Impact of Occupational Stress on Job Performance: A Heuristic Study of the School Teachers in India

This study prioritises in recognising the factors which provoke stress amongst school teachers and understanding how this stress affects their job performance and productivity. In other words, this study aims to find out the sources of stress and whether this stress has a positive or negative impact on the expected job performance of school teachers


Introduction
In recent years, occupational stress has proved to be the leading phenomenon pertaining to increasing mental and physical health deterioration among professionals, office workers and labourers. Occupational stress refers to the continuous or progressive stress faced by an employee due to the conditions prevalent in the workplace. Neoteric studies show that the profession of teaching has emerged to be the occupation having the highest rates of employees experiencing work-related stress. Prolonged exposure to stress, however, adversely affects the health of the employees with frequent cases of professional burnout. As a profession, teaching is not limited to imparting knowledge to students; rather it is a holistic approach towards developing a child's personality, intrinsic values and morals. It involves a comprehensive effort towards preparing individuals to become future citizens of a country. Thereby, people involved in such a humanitarian occupation suffer from higher levels of stress than other individuals.
One of the leading education systems in the world where teaching professionals experience high occupational stress levels is namely -The Indian Education System. In recent decades, owing to intensive development and rapid proliferation, the Indian education system has been compelled to strive towards competency in the generation of accomplished and cultured individuals. Increasing demand for Indians in this new era of privatisation and globalisation has changed the perspective of the education system and the government. Extensive effort is consistently being pooled into the preparation of individuals of sound and cultivated minds. However, the victims in this fiasco have turned out to be the school teachers. Experts and industry professionals have shown an increasing source of concern for the teachers that are being used to put into effect diligently formulated educational reforms. There is no degree of precaution considered for the well-being of these teachers that put in their time and effort for the betterment of the students. This has negatively impacted the mental, physical and emotional health of the teachers. However, rather than taking proper measures to counteract the effects of stress, they are being held accountable for every single botched-up situation.
Prioritising the students to a much greater extent than teachers has led to an unnecessary and redundant increase in the expectations of the students regarding the provision of better quality education by the system. In addition to the anticipation, the rapid growth in the population density has increased the number of students under every teacher. The unbalanced teacher-student ratio with the growing need for a better standard of education is the major triggers that hike up the levels of stress in school teachers. Massive workload, lack of resources, inhumane deadlines, lack of job security, handling difficult students, poor working conditions, stressful working environment, time management and trying to pursue further education are just a few of the other factors that strain the teachers. Educational institutions like schools nowadays are very susceptible to change due to the continuous monitoring of various reforms by the Indian government formulated to protect and safeguard students from unnecessary distress. Therefore, school teachers also need to keep in touch with the changing reforms and curriculum in addition to all the other stress-related factors they already experience.
Contrary to the general belief, however, recently there have been initiatives taken to reduce and manage the stress levels in school employees due to the exceeding rate of employee turnover. The methods which are being undertaken by educational organisations for stress management are -creating a supportive workplace, encouraging mentorship to new teaching professionals, listening to the opinions of the teachers and eliminating toxic positivity. However, implementation of these stress management strategies is timeconsuming as it involves bringing in a change in the generational by laws formulated by the institutions in general and the education system as a whole.
Occupational stress is a psychological condition that affects the majority of job workers including teaching professionals. In the wake of a new age, wherein mental health is not a taboo but rather a curable disease instead. This study, therefore, prioritises in recognising the factors which provoke stress amongst school teachers and understanding how this stress affects their job performance and productivity.

Objectives
The major objectives of this study are as follows: • To analyse the factors that cause stress among school teachers • To study whether these factors have a positive or negative impact on job performance • To judge how teachers at school handle stress and its impact on productivity • To determine whether employees experiencing stress symptoms meet the expected performance standards

Methodology Primary Sources:
• A cross-sectional study was conducted in different government and private schools all across India.
• This study included releasing an exclusive questionnaire using Google Forms to teachers who had previously given consent to be a part of the study.
• This survey consisted of around 23 questions concerned with the factors, levels and ways to handle stress for school employees and anonymity was maintained by not asking them to write their names in the questionnaire. • As of now, around 117 individuals have been contacted out of which a combined total of 104 individuals have participated in the study and 13 individuals did not consent to participate in the study.

Secondary Sources:
• In addition to the primary collection of data through a survey, secondary information was also collected from an extensive evaluation of various research papers and studies published on competent platforms. • Research papers on or after the year 2016 have been considered to prevent excessive research gaps.
• Evaluation and review of prior studies have helped understand the area of research, the proper methods to be utilised towards answering the objectives and how their findings have affected the conclusion of the study. • A total of 15 published research papers have been reviewed from across India for this study.

Both the primary and secondary data have then been further interpreted, analysed and diagrammatically represented to recognise the levels and factors of stress among teachers at various educational institutes by utilisation of charts and graphs.
Primary Data 1. What is your age?
• 21 to 30 years • 31 to 40 years • 41 to 50 years • 51 to 60 years • > 60 years Inference: From the information given, it can be assumed that the majority of the responses are within the age range of 21 to 30 years (26.90%), while the lowest number of responses has been received from the age range of > 60 years (3.80%). In other words, 28 out of the 104 respondents were teaching professionals ranging between the age of 21 to 30 years while only 4 respondents out of the total were greater than 60 years of age. The remaining number of responses i.e. 72 were received from people of age 31 to 40 years, 41 to 50 years and 51 to 60 years.

