Occupational Stress Among Middle-Aged Professionals in India

BACKGROUND: Professional world nowadays is very competitive, and surviving the cutthroat competition while sustaining work-related stress and pressure is an important task for employees.

Professionals are required to meet daily and monthly objectives and may encounter work-related stressors.

PURPOSE: The study aims to explore occupational stress among middle-aged professionals in the age range of 45–60 years from the marketing, banking, and teaching sectors.

METHODS: A total sample of 180 consented middle-aged professionals in the age range of 45–60 years from the banking, teaching, and marketing sectors were included in the study using a purposive and snowball sampling technique.

Professionals having serious medical or psychiatric conditions and undergoing treatment for the same were excluded.

The Occupational Stress Index was administered to assess different types of occupational stressors.

The statistical analysis was done using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 20 software.

A descriptive analysis and a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to get meaningful results.

RESULTS: Results revealed that 40% of the middle-aged professionals reported experiencing minimal levels of occupational stress, followed by 32.2% experiencing moderate levels and 27.8% experiencing high levels of occupational stress.

Additionally, it was found that a significantly higher percentage (91.6%) of banking professionals reported low levels of occupational stress compared to their counterparts.

Eighty percent of marketing professionals reported experiencing high levels of occupational stress, whereas a majority (73.3%) of teaching professionals reported moderate levels of occupational stress.

CONCLUSION: Occupational stress with different severity levels is found to be common among middle-aged professionals, which is a risk factor to develop mental health problems and affects well-being.

Large-scale primary and secondary interventions are required to manage stress and facilitate professional growth and development in India.