ABSTRACT
This study examined jobstress on employees’ productivity in the service industry, in Benin City. A total of 2000 employees from both private and public sector service industries were sampled with two hundred questionnaires with the sole aim of providing answers to the research questions raised in line with the objectives of the study “Do employees of privately owned service industries experience peculiar stressors from publicly owned service industries?What are the implications of job stress on employees’ productivity in the service industry?What are the ways to manage the adverse effects of job stress on employees’ productivity in the service industry?” Both qualitative statistical methods (tables, percentages, averages, and charts) and quantitative statistical methods (analysis of variance, ANOVA; t-test, and Duncan Post Hoc test) were used to evaluate the collected data to ascertain significant variations among the various data groups and to draw inference on the study.
The results obtained showed that Certain (peculiar) job stressors are common to both private and public sectors services industries e.g. Heavy Workload, and Lack of Adequate Working Equipment; Heavy Workload was the mostly experienced stressor by both private and public service industry employees followed by Tight Deadlines, Lack of equipment, and Absence of Holidays; job stressors were almost experienced about the same way in both the private and public service industry sectors although employees of private service industry sectors tend to feel the adverse impact most with a mean of 4.17±0.92 compared to employees of public service industry sectors with a mean of ±SD =4.11± 0.97; and finally, the study results showed that Home and Work Interfacewere the stressors with the highest adverse implications on employees’ productivity in the service industry followed byHealth Threat, Workload Pressure, and Role Ambiguity. This study therefore recommended that management and employees of the service industries should acknowledge that job stressors are inevitable phenomena in the work place; learn best practices on managing job stress, considerable break period within working hours should be given to employees; Recognition of Employee’s Contributions to organizational growth via Awards or bonuses and extra pay should be practiced by management; Regular Medical Check-up packages, Recreational Facilities and Adequate Work Equipment should be duly made available to employees; and finally, further studies on how to ascertain other possible ways of managing the adverse implications of job stress on employees’ productivity in the service industry efficiently should be encouraged.
