Identification and Risk Profiling of Major Stressors in the Indian IT Sector

Abstract

Workplace stress has always been considered as a potential source of job dissatisfaction and many psychosomatic disorders in employees the world over. The IT sector has emerged as a major contributor to work stress in India over the last 2 decades. Still there is lack of sector-specific studies, and most of the existing studies treat work stress as an umbrella term. Against this background, the objective of this article is twofold: one, to identify different types of stressors, and the other, to rate them according to their severity. The outcome should be helpful in devising proper mitigation strategies. On the basis of findings from the two field studies, the article identifies major stressors among junior level Indian IT professionals (n₁ = 38), and then furnishes a risk profile of these stressors on the basis of their frequency and impact (n₂ = 234). At the end, 21 stressors are identified in the given context, and their ‘riskiness’ is presented in a descending order in terms of risk scores. Implications of findings are discussed at the end. All the stressors were assigned a score in terms of their frequency, impact and risk. At the end, techno-stress emerged as the most serious stressor in both in terms of its frequency of occurrence and impact. The results serve as a guide to the management in the IT firms in addressing the prevalent high levels of stress at workplace. The risk scores will help them in allocating resources and, setting and prioritizing their HR strategies to this end. Amid few studies conducted in the context of stress in the Indian IT sector, this article offers useful and practical insights while deploying a novel approach of risk profiling.