasons behind the turnover in the industry is the piling up
of stress which ultimately causes the turnover rate to go high. (Mohammad et al 2011)

Organizational Stress effecting Job Satisfaction

Stress has a very widespread occurrence in our organizations. Originally, it was conceived as
pressure from the environment, then as strain within the person. For instance, (Hans,
Seyle1976) defines stress as primarily a psychological reaction to certain threatening
environmental events. The effects of stress vary among the persons ability to take it serious
or to have enough emotional intelligence to cope with it. While Job satisfaction illustrates
how content an individual is with his or her job. It addresses issues like, how does the worker
feel about a job or task. Usually, it is said that Happy Employee is a more productive
employee and he displays positive feelings or attitudes toward the job. (Charles Arinze

Obiora, July 2010, Nigeria) These attitudes include all aspects of negative or positive feelings
about a particular job which are likely to contribute to the developme nt of feelings of
satisfaction or dissatisfaction (Riggio, 2003). More job satisfaction lead to more commitment

and ultimately better performance of that given task.

Stress at work may affect employee negatively or positively too, but the effects of
negative side outweighs its positive implications. The stressors at work effect more
negatively on employees comfort ability level and satisfaction with its job. (N. Mallika, Dr.
M. Ramesh IJM May, 2010). Our study mainly focuses on different stressors that may have
serious impacts on employees of banking sector in an organization, we started off with
identifying what these stressors are and how do they effect employees. Mainly there are three
different types of stressors such as groups stressors that include lack of support from group,
being socially unaccepted ,not being able to work in a group, groups cohesiveness issue etc
while there are some individual stressors too that includes tolerance for change , type A or B
behavior, sex, gender etc that have implications on individual level, the third stressors under
study are the organizational stressors that may also be called as job-related stressors, it
includes both the content of the job and also the work environment in terms of organizational
support, feedback, work load, time pressures, role ambiguity and structural issues.
The findings we got from banking sector leads to the fact that there are people
working in cabins and having their separate work assigned to them rather than any group
tasks for which they have to show team spirit or work on group cohesiveness, informal
groups helped them to be together at free times and discuss their discrepancies so we
concluded from research that there are less group related issues prevailing, while we observed
that the timing of banks lies from 9 am to 5pm, which often being increased till 9 pm, more
work load and longer working hours leads to employee feeling strain and physical stress.
There are certain other variable that we observed are effecting employee job satisfaction e.g.
job boredom that is caused due to monotonous job and sitting at the same place all day long,
physical or mental strain due to lack of variety in their tasks, tight control by management to
meet certain deposit requirements even if they dont have ability to bring more of them, only
downward communication leading to lack of participation and enforced decision making,
appraisal that do not have a 360 degree angle and being done by only the immediate
supervisor to whom you cant complain even if you face any problem, formalization of all the
jobs with no creativity at any point, lack of autonomy over time and work and another
important variable is low utilizations of abilities where many of the workers possessing
higher educational degrees were working under the tellers counters and were not pleased by

their job responsibilities, these identifies stressors can lead harmful outcomes on the part of
organization some of the observed results are increased absenteeism, poor overall morale,
lack of productivity and employee high turnover rates.

Gap analysis
The study that we did was intended to find out different theories about organizational
stressors and their implications in theoretical framework and in practical workplace
environment. We figured out numerous stressors that were effecting employee job satisfaction
and their motivation will and ability to perform that job competently, these stressors are
categorized in organizational, group and individual stressors, effecting employees at different
level. While studying it through theories we found that group dynamics and individual
characteristics are as important as organizational stressors and they do have wide range of
implications on employee satisfaction, no matter which organization it is. And all kind of
stress variable ultimately leads too contingencies at individual level where he might feel
anxiety, strain, physical pressure and psychological issue.
Most part of our study states that there are significant amount of similarities between
the theories related to stress in academia and what effects does it cause on employee and
there were same constructs being observed in the banks that employees do find themselves in
stress situations and feel dissatisfied. The point which we consider as a Gap is when we did
our research in banking sector, finding details about their job details and work environment
through interviewing, we found that although there are three different types of intraorganizational stressors, bank employees are most effected by organization stressors(Jobrelated) (work load , work pressure, deadlines, working conditions centralized structure and
formalization) as compare to individual level or group stressors, as in banks employees
usually do not have group or team task so they are less inclined toward problem causing
through these variables, but one thing that we identified through our research was that even if
the personality types does not directly affect job satisfaction at banks but still if they face any
of the job related pressure they ultimately triggers down to individual level and their
emotional intelligence help them to either cope with it easily or get themselves burnout
through it. Another important thing that we notice is that in books there are certain techniques
and theories given which can help managers to reduce employee dissatisfaction but in real
workplace these stress management techniques do exist on paper but not in actual practice.

