Abstract
Employee involvement and work stress are significant factors that determine the productivity of employees and performance of organisations. Fundamentally, employee involvement improves productivity and performance while work stress decreases the productivity of employees. The core objective of the study was to establish the nature and the extent of the relationship between employee involvement and work stress. In the methodology, the study conducted an online survey among employees (N = 63) from various organisations and collected data on demographics, employee involvement, and work stress. Descriptive statistics, analysis of variance, correlation, and simple regression were used to analyse data and make an inference. The findings showed that employee involvement and work stress does not vary according to demographic attributes of employees (p > 0.05). Moreover, the findings show that employee involvement and work stress do not have a statistically significant negative relationship (p> 0.05). The regression analysis indicates that employee involvement is not a statistically significant predictor of work stress among employees (p > 0.05). Thus, the findings imply that employee involvement does not only have a negative relationship with work stress but also is a statistically insignificant predictor.
Introduction
Background
With the advancement of management strategies, diverse organisations have adopted employee involvement as one of the strategies of improving productivity and performance of employees. Organisations that keep abreast with modern management strategies have adopted employee involvement in the management of employees as critical human resources. Phipps, Prieto, and Ndinguri (2013) explain that organisations adopt and implement employee involvement by imparting knowledge, sharing information, empowering employees, and rewarding performers in an organisation with a view to improving employee productivity and organisational performance. Fundamentally, employee involvement promotes engagement of employees in the workplace and optimises their productivity. Iqbal, Khan, and Iqbal (2012) assert that employee involvement is beneficial for it energises and motivates employees to perform assigned tasks and assignments effectively. Thus, employee involvement is a beneficial management strategy used to improve the productivity of employees and overall performance of organisations.
Despite the fact that employee involvement has significant benefits to employees and organisations, work stress is one of the established factors that hinder employees and organisations from attaining optimal productivity and performance. Work stress emanates from factors in the work environment, which interact with personal factors in the workplace resulting in reduced productivity and performance (Kaufman 2013). Factors such as unclear roles, workplace victimisation, job insecurity, exposure to traumatic events, and social issues are some of the factors that contribute to work stress. Besides, the demand that employee involvement puts on employees is a factor that contributes to work stress because it determines the workload. Iqbal, Khan, and Iqbal (2012) argue that work stress has negative effects on employees for it has psychological and physical effects. Stressed employees normally lose interest in their jobs resulting in absenteeism, laziness, sickness, and high turnover rate. Fundamentally, employee involvement causes burnout and hinders an effective performance of employees.
Statement of the Problem
Employees in diverse working environments experience work stress in the course of their work. Work stress is one of the major issues that hinder employees from performing their duties optimally and prevents organisations from attaining their desired objectives. Kaufman (2013) states that some causes of work stress are demanding tasks, tight deadlines, heavy workload, dynamic roles, job insecurity, long working hours, and a boring working environment. According to Ali et al. (2014), work stress is an incessant problem in the workplace because it causes depression, deteriorates health, and negative attitude towards work resulting in work conflicts and poor performance among employees. In their study, Iqbal, Khan, and Iqbal (2012) found out that there is a statistically significant relationship between employee involvement and work stress. These findings imply that employee involvement is a factor that mediates the occurrence of work stress in the workplace. Although management aims to optimise human resources in their respective organisations through employee involvement, work stress hinders optimisation for it reduces productivity and efficiency of employees.
Aim and Objectives
Aim
The aim of the study is to determine the relationship between employee involvement and work stress among employees in various organisations.
Objectives
- To determine if work stress and employee involvement vary according to demographic attributes of employees.
- To determine the correlation between the employee involvement and work stress among employees.
- To determine the extent in which employee involvement explains the variation in work stress among employees.
Research Question
- What is the difference in work stress and employee involvement among employees with various demographic attributes?
- What is the correlation between employee involvement and work stress among employees in various organisations?
- What is the extent in which employee involvement explains the variation in work stress among employees in various organisations?
Hypotheses
First Hypothesis
- There is no statistically significant difference in work stress and employee involvement among employees with various demographic attributes.
- There is a statistically significant difference in work stress and employee involvement among employees with various demographic attributes.
Second Hypothesis
- Employee involvement and work stress have no statistically significant correlation among employees.
- Employee involvement and work stress have a statistically significant correlation among employees.
Third Hypothesis
- Employee involvement is not a statistically significant predictor of work stress among employees.
- Employee involvement is a statistically significant predictor of work stress among employees.
