Stress Among Women Working In Banking Industry Psychology Essay

Published Date: 23 Mar 2015

Women in India have served a lot after independence. From just a experienced homemaker, women today have gained skills and potential of not just being a homemaker but being at parity with their male counterpart. Moreover, varying roles of working women, they have preserved the conventional work culture of household. Now a day the companies are thriving towards high rate that the women have to work for longer hours to sustain the standard of living and accomplish their basic needs. In spite of having the recent technologies and services, women feel to be work loaded and stressed. The abstract literature on stress recommends that working women are lying on to the same face stressors practiced by working men. So far, women are also confronting with possibly exceptional stressors such as inequity, stereotyping, social separation, and work/home clases. Stress arises because of many reasons which are discussed in the research paper. The research paper also contains causes of stress and how to reduce the stress and overcome such problems by the working women at their workplace.

KEYWORDS: Workplace, Stress, Working Women.

INTRODUCTION

Know About Stress

Stress is a mood that is formed when we respond to particular events. It is the body's manner of growing to a challenge and getting ready to meet a strong situation with focal point, power, energy, and sensitive alertness. Stress is a normal physical reaction to actions that make you feel endanger and disturb your balance in some way. Fortunately, research shows that lifestyles vary and stress-reduction techniques can facilitate people learn to cope up with stress.

Stress refers to the tension from the argument between external environment and internal environment, guiding towards emotional and bodily pressure. In this fast moving world, it is not viable to live without stress, whether it is a student or working women. There is both constructive and destructive stress, depending on each individual's exclusive insight of the pressure between the two forces. Not all stress is terrible. For instance, constructive stress, also known as eustress, can assist a person to perform a task at best efficacy and effectiveness. Therefore, it is clear that some form of constructive stress can adjoin more shades and enthusiasm to lives. The presence of a target, for example, can drive to make the most of the moment pleasant and produce greater effectiveness. It is significant to keep this in mind, as stress management signify to use stress to our benefit, and not on eliminating the occurrence of stress in our lives.

I.4. Present Status Psychological Well Being

The present status of women in the current working environment can be demonstrated using some current data on the working women culture.

FIG 1.PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL BEING

( Source : www.bbc.co.uk )

DIFFERENT TYPES OF STRESS:

External and Internal Stressors

People can get familiar with stress from external or internal factors.

External stressors comprise of unfavourable physical state (such as pain or hot or cold temperatures) or traumatic psychological atmosphere (such as poor working conditions or unpleasant relationships).

Internal stressors can also be bodily (infections and other illnesses, inflammation) or psychological (such as deep worry about a destructive event that may or may not occur).

Acute or Chronic Stress

Stressors can also be defined as short-term (acute) or long-term (chronic).

Acute Stress. Acute stress is the response to an instant danger, commonly known as the fight or flight response. The threat can be any circumstances that are supposed, even subconsciously or incorrectly, as a threat.

Common acute stressors include:

Noise (which can cause a stress answer even during sleep)

Crowding

Isolation

Starvation

Danger

Illness

High technology effects (playing video games, frequently ringing mobile phones)

Imagining a risk or remembering a dangerous happening

Under most circumstances, once the acute threat has agreed, levels of stress hormones come back to normal. This is called the relaxation response.

Chronic Stress. Often, up to date life poses ongoing stressful conditions that are not short-lived. The advice to act (to fight or flee) must thus be controlled. Stress, then, becomes chronic.

Common chronic stressors contain:

Ongoing extremely pressured work

Long-term relationship problems

Lonesomeness

Constant financial worries

WORK PLACE STRESS:

Stress at work is quite a new perceptible fact of contemporary lifestyles. Job stress poses a load to physical health. Work related stress in the life of controlled workers, consequently, affect the health of organizations. Job stress is a chronic disease caused by situations in the workplace that negatively influence an individual's performance and/or overall well-being of her body and mind. Stress, either fast or steady, can bring risky body-mind disorders. Instant disorders such as nervousness attacks, worry, insomnia, tenseness and muscle pain can all result in chronic health problems. They may also have an effect on immune system, cardiovascular and nervous systems and direct individuals to regular addictions. Like "stress reactions", "relaxation responses" and stress management techniques are some of the important built-in response systems. Unfortunately, at present, don't get peaceful and calming situations without asking. To be relaxed one has to struggle to create such situations.

This research is to carry out the study that how much stressed the women employees of the banks are and how do their stress influence their work life, social life, output etc. so a sample of 10 women employees are selected from each of the three banks for the research of workplace stress among them.

Symptoms of Work Stress

It is no clandestine that stress and related disorders are the most regular cause of employee disability (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health). As far back as 1992, a United Nations report called job stress a "world wide epidemic". Control of workplace stress is leadership accountability. Good leaders who are familiar with the symptoms of stress can manage situations to create more pleasing workplaces and to improve both efficiency and the bottom line. Corporate women who have served in all conditions distinguish stress when they monitor symptoms such as:

Nervousness

Indecisiveness

Petulance

Complaining

Forgetfulness

Loss of self confidence

Sleeplessness

Physical tiredness

WORKING WOMEN:

This is the fresh generation of women, who needs to chase their dream career. But this life is not a couch of roses for everyone. Waken up at sharp 6 in the morning after retiring to bed late at night, crackling up an delicious breakfast for each one while getting the children all dress up for school, taking care of the sundry house needs that require her consideration that's the average working woman's home schedule for all. Things are not easy for her on the work frontage either. The collective-roles that women are have to play these days, bring about energy leak both at the bodily as well as mental level.

II. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The study on the workplace stress among women is conducted with the following objectives:

To determine the major causes of workplace stress.

To find the steps to reduce work place stress among women.

To find the measures to reduce workplace stress.

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

The questionnaires were filled by 30 women employees working in the three major Banks of Bhopal i.e. Axis Bank, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank. So the scope of sample findings was less. The questionnaire was filled by 30 women employees of different designations. So the point of view of employees differs as per their designations. The sources utilized in the research are extracted from different current article like from online services, the Internet, and public libraries. The research describes the factors causing stress in the workplace and its impact on women. An effective method of coping with stress is given, but limited to ones examined in the primary and secondary resources.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Women and Workplace Stress:  

WOMEN ACCOUNTABILITYStress at work, the stress of lifting up children, the stresses that come with aging parents, any of these situations could provide a moderately high amount of stress. When women are faced with collective roles, all of which carry serious demands, they face stages of stress that are high enough to add to health trouble, missed work, and a diminished capacity to take on more.

ACCOUNTABILITY AT OFFICE

ACCOUNTABILITY AT HOME

A woman working in an environment with little elasticity or choice would be a greater risk of distress than a climate of no-voice. Interestingly, women's stress issues do not vary significantly. Women are multi-talented by nature and enclose tasks within tasks. Work, family and home are not separate and the issues around balance surmount in spite of working for yourself or someone else. The new study from University of Melbourne has publicized that almost 1 in every 5 Victorians working women undergo depression that can be attributed to job stress and more than one in eight or 13 per cent of the working men with depression have trouble due to job stress.

The literature on work-related stress has made known many different courses of job related stressors and linked them to such matters as job pleasure and worker yield (Beehr & Bhaget, 1985). One of the major causes of workplace stress is whether the person is satisfied with the job or not. Many researchers found that job related stress issues are related to role ambiguity, role conflict, employee performance and satisfaction, over work load, need for achievement and organizational effectiveness. In 1976 Research conducted in the financial services sector recognized that stress can also increase the probability of errors and arguments as workers cut corners to achieve targets - 81% believe anger in the workplace has negative effect on morale, 74% are less productive when in a bad mood, and 15% work slower (in fear of making a mistake) when their boss is angry. Fear of violence is often on the minds of individuals who handle cash on a regular basis, and can be a major cause of mental and physical distress (Violence and stress in financial services, 2003).

A survey of 1,299 employees from 37 organizations identified ten factors as the more important contributors to employee stress. These were Employees not being free to talk with one another, Personal conflicts on the job, Employees not being given control over their work, inadequate staffing or budget, Management and employees not talking openly, Management perceived as being unsupportive, Below average sick and vacation benefit, Reduction in employees benefit, Lack of recognition or reward for doing a good job.

In one more research "Managing Stress at Work" by Kate Jenkins conducted in 2001 drew number of factors which add to stress in work places, which are people are working longer hours, taking shorter or no breaks, with increase growth in IT and globalization, decrease in spare time and less sleep and there are more time and travel pressures. (Jenkins, 2001) .Work stress sometimes affects organization by:

Increased rate of absenteeism.

Decreasing rate of dedication to work.

Increasing rate of employees return.

Increasing rate of grievances from clients and customers.

Increasing rate of insecure working exercise.

Negatively affecting staff recruitment.

With the rapid progression of technology, the rate of work load has increased and thus the stress among working women. There is partially the fear from being retrenched in bad times, leading to better job uncertainty on the part of those who stay. Unquestionably, work-related stress is one of the most frequently quoted stressors faced by persons all over the world. While some stress is good for inspiration and growing competence, stress after a limit can result in depressing crash such as reduced efficiency and effectiveness. Most of the people are feeling secluded and upset at work, and this has resulted to better work-related stress. Consulting experts and professionals are being consulted on ways to raise link and inspiration of their employees. Few companies arrange parties and make their workforce feel appreciated at work. These are method to encourage employees and assist them to sense protected at their jobs, interpret into greater yield. On the other hand, not all companies have such method in place.

Figure 2 : Model Of Causes And Consequences Of Work-Related Stress

Source: Adapted from Kompier and Marcelissen, 1990

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

III. Research Design: This study includes exploratory research on the concerned areas relating to working women and the stress levels that are constantly being felt by them at their workplace. I have tried to highlight the situation in context of such problem and tried to suggest some of them for correcting the situation.

IV. Data Collection: primary Data was collected with the help of self-administered questionnaire which includes 15 items. Secondary data was gathered from newspapers, magazines and online sources such as websites. Some analytical graphs were also collected to support the research objectives.

VI. Sample Size: I have taken the sample of 30 women employees from three different private banks of Bhopal named ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, AXIS Bank.

