Workplace stress and coping mechanism in a cohort of Indian service industry

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to explore workplace-stress perceptions and stress coping mechanisms used by employees of different age-groups in services. The study further examined the relationship between stress coping mechanisms and workplace-stress perceptions of employees, by underpinning literature-based evidences to results. The study investigated workplace-stress and coping mechanisms of randomly selected employees (n = 204) of three sectors of service industry. Descriptive statistics, analysis of variance and related post-hoc tests were used to examine different research questions in the study. The study was primarily designed to study the impact of gender, age, management level and organizational ownership on stress perceptions and coping mechanisms of employees. The results suggested that perceived workplace-stress and stress coping mechanisms differ significantly with age while other factors reported insignificant differences. Interestingly, the older employees scored high on the use of coping mechanisms but their perceived workplace-stress was also high in comparison to their younger counterparts. The study attributes high stress-perceptions in older employees to the new stressors at work, thereby negating the experience theory widely used in explaining high coping ability of older employees at work.