How does occupational stress affect individuals employed in textiles? An exploratory study from Pakistan

Abstract

Occupational stress among the employees has become a major concern for the organizations without exemption for the textile and clothing industry, a major manufacturing industry of the developing countries. In Pakistan, it contributes 8.5% to the GDP and is a source of employment for 30% of the workforce. This research aims at exploring the effects of job stress amongst the individuals employed in textiles. For the purpose, data was collected from 1212 textile industry employees. Deployment of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on the information collected resulted four stress impact factors, namely psychological, behavioural, performance and effectiveness, and physical. The factors described an overall accumulative variance of 60.87%, with psychological as the most significant, explaining 40% of the total. Results of this work disclose that how Occupational Stress affect the employees of textile and clothing industry. There is a need to understand the complexity of stress phenomenon so that the stress management intervention strategies could be designed and implemented accordingly. Findings of this research may be helpful in unfolding the complexity of stress phenomenon and these can be used as a guideline for the design and promotion of more acceptable and viable approaches or strategies for real-time benefits realization at individual and organizational level in terms of higher job satisfaction, motivation and productivity.