A Study of Organizational Role Stress in NTPC

Name: Puja Kumari (2006 – 2008)

Title: A Study of Organizational Role Stress in NTPC

Summary

The project highlights the problems of employees associated with NTPC, how
they deal with stress and to what an extent does stress affects an
individual’s life. The study undertaken regarding the organizational role
stress is to know about the major dimensions of stress and the problems of
employees at workplace, which the executive’s experience while performing
their roles in the organization.
Today, retention of employees is very challenging. Through this study an
effort has been made to identify the most prominent role stress and also how
well is the satisfaction among the executives in NTPC. An assessment of the
relationship of role stress with age and level of responsibility has been made.

Stress is a prevalent and costly problem in today's workplace. About one-

third of workers report high levels of stress. One-fourth of employees view
their jobs as the number one stressor in their lives. Three-fourths of
employees believe the worker has more on-the-job stress than a generation
ago. Evidence also suggests that stress is the major cause of turnover in
organizations.

Conclusion
There were several interesting observations in the results obtained from the
survey on Role Stress.

1. Alarmingly high levels of stress at level E1.

2. Surprisingly low levels of stress at level E5.

3. Surprisingly RO for execution at level E1 –E4. Especially Level E3 –

alarmingly high.
4. Low levels of RA & REC at levels E5-E7 opposite incase of levels E1-E4.

5. Significantly higher levels of PI experienced by No I would level E1-E4 like

to analyze one at a time.

(i) The direct execution induction happens at level E2A the executives at
level E1 are mostly those who have risen from the supervisory levels over
the years. The transition from level S4 (highest supervisory level) to level E1
involves a sudden shift in the expeditions of the people around where
suddenly they are expected to be more accountable and efficient.

(2) Low levels of stress at level E5: Reasons could be:

(i) low workload

(ii) E1-E4 working level executives – E3 & E4 highly overburdened.

Therefore, on reaching E5 tend to relax. [Promotion at level E4 is
crucial because it’s a transition from the working level towards the
group head category.

(iii) Large numbers in E5 level which causes dilution of work where there
were earlier few (2) executives now there are several (20) executives
taking care of the same responsibilities which were shared by few (2).
Therefore, workload and therefore stress in general is low except for

(iv) Role erosion which is experienced to a near median level because of

the creation of these new roles and redefinition of the old ones. These
executives may feel that the functions they would like to perform are
being done by some other roles.

There are several implications of this finding:

(1) These low levels of stress may be affecting the productivity of the
executives at this level adversely which implicates that they might
require an optimum level of stress for performing most effectively.

This could perhaps be done in either of these ways;

(i) Club E5 with (E1-E4) categories , i.e., the working level executives
where they would have more workload

(ii) Club (E5/ LR) with the group heads categories, i.e., E6 level where
again they would have several added responsibilities which would
again take care of their stress levels.

(iii) Enrich the jobs at level E5 which added responsibilities and higher
workloads.

This condition also has a very positive implication for the management
where they can utilize the time with level E5 executives for training for
higher levels. Since a large number of them would be reaching higher levels
and heading the company eventually.

Therefore, their spare time can be effectively utilized for imparting them
training skills, values, attitudinal etc. to ensure a healthy and a competent as
well as a value-ladder organizational culture in times to come.

(1) High levels of RO for the working level executives, especially level E3
which is alarmingly high. The probable reasons for this is that levels E1-
E4 are actually the working level executives who mostly do all the ground
work. Infact here it is of extreme interest to note the decision of
executives at various levels, instead of the expected paranoid structure,
the structure is more like a rocket, i.e. , a bulk of the executives are at
levels E5 – E6.

(2) This could perhaps be attributed to the fact that E1 recruitment process
started in 1977. Over the period of 13-14 years, most of the executions
who joined during the earlier years (77-80) over the due course ( of
timely promotions) have reached level E5-E6.

Whereas those at levels E1-E4 are chiefly those who have gradually risen
from supervisory levels over the years (Therefore since the past 10 years or
so, the corporate centre has inducted very few freshers).
Resultantly these few E1-E4 are catering to the work of the huge numbers of
E5-E6 (Infact there is a popular joke at CC, that when 2 executives at levels
E1-E4 meet, they ask each other “now many bosses are you taking case
of?--) because of which they are grossly overworked.

(3) Low levels of RA & REC at levels E5 –E7 whereas its high for executives at
levels E1-E4. This was contrary to new hypothesis where I assumed that
the higher level executives would have greater RA & REC as compared to
executives at levels E1-E4 who have relatively structured roles. This too
didn’t hold incase of CC because of the earlier discussed decision of
executions at different levels.

(4) There are fewer E1-E4 executives taking case of the work assigned by
several bosses. Even amongst themselves, they don’t divide the work in
a very organized manner which resultantly leads to RA & REC. Incase of
PI, execution at level E1-E4 experienced significantly higher stress as
compared to those at levels E5-E7.

There could be several reasons for this:

(i) Over the past couple of years, there have been very few direct recruits
or ET introduction at CC due to which most of the executives at levels
E1-E4 are those who have gradually risen from the supervisory levels
over the years. They might experiences this stress because of (I) lack
of formal training (education i.e., qualification wise) required for some
of the tasks.

(ii) Most of them (due to the above stated reason) are mostly in the higher
age bracket (i.e., above 40 years) and might experience mental facility
burnout.

(iii) Perhaps because of high work overload and pressure they might
experience lack of control and hence feel PI.
The above article was extracted from dissertations by the students
of Skyline College. Skyline College is amongst the top MBA and BBA
institutes in Delhi, Gurgaon (NCR)