Justification of the Study
Work stress is a considerable problem faced by numerous organisations. Despite the fact that organisations struggle to manage and reduce work stress, management strategies adopted and implemented contribute to the occurrence of stress in workplaces. For instance, most organisations have adopted and implemented the strategy of employee involvement with the objective of improving the productivity of employees and the performance of organisations. Iqbal, Khan, and Iqbal explain that various factors of employee involvement relate to work stress. The understanding of the relationship between employee involvement and work stress is important for it enables organisations to use employee involvement in the management of work stress. Ali et al. (2014) assert that heavy workload, insufficient reward, and role conflict among engaged employees contribute to work stress. In this view, the study is significant for it aims to highlight the relationship between employee involvement and work stress for managers to leverage them with a view of eliminating stress and optimising productivity and performance among employees.
Scope of the Study
The study examined the relationship between employee involvement and work stress. The examination of the two variables means that the study did not consider the existence of confounding variables, which mediate the relationship between these variables. Moreover, the study sampled employees in various organisations. In this view, the study focused on employees who come from diverse organisations with unique experiences and roles. The diversity of the employees implies that the findings are not applicable to a specific organisation, but they reflect the existence of diverse levels of employee involvement and work stress.
Literature Review
Employee Involvement
Employee involvement is one of the significant factors that determine the successfulness of organisations in managing their employees and achieving their goals. Essentially, employee involvement is a management concept aimed at optimising employees as critical resources in an organisation. Over centuries, organisations have devised numerous concepts and philosophies aimed at optimising the performance and productivity of employees in the workplace. Employee involvement optimises productivity, commitment, creativity, and motivation of employees in various positions within an organisation. In their study, Phipps, Prieto, and Ndinguri (2013) established that there is a positive relationship between employee involvement and organisational performance. Moreover, employee involvement recognises employees as critical assets in an organisation, and thus, empowers them to participate effectively in making-decisions and performing diverse tasks and activities in their realm of work. According to Phipps, Prieto, and Ndinguri (2013), knowledge, information, power, and rewards are key elements of employee involvement in an organisation for they determine performance and productivity of employees. As a management concept, employee involvement is critical in modern organisations where there is optimisation of employee productivity.
Work Stress
Work stress is one of the major factors that reduce the productivity of employees and performance of organisations. Work stress occurs when the demands of the workplace exceed the abilities and resources of employees resulting in emotional and physical harm (Iqbal, Khan & Iqbal 2012). Stressed employees perform their duties dismally for they lose vigour and impetus, which is essential for optimal performance in the workplace. Ali et al. (2014) explain that work stress is an unremitting predicament that causes depression, deteriorates health, causes negative attitude towards work, and discourages employees. Work stress can occur in the workplace depending on the nature of work and the working environment. Ali et al. (2014) identify role conflict, physical environment, role ambiguity, inadequate monetary reward, and work relationship as some of the common factors that contribute to work stress. Therefore, work stress is a significant factor that influences the productivity of employees and performance of organisations.
Empirical Review
As work stress is a major issue in the workplace that hinders an effective performance of employees and organisations, human resource managers have been grappling to understand the causes and deriving relationship with some factors in the workplace. In their study to establish the influence of work stress on employee engagement, Iqbal, Khan, and Iqbal (2012) revealed that work stress has a statistically significant negative relationship with dedication, vigour, and absorption, which are core elements of employee involvement. The findings imply that work stress affects the performance of employees in the workplace for it reduces dedication, vigour, and absorption. In another study, Mansour and Elmorsey (2016) found out that occupation stress not only reduces performance but also increases turnover rates of employees in workplaces. In this view, these findings recommend the reduction of work stress to optimise the performance of employees.
As numerous stressors exist, which vary from one organisation to another depending on the nature of jobs and the working environment, different researchers have established diverse stressors. In a survey undertaken among employees in the Palestinian construction industry, Alkilani (2015) found out that physical stress, job burnout, and behavioural stress are some of the stressors that contribute to the occurrence of organisational stress in the construction industry. Trivellas, Reklitis, and Platis (2013) affirm that workload, role conflict, career development, information access, and interpersonal relationships are factors that determine the occurrence of work stress in various organisations. These findings suggest that minimisation of these stressors in the construction industry would improve the performance of employees.
