Occupational stress and employee performance: the case of cape coast technical university

Abstract

The study examined the effect of occupational stress on the performance of academic professionals at the Cape Coast Technical University within the Central Region of Ghana. Based on the conservation of resource (COR) theory, the study also assessed the sources of occupational stress and determinants of academic professional’s performance. The study adopted the quantitative approach and explanatory research design. Using the Krejcie and Morgan (1970) sample size determination table, the study randomly sampled 113 members from the population size of 260 academic staff of the technical university. Structured questionnaires were used to obtain data from the respondents and processed using the IBM SPSS Statistics version 24. Using the mean, standard deviation scores and regression analysis, the study found task performance as the major and highest determinant of employee performance. Also, occupational stress was found to have a significant negative relationship with employee performance at the technical university. It was concluded that, occupational stress is a key contributor of poor performance among the academic staff of the technical university. The study recommended that management should adopt innovative strategies geared towards reducing occupational stress at the institution in order to enhance employee performance levels