Theoretical Nexus
Person Environment Fit Theory (Lewin (1935) and Murray (1938))
Person environment (PE) fit theory is based on the statement that stress arises as a result of a
mismatch between the individual and the environment and not from each component
separately.
So banking sector must make efforts to avoid misfit between employee and the environment
so as to mitigate the stress factor that may arise due to the misfit by balancing and creating a
match between organizational norms, job requirements, role clarity and expectation with the
individuals competencies. As greater the compatibility gaps between the employee and the
environment greater the likelihood of stress and push, ultimately creating a need of coping, so
banks can reduce stress element by taking into account the relation between the employee and
the environment in which the employee is working. (Melanie 2005)

Demand Control Support Model (R. Karasek & Theorell 1980s)

The demand control support model signifies work contents

role as the major source of stress at workplace. Work content is divided into two parts:

Employee perceptions about the tasks necessary in performing the job.

Employee perceptions about the degree of control or authority in doing the job tasks.

The above two interact with each other creating strain leading to stress.
The upmost levels of occupational stress occurs in situations depictedby extremely high
demands, and very low control and in our banking sector it is very much the same case, less
autonomy and more demand exists thereby causing stress in employees so the DCSM can
turn out to be very handy in removing the stressors after pointing out the interaction between
the two mentioned constructs. (ibid)

Conservation of Resources Theory (Stevan Hobfoll 1989)

COR examines the interaction of the person and the environment, the degree of
correspondence between demands in the environment and the individuals resources to deal
with those demands. Individuals strive to obtain, retain, protect and foster those things that
they value. (Hobfoll 1989)
Environmental resources include having autonomy in ones job, degree/ level of feedback
received and rewards upon good job performance. It also includes social support and
organizational support for the employee. Having the above mentioned factors or resources in
a banking system setting can greatly affect the stress level of employees through the
provision of favorable conditions leading to resource increase e.g. when an employee would
receive positive and suggestive feedback from the supervisor then it will not only give the
employee self assurance and uplift the positivity but would also confirm that the performance
is acceptable whereas stress if there would lead to resources decline and employee would
have his/her attention distracted from the job itself. (Philip et al)

Recommendations
For a manager it is important to maintain minimum levels of stress at workplace. A manager
can be taken as a source of positive role model during high stress times. Furthermore, there
are number of organizational changes and management techniques that both employees and
managers can implement to reduce the organizational stress at work which are recommended
below:

By Improving Communication
A manager should encourage open channels of communication for dealing and mitigating the
work related stress issues. (Jeane et al 2013)

Employee Consultation
A manager should foster a culture that enables worker to participate in decision making
which is crucial to their jobs. He should also give create an entrepreneurial work
environment that increases workers command over their work. (ibid)

Furnishing the Social Environment

Social interaction should be encouraged among workers. There should be a social platform
which encourages positive reactions to accomplishments and also prevents negative
reactions to personal accomplishments among employees. (ibid)

Time Management Technique

Time management technique would help a manager to:

Build an effective environment which in turn would affect stress in a positive way

Setting and organizing the order of priorities and them performed around them

Leading to reduced spending time on non priority activities.

(Dr. Dutta)

Introduction of Stress Management Program (SMP)

Organized SMP would help focus on employees at all levels of hierarchy. It may include:

Introduction of training programs which are job oriented, thus improving workers
skill and abilities while enhancing their work affectivity

Providing counseling and support on problems (work related or personal)

Attractive reward and recognition system for employee welfare

(C. Cooper)

Autogenic Training
Its a technique that could be applied to employees. It consists of routine sessions being
carried out lasting about 15 minutes, usually at an early time of the day. It involves repetition
of visualization in turn creating a state of relaxation. It can be practiced by choosing any of
the recommended positions (lying down, sitting meditation, sitting like a rag doll). It would
help in relieving stress related neurotic disorders. (Dr. Dutta)

