Effect of Stress on Employees’ Performance in Guaranty Trust Bank: a Qualitative Study

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of stress on employees’ performance in Guaranty Trust Bank, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria with the objective of examining the perception of employees on job stress and investigating the nature and causes of stress among employees, the study was hinged on the Job Demand Control model and Transactional model. The methodological aspect of the study entailed a qualitative study from 10 in-depth interview sessions conducted among the employees of Guaranty Trust Bank. Finding of the study revealed that employees of Guaranty Trust Bank are faced with high level of stress due of their job and the reasons behind this include long working hours, heavy workload, unrealistic deadlines, customer management; findings also revealed that the level of stress have exposure employees to physical, emotional, behavioural and other traumatic experiences such as fatigue, migraine, anger and management has failed in providing stress policies to assist employees in reducing the amount of stress they encounter on the job. Based on these findings, the study concluded that since stress in the banking sector is mostly due to excess work pressure and work-life imbalance, support is necessary by the organisation to encourage taking up roles that help employees balance work and family; this will prevent mental stress and aid employee retention. Therefore, the study recommended that there is a need for the management of Guaranty Trust Bank to formulate coping mechanism and stress management programmes for employees in order to balance their work-life and this will in turn raise the bar of productivity of these employees and bring about organisation advancement.