Can We Rely on Job Satisfaction to Reduce Job Stress?

Abstract

Stress has been a hot topic to discuss since several years ago. Stress triggered a negative behaviour from employees. In a long term, stress would decrease the whole organizational performance. This study aimed to understand the factor which led to employees’ stress within state-owned organization in Indonesia. All this time, each organization tried to improve their employees’ job satisfaction as it would commonly lead to a positive attitude from the employees. Employees’ organizational commitment was a key which led to organizational success. Work-family conflict had been manifested as a problem in the work-life as the employees could not balance their role as employees and as a family member. These variables were hypothesized to affect employees’ job stress level.The research was conducted at PT Pelabuhan Indonesia I Medan, one of major state-owned firm in Indonesia. The research was focused on married employees and had been working for at least 3 years. There were 72 employees across division selected in the research. The sample was proportionally taken from each division. Data was collected using self-administered questionnaires. The data was analysed with correlation and multiple regression analyses.Correlation analysis showed that stress had a strong positive relationship with work-family conflict. Stress moderately correlated with the employees’ organizational commitment level and satisfaction level. Multiple regression analysis showed that job satisfaction might reduce employees’ job stress but it was insignificant. Job stress was positively and significantly affectedby employees’ satisfaction and commitment. Employees’ organizational commitment negatively and significantly affected the stress level. These relationships explained 64% of job stress variance.