Employee involvement is a management philosophy, which has numerous benefits to employees and organisations. A survey performed to determine the benefits of employee involvement shows that it improves satisfaction, guarantees freedom of expression, protects rights, promotes understanding, and eases resolution of conflicts (Cheng 2014). These findings imply that management can use employee involvement as a strategy for improving the wellbeing of employees in the workplace. A study done to verify the influence of employee involvement on job performance indicated that aspects of employee involvement such as knowledge, information, power, and rewards enhance the productivity of employees and boost organisational performance (Phipps, Prieto & Ndinguri 2013). Adham (2014) adds that employee involvement improves commitment and satisfaction among employees. Moreover, Zubair et al. (2015) established that employee involvement in the decision-making process in an organisation promotes creativity among employees. Therefore, these findings mean that organisations need to employ employee involvement as a strategy for improving the productivity of employees.
As an important management strategy, employee involvement is subject to numerous forces in the workplace. In the analysis of factors that influence employee involvement, Marchington (2015) identified commitment of employees, independent voice, regularity of job, meaningfulness of operations, and organisational culture as prime factors that mediate employee involvement. Managers have the power to leverage these factors and determine the extent of employee involvement in an organisation.
Conceptual Framework
Figure SEQ Figure * ARABIC 1: Conceptual framework
Methodology
Research Design
The study employed the quantitative approach in the collection and analysis of data. Creswell (2013) argues that quantitative approach offers robust research design for it allows effective and accurate measurement of variables. The survey is a versatile and multifaceted research design as it permits researchers to design questions and collect diverse forms of information from respondents through online survey (Andres 2012). Hence, the study employed the quantitative approach and the survey in determining the relationship between employee involvement and work stress. The study takes employee involvement as an independent variable and work stress as a dependent variable.
Target Population and Sampling
The target population of the study was employees in various organisations. The diversity of employers in terms of demographic data and their job experience provides robust information, which enhances external validity of the data and subsequent findings. In the selection of participants, the study employed convenience sampling method. This method of sampling is advantageous for it is cheap, easy to use, eliminates biases, and allows collection of diverse information (Gravetter & Forzano 2012). To collect adequate data for analysis, the study determined sample size as employees (N = 63) based on the population size of 300, the confidence level of 95%, and the margin error of 11%.
Research Instruments
The study created a questionnaire with three diverse variables that are relevant to the study. The questionnaire comprises three parts, which collect data related to demographics, employee involvement, and work stress. The first part of the questionnaire had questions, which collected demographic information of employees. In the second and the third part of the questionnaire, the study designed a Likert scale. The second part of the questionnaire had 16 Likert items measuring work stress and was adopted from Job Stress Measure created by Sakketou et al. (2014). Based on the Likert statements presented, respondents rated them as 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 to represent stress, slight stress, some stress, small stress, or immense stress respectively. The third part of the questionnaire had 10 Likert items measuring employee involvement and was derived from the works of Chin, You, and Chang (2014), and Zatzick and Iverson (2011). The employee involvement scale measured the degree of involvement using a five-point Likert scale. Based on their perception of causes of work stress, respondents rated Likert statements as 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 to represent very low, low, moderate, high, or very high correspondingly. The questionnaire that the study used is in Appendix A.
Data Collection
The study collected data from the participants through self-administered questionnaire through survey monkey. The collected data were cleaned and entered into the SPSS version 20 for analysis. To allow quantitative analysis of data, the data were coded using respective values and utilised in the performance of descriptive statistics and linear regression analysis. Before analysis, the study determined validity and reliability of scales using exploratory factor analysis and Cronbach’s alpha.
Data Analysis
Descriptive Statistics
Table 1
Frequency Distribution
Table 2
Table 3
Table 4
Table 5
Table 6
Reliability Analyses
Table 7
Table 8
Exploratory Factor Analyses
Table 9
Table 10
ANOVA Tests
Gender
Table 11
Age group
Table 12
Table 13
Marital status
Table 14
Health status
Table 15
Optimism
Table 16
Correlation Analysis
Table 17
Simple Regression Analysis
Table 18
Table 19
Table 20
Findings and Discussion
Demographic Information
The descriptive statistics of demographic attributes show that they are highly variable among 67 employees (Table 1). The frequency distribution (Table 2) of gender indicates that 73% (46) and 27% (17) of employees were males and females respectively. Moreover, the frequency table (Table 3) shows that most employees (30) had the ages of between 36 and 50 years followed by employees (29) with the ages of between 20 and 35 years while the least number of employees (4) had the ages of between 51 and 65 years. However, none of the employees had the ages of below 20 years and above 65 years. Regarding the marital status, the frequency distribution depicts that married employees constituted 82.5% (52), single employees comprised 15.9% (10), and divorced employees composed 1.6% (1) of the total employees as shown in Table 4. In the aspect of health, 77.8% (49) had good health while the remaining 22.2% (14) had fairly good health (Table 5). The frequency distribution (Table 6) shows that most employees (46) were highly optimistic while 16 and 1 were moderately and lowly optimistic correspondingly.