DISCUSSION & FINDINGS:

The Major Causes of Work Place Stress among women are:

In the Modern times stresses can take the form of financial needs, or emotional disturbance. Contest at work and an increased workload are also the root cause of greater levels of stress. The stress can be identified by the symptoms as mental symptoms usually experienced include sleeplessness, headaches and an incapability to focus. Physical symptoms like heart palpitations, breathlessness, excessive sweating and stomach-aches. What are the causes of stress? There are many different causes of stress which are also known as stressors, like Common lifestyle stressors include performance, intimidation, and demise stressors. Performance stressors are generated when a person is placed in a state where she feels a need to shine. This could be during performance evaluation, lunch with the boss, or delivering a speech. Threat stressors occur usually when the present situation poses a risky threat, such as a monetary recession, or from a misfortune. Last but not least, demise stressors take place when there is a sense of loss such as the loss of a loved one, or any other loss. Therefore, there are a variety of stressors, and even more diverse methods and measures of dealing with stress and turning it to our own advantages. The causes which are faced mostly by working women at their workplace in my study at Bank are:

Extended working hours

Harder to balance work and home demands

Under utilization of skills

Unreasonable demands for performance

Underpaid job

Multiple tasks at work

Lack of interpersonal communication between the employer and the women employees

Lack of interpersonal relationship among the women employees

The fear of losing one's job

Less time to spend with the family

Treated inferiorly to your male colleagues

Experience sexually harassing jokes from your boss and male colleagues.

Very few of the women employees feel that they are suffering from depression while most of the women employees feel that that they are free from the depression. Most of the women employees worry about their colleague's opinion about them while few of the women employees are not concerned with the opinion about their colleague. Most of the women employees of the bank discuss their problem and share their feelings with their spouse or friends or others while very few of the women employees are not concerned with it. Most of the women employees work for more than 8 hours which is the starting point of the stress while few of the women employees don't work for more than 8 hours. Nearly half of the women employee spent regular time on entertainment which helps them to remain stress free while 3/4th of the women employees don't do that. Nearly half of the women employees find their social life to be balanced while 40 % of the women employees don't have their social life balanced. Very few of the women employees remain silent. Most of the women employees fear the quality of performance which they give while 15 % of the women employees don't fear the quality of their work. 70 % of the women employees try to find the solution of their stress while 30% of them do not find any solution. 45% of the women employees try yoga and other ayurvedic techniques to reduce their stress while 55 % of the women employees use other techniques to reduce stress like resorting to hobbies, vacation. Taking a look on the data of all the three banks, it is seen that the women employees working in AXIS bank are found less stressed out compared to other banks. This can be because it's a brand name and believe in teamwork as their core values.

Steps To Reduce Work Place Stress In Women:

 Stress management is the need of the hour. Though hard we try to go ahead of a stress situation, life appears to discover new behaviour of stressing us out and resulting with nervousness attacks. Furthermore, be it our nervousness, mind-body tiredness or our erring outlooks, we tend to ignore causes of stress and the circumstances generated by those. In such disconcerting instants we often do not recall that stressors, if not avoidable, are reasonably manageable and treatable.

Unfortunately, today, women don't get relaxing and soothing situations without asking. To be stress-free one has to struggle to make such situations.

The suggestions range from individually focused actions to broad based organizational policy changes. These include the following:

"Just smile away and forget everything" An employee of HDFC Bank

"Talking to family members ,loved ones, Watching TV or listening good music, Going for a walk or long drive" An employee of HDFC Bank

"Working in environment benefits, lot of optimistic approach. Optimistic approach is only that reduces stress and achieves victory." An employee of AXIS Bank.

"Get adjusted with others, Find and spend time for prayer, Study novels, All are the child of the supreme GOD" An employee of AXIS Bank

"We should do such actions from which we get pleasure and also make others pleased. Pass your time with your close friends and relatives." An employee of ICICI Bank.

Provide day care and substitute work preparation as resources for preventing stress.

Provide more job elasticity for women to better manage work home clashes.

Deal with Finances and Treat physically in spa, massage centres in weekends.

Get Help by a mate or servant so that time could be spent with family.

Cook if you like it and serve by your hand to family members.

Dropping / Picking up Kids from School in your leave days and then go for a little walk.

When stressed at work for deadlines or otherwise, give priority to your "me" time first and maintaining home comes second.

CONCLUSION:

In recent years majority of the women discovered that their stress was essentially due to their idleness and also they were happy with fewer responsibilities. Lack of loving behavior from their colleagues, scolding from boss, more working hours, under utilization of skill sets was reported as cause of stress always by maximum percentage of the women. Higher percentage of the respondent experienced stress always because of lack of their involvement in decision making in their organization that reduced their responsibilities on their shoulder and the participatory model followed in their organizational set up enhanced their responsibilities to the point of exhaustion. As women, they need to admit what they can do for themselves to reduce stress. They need to remember that old saying, if you don't look after yourself, no one else will. Honour yourself!

SCOPE FOR FUTURE WORK

I know that the current level of research may not reveal the exact parameters of stress regarding the causes and suggestions. Therefore, exhaustive research shall be carried out in future research work in this particular field.