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Appendices:
Detailed Interviews
Following are the main Questions asked from managers in Formal interviews:
Q: What is your job description? And how does it stress you out
ANS: I have to basically manage deposits and finances of my branch and achieve all the
targets given to me by central office and talking about stress it does stresses me out because
its very difficult to achieve these targets as they are chasing targets so I feel stressed out every
time specially in closing months. It is very difficult to satisfy people when they have many
banks as choice for keeping deposits and many banks ready to loan out money.
Q: How do you manage work load in closing months?
ANS: As banks do closing 2 times a year one in JUNE and other in DECEMBER so these
two months are one of the most stressful months as we have to achieve all our targets in any
case. We are not allowed to get off days during these months except for weekends and we
have to run in full swing to full fill those targets. To manage this entire work load we have to
spend late nights in banks and due to excess of workload most of people have to take
medicines and become patents of hyper tension
Q: If you fail to achieve your targets then what are its consequences?
ANS: As main part of my job is to achieve all the targets and when I fail to do that or any
other manager fails to do that he has to face very complication like no bonus, no increment
and transfer to a distant area etc. These consequences are very stressful and make us work
harder leaving our health concerns on back foot
Question asked from marketing officer
Q: What is your job description and how does it stress you out``?

ANS: As it is evident from my name I am marketing officer and I have to sale all the products
offered by my bank and achieve my targets. It is very difficult to sale things to people. People
dont listen to you and dont give respect to you so it stress you out a lot and just because of
the level of this stress I plan to leave but as I dont have any other choice I dont
Q: Who writes your appraisal and on what points?
ANS: Chief Manager writes my appraisal and there is an only criterion of writing my
appraisal SALES. If I achieve my targets its ok and I get all the benefits but if I dont
achieve them for just few months I my lose my job. This constant pressure of losing job is
very stressful
Q: Are you a permanent employ of bank or on contract?
ANS: All marketing officers come on contract bases and if he performs well then he gets
permanent. I am still working on contract bases and the worst part of this job is that there is
no significant growth and no job security
Question asked from COSTMER SERVISES MANAGER:
Q: What is your job description and does it stress you?
ANS: I have to deal with all the customers and address their problems and satisfy them.
Basically I have to look up to all the happenings in branch. Stress is part of every job but it is
more in banking sector as we provide financial services to people and we are dependent on
people and their money. People came up with different problems and always want their work
to be done on priority bases and if its not done they misbehave and its very stressful work to
control people
Q: If customer complaints against you then how do you handle with it?
ANS: As I have to deal with all the customers and handle all the happening in branch to there
lies a great responsibility on me and if a customer complaints against me then its a very big
trouble for me and there are two ways of dealing with it one is that I personally go to that
person and apologies him or I will have to face an investigation against that complaint which
could even cost me my job. It is very difficult and stressful to satisfy each and every customer
Question asked from TELLER

Q: Whats your job description and is it stressful?

ANS: I have to deal with all the cash transactions means all the money in and out of the bank.
As we have to directly deal with customers with cash so its most stressful job in banking
sector. I have to give and take money all in and out and at the end of day I am responsible for
all the transactions and have to balance them. People in Pakistan are not so polite and have no
patience and keep on yelling at me and all day I have to count money their no monotony in
my work
Q: What happens if at the end of the day you are unable to balance your ledgers?
ANS: We keep on entering amount going out and coming in to keep the balance but in rush
hours its impossible to enter every entry and that is the point where we come into trouble and
sometimes fall short of cash and as a result of that we have to pay that from our pocket. Its
very difficult to manage money when it is coming in and going out in bulk. The worst part of
this job is all this balance of money

Meeting Minutes:
Date

05/11/2013

Time
2.00 pm

Location
NBS Library

Called By
Zainab

Time Taken
20 minutes

13/11/2013

9.00 am

NBS Library

Hamza

90 minutes

22/11/2013

6.00 pm

NBS Library

Zainab

30 minutes

12/12/2013

9.00 am

NBS Library

Zainab

5 hrs 30

18/12/2013

9.00 am

NBS Library

Mehjabeen

minutes
3 hrs

Agenda
Discussing
and deciding
on topic
Discussing
pros and cons
of two topics
decided
Start working
on chosen
topic
Group work
on project
Changes to be
made in
project after
discussion