Reliability Analysis
Reliability analyses revealed that Work Stress Scale had Cronbach’s alpha of 0.893 (Table 7) while Employee Involvement Scale had Cronbach’s alpha of 0.519 (Table 8). According to Nguyen (2010), Cronbach’s alpha indicates the internal consistency of Likert items measuring a given construct. In this case, the Work Stress Scale had a good internal consistency whereas Employee Involvement Scale had a poor internal consistency.
Exploratory Factor Analysis
The analysis of Work Stress Scale showed that four factors, namely, 1, 2, 3, and 4, are significant for they have eigenvalues greater than one and account for 39.7%, 12.1%, 10.2%, and 6.6% of the variance respectively (Table 9). Additionally, the analysis of Employee Involvement Scale indicated that factor 1, 2, and 3 are significant because they have eigenvalues greater than one and explain 37.9%, 15.1%, and 12.4% of the variance respectively (Table 10). The eigenvalue is a parameter that provides a threshold for differentiating significant factors and insignificant factors in a Likert scale (Hatcher & O’rourke 2013). Hence, exploratory factor analyses showed that both Work Stress Scale and Employee Involvement Scale are valid scales.
ANOVA Analysis
ANOVA tests reveal that there are no statistically significant differences in means of both work stress and employee involvement among employees based on gender, age group, marital status, health status, and optimism (p > 0.05). The tests fail to reject the null hypothesis that there is no statistically significant difference in work stress and employee involvement among employees with various demographic attributes. These findings are consistent with earlier studies, which showed that demographic attributes do not have a significant influence on employee involvement and work stress (Check & Okwo 2012; Konya, Matic & Pavlovic 2016). The failure to reject the null hypothesis means that demographic variables do not confound the relationship between employee involvement and work stress.
Correlation Analysis
Correlation analysis shows that work stress and employee involvement have a negative relationship. According to Field (2012), a correlation value of between 0.1 and 0.3 indicates the existence of a very weak relationship between variables. In this case, the correlation value of -0.188 shows that it is a very weak negative relationship between work stress and employee involvement. These findings are consistent with the findings of Iqbal, Khan, and Iqbal (2012), which show that there is a negative relationship between employee involvement and work stress, but a very weak correlation and an insignificant relationship offer a contrast. The significance value fails to reject the null hypothesis that employee involvement and work stress have no statistically significant correlation among employees (r = 0.188, p = 0.140). Thus, the correlation test implies that statistical evidence does not support the existence of a significant relationship between work stress and employee involvement.
Simple Regression Analysis
Simple regression analysis confirms that there is a very weak relationship between work stress and employee involvement (R = 0.188). Moreover, the regression model (Table 22) indicates that employee involvement accounts for 3.5% (R2 = 0.035) of the variation in work stress among employees. However, the ANOVA table (Table 22) shows that the regression model is not statistically significant model in predicting the relationship between employee involvement and work stress (p = 0.140). Although these findings contrast that of Iqbal, Khan, and Iqbal (2012), they confirm that employee involvement mediates work stress (Alkilani 2015; Trivellas, Reklitis & Platis 2013; Zatzick & Iverson 2011). Thus, the fact that employee involvement accounts for a little variation in work stress indicates that other confounding variables account for the significant part of the variation.
The coefficients’ table (Table 23) provides coefficients of the regression equation and the significance of the predictor. The regression equation is that:-
Work Stress = -0.283(Employee Involvement) + 55.785
The regression equation implies that a unit increase in employee involvement results in 0.283 decreases in units of work stress among employees when other predictors or confounding variables are constant. The constant is statistically significant (t = 7.526, p = 0.000) while employee involvement is not a statistically significant predictor of work stress (t = -1.794, p = 0.140). The regression analysis fails to reject the null hypothesis that employee involvement is not a statistically significant predictor of work stress among employees.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The findings of the study provide insightful information about the relationship between employee involvement and work stress. The first finding is that there is no statistically significant difference in work stress and employee involvement among employees with various demographic attributes. The second finding is that employee involvement and work stress have no statistically significant correlation among employees. The third finding is that employee involvement is not a statistically significant predictor of work stress among employees.
As the study has some limitation regarding the external validity and internal validity, it provides some recommendations. To enhance external validity, the study recommends recruitment of employees from a specific industry since employee involvement and work stress varies from one industry to another. To boost internal validity, the study recommends the use of established scales or validated scales to collect consistent and valid data.
