THE IMPACT OF SHIFT WORK ON THE LEVEL OF JOB STRESS WITH SPECIFIC REFERENCE TO THE OPERATIONAL LEVEL SHIFT WORKERS

Abstract

The manufacturing organizations in Sri Lankan Free Trade Zones play a key role in the national economy in terms of export revenue, industrial production, and employment in private sector industries in Sri Lanka. But these organizations, operating in a rapid changing environment have not recognized the imperative need to identify psycho social dimensions which tend to hamper the role efficacy of their operational level workers who play a pivotal role in organizational and national level development process. The level of job stress of shift workers has been one such dimension so identified, which according to some studies, appeared to have suffered due to their peculiar role demands. This research is an attempt to find out the potent stressors that are prevalent among operational level shift workers of the manufacturing organizations in free Trade Zones and the study examines the impact of shift work related issues on the level of job stress and  the coping strategies adopted on such relationship. From a population of 68000 shift workers a sample of 486 was selected through stratified sampling method. The researcher adopted the survey method as her research methodology. Three structured questionnaires have been used as a main method of collecting the data. Nine manufacturing organizations in Biyagama Free Trade Zone were selected as the research site.  The moderated stepwise multi regression analysis was made to find out the composite relationship between the dependent variable and the set of independent variables, and the relative contribution of independent variables. The findings revealed that as per H1, shift work related issues dominate the stress profile of the sample. Two other findings were significant; firstly, it was found that 73% of the sample was ranked “highly stressed”. Secondly the stress dimensions that ranked second and third are Domestic problems and Social relationship problems respectively. It is a situation where shift workers experience problems in coping with domestic problems and social relationship problems as well as shift work. In the light of the findings in respect of H2, the coping strategies appear to have served as a moderator in mitigating the effect of stress. The findings underly the imperative need to undertake specific stress management programs for shift workers.

Keywords: Coping Strategies, Domestic Problems, Job Stress, Shift Work, Social Relationships Problems

For full paper: fmscresearch@sjp.ac.lk