Work stress among employees of steel import companies in Bangkok

Abstract

Background: Stress is a reaction of the body and mind that responds to any condition or action occurring in daily life. One the one hand, good stress, i.e., when it is not excessive or prolonged, it may serve as a challenge and stimulate the potential for personal growth or selfdevelopment; on the other hand, bad stress can have deleterious health implications, contributing to the onset and progression of a variety of physical illnesses and mental disorders. Thus, it is necessary to minimize and manage the work stress of the employees especially those who are involved in driving the organization.

Objectives: To study work stress and its related factors among employees of steel import companies in Bangkok.

Methods: Data were collected from 370 employees of steel import companies in Bangkok. The questionnaires included:

1) General information;

2) Organizational information; and,

3) Work Stress evaluation. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, unpaired t-test, One way
ANOVA, Pearson’s correlation coefficient and multiple linear regression.

Results: The majority of the participants had work stress in dimension of stress from workload (76.8%), working hard stress (52.2%), work stability (82.2%), hazard at work (54.9%) at moderate level while stress from independent decision (64.6%) and social support (53.6%) were in high level. Regarding the factors associated with work stress were, namely: age, working age, working experience, average income, the policy of work management, relationship with workmates, compensation, welfare, and the success and progress in work. In multivariate regression analysis, the statistically significant factors with stress about hazard at work were marital status ( < 0.01), engineer position ( < 0.01), work overtimes ( = 0.03), income insufficiency ( < 0.01), relationship with workmates ( = 0.02), gender ( < 0.01), and work experience ( = 0.02).

Conclusion: In this study, work stress among employees of steel import companies in Bangkok was found to be of moderate level. Organizational and socio-demographic factors should be considered for reducing stress in order to improve the physical, mental health and also the performance of the employee