Reference List
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Ali, W, Raheem, A, Nawaz, A & Imamuddin, K 2014, ‘Impact of stress on job performance: An empirical study of the employees of private sector universities of Karachi Pakistan’, Research Journal of Management Sciences, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 14-17.
Alkilani, A 2015, ‘Job stress, job burnout and safety performance in the Palestinian construction industry’, Journal of Financial Management of Property and Construction, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 170-187.
Andres, L 2012, Designing and doing survey research, SAGE, London.
Check, R & Okwo, F 2012, ‘Influence of demographic factors on stress perceptions of teachers of public secondary schools in Cameroon’, Social and Behavioural Sciences, no. 47, vol. 1, pp. 439-443.
Cheng, Z 2014, ‘The effects of employee involvement and participation on subjective wellbeing: evidence from urban China’, Social Indicators Research, vol. 118, no. 1, pp. 457-483.
Chin, H, You, S & Chang, J 2014, ‘Comparison of role conflict, self-efficacy, job satisfaction, and job involvement between nutrition teachers and dieticians at school food service in Incheon Metropolitan City’, Korean Journal of Nutrition, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 64-74.
Creswell, W 2013, Research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches, SAGE, Thousand Oaks.
Field, A 2012, Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS statistics, SAGE Publication, London.
Gravetter, J & Forzano, B 2012, Research methods for the behavioral sciences, Wadsworth Cengage Learning, Belmont.
Hatcher, L & O’rourke, N 2013, A Step-by-step approach to using SAS for factor analysis and structural equation modeling, SAS Institute, Cary.
Iqbal, T, Khan, K & Iqbal, N 2012, ‘Job stress & employee engagement’, European Journal of Social Sciences, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 109-118.
Kaufman, B 2013, ‘Keeping the high commitment model in the air during turbulent times: Employee involvement at Delta Airlines’, Industrial Relations, vol. 52, no.1, pp. 343-377.
Konya, V, Matic, D & Pavlovic, J 2016, ‘The influence of demographics, job characteristics and characteristics of organisations on employee commitment’, Acta Polytechnica Hungarica, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 119-138.
Mansour, R & Elmorsey, R 2016, ‘Occupational stress: Measuring its impact on employee performance and turnover’, European Journal of Business and Management, vol. 8, no. 21, pp. 12-21.
Marchington, M 2015, ‘Analysing the forces shaping employee involvement and participation (EIP) at organisation level in liberal market economies (LMEs)’, Human Resource Management Journal, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 1-18.
Nguyen, D 2010, Cronbach’s alpha in reliability testing, Cengage Learning, New York.
Phipps, S, Prieto, L & Ndinguri, E 2013, ‘Understanding the impact of employee involvement on organisational productivity: The moderating role of organisational commitment’, Journal of Organisational Culture, Communications, and Conflict, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 107-120.
Sakketou, A, Galanakis, M, Varvogli, L, Chrousos, G & Darviri, C 2014,‘Validation of the Greek version of the “Job stress Measure”’, Psychology, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 1527-1535.
Trivellas, P, Reklitis, P & Platis, C 2013, ‘The effect of job related stress on employees’ satisfaction: A survey in health care’, Social and Behavioural Sciences, vol. 73, no. 1, pp. 718-726.
Zatzick, C & Iverson, R 2011, ‘Putting employee involvement in the context: A cross-level model examining job satisfaction and absenteeism in high-involvement work systems’, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, vol. 22, no. 17, pp. 3462-3476.
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Appendices
Appendix A: Questionnaire
Section A: Demographic Data
Please answer each of the following questions by ticking (√) where applicable to you.
- What is your gender?
- Male
- Female
- What is your age group?
- Under 20 years
- Between 20 and 35 years
- Between 36 and 50 years
- Between 51 and 65 years
- Over 65 years
- What is your marital status?
- Single
- Married
- Divorced
- What is your health status?
- Good
- Fairly good
- Fairly bad
- Bad
- What is your level of optimisms?
- High
- Moderate
- Low
Section B: Measurement of Work Stress
Please rate the level of work stress on a five-point Likert scale (1-5) based on the degree caused by each of the 16 Likert items shown in the table below. The values 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 show no stress, slight stress, some stress, small stress, and immense stress respectively.
Section C: Employee Involvement
Kindly indicate the level of involvement in the workplace using a five-point Likert scale in the following table. The values of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 represent very low, low, moderate, high, and very high correspondingly.