What is your gender?
• Male • Female • Other Inference: The above information implies that more female school teachers (54.80%) have participated in the study when compared with that other teachers. However, this study does not adhere to a certain type of gender. In other words, this study is all-inclusive when gender is taken into account since it deals with the amount of occupational stress faced by school teachers in India irrespective of gender. Inference: From the information displayed in the chart it can be concluded that school teachers having work experience of around 5 to 15 years (27%) majorly affected the findings of the study. This study, however, does not consider the number of years of work experience of the respondents as a criterion for solving the objectives. The reason for asking this question in the survey was just to classify the respondents into different categories and then study the occupational stress suffered by each category.

What type of school do you teach at? • Government School • Private school • Other
Inference: From the information received in the survey, it was seen that the teachers in private schools (59.60%) who took part in this study were more effective in determining the result. However, this study does not specifically target teachers from either private or government schools; rather it aims to give a holistic overview of the objectives considered in the study.

Do you plan on pursuing further education in the future? • Yes • No • Maybe
Inference: The information in the chart implies that the majority of the respondents were unsure whether they wanted to pursue further education in the future or not (48.10%). Furthermore, it can be implied that the uncertainty that teaching professionals experience while determining their further education plans can be a result of the lack of a supportive workplace environment.

How often do you suffer from work-related stress?
• Very rarely • Rarely • Frequently • Very frequently • Never Inference: From the information displayed it can be inferred that the majority of the respondents frequently suffer from work-related occupational stress (44.20%) while 36.50% of respondents very frequently suffer from stress. However, it can also be implied that there are schools and other educational institutes which are actively tackling the problem of occupational stress which is why out of the 104 respondents around 20 of them have rarely or never experienced occupational stress before the survey has been conducted.

What are the sources of your occupational stress?
• Stressful working environment • Lack of proper resources • The unruly behaviour of students • Excessive workload • Other IJFMR23045914 Volume 5, Issue 4, July-August 2023 8

Inference:
The information in the chart suggests that the majority of the respondents who consented to this study consider the unruly behaviour of students to be the greatest source of occupational stress (50%). Excessive workload is also one of the most predominant sources of occupational stress seen in school teachers (49%).

Is being a teaching professional the major inducer of stress in your life?
• Strongly disagree • Disagree • Neutral • Agree • Strongly agree Inference: From the information available in the chart it can be concluded that a majority of 35.60% of respondents agree that being a teaching professional is the major inducer of stress in their lives. However, almost 21.20% of respondents have remained neutral on the matter. While around 25 out of the 104 respondents disagreed with the fact that occupational stress is a major inducer of stress in their lives. Therefore it can be implied that there is a minority among teaching professionals that predominantly suffer from other forms of stress besides occupational stress.

Is a minimum amount of stress necessary to be efficient at work? • Yes • No • Maybe
Inference: The information in the chart implies that almost 47.10% of respondents are unsure whether a minimum amount of stress is required to be efficient at work or not. The rest of the responses however have remained divided. Out of the mixed responses, around 30 respondents believe that a minimum amount of stress is required to be efficient at work; this implies that there is a certain category of individuals who find stress to be a necessary motivating factor at work.

How often has stress caused you professional burnout?
• Very rarely • Rarely • Frequently • Very frequently • Never Inference: From the information given it can be inferred that almost 38.50% of respondents very frequently experience professional burnout. The remaining respondents are equally divided among the other options but there still seems to be a vast difference between the option that received the highest response and the other options. This suggests that cases of professional burnout are relatively common among teaching professionals. However, it should also be taken into consideration that 37.5% of the respondents have either rarely or never suffered from burnout at work before the survey. To put it differently, the casualty of stress required for an individual to experience professional burnout depends from person to person and since this study does not specify the extent or casualty of stress we have to depend on how the respondents have related to the question.
11. Is occupational stress deterring you from meeting the expected performance standards?
Inference: From the information given it can be assumed that the vast majority of respondents (38.50%) agree that occupational stress deters an individual from meeting their expected performance standards. In conclusion, 59.70% of respondents agree and strongly agree, only 19.2% of people disagree and strongly disagree while 21.20% of respondents have remained neutral. This shows that there is a category of teachers that do not let stress at work determine or affect their performance in any way whatsoever. However, this significantly depends on how they individually tackle the pressure and the extent of stress they encounter at work.

What kind of activities do you engage in to reduce work-related stress?
Inference: From the information displayed in the charts it can be concluded that a majority of the respondents perform meditation as a means to reduce occupational stress (46.20%). However, around 28 respondents out of the 104 of them did not relate to any of the options given to them in the survey and chose to provide their own answers namely spending time with friends and family and watching movies and shows.

Has occupational stress resulted in you developing any mental or physical health conditions? • Yes • No • Maybe • Prefer not to say
Inference: From the information given it can be assumed that the majority of respondents (28.80%) were not that burdened by stress to develop any sort of mental or physical health conditions. However, around 26.90% of respondents did develop mental or physical health conditions because of occupational stress. Furthermore, this graph portrays how talking about changes in mental and physical health due to the field of work an individual is engaged in is still a stigma as around 21 respondents preferred not to discuss the same promising the anonymity of the survey.
14. Are your personal efforts significantly helping you to overcome the stress?
Volume 5, Issue 4, July-August 2023 13 Inference: The information in the chart hints that around 40.40% of respondents were unable to give a proper answer to whether their personal efforts are helping them to overcome the occupational stress that they are experiencing. This shows the complexity of the day-to-day stress faced by individuals; since occupational stress is just one of the many types of stress that affect an individual holistically. The human mind is not effectively capable enough to distinguish one type of stress from the other, which is why even though personal efforts to reduce stress might work, a person can feel a negligent amount of reduction in overall stress.

What kind of assistance does your school offer to reduce stress?
• Extra-curricular activities • Outings or events • Counselling • Other Inference: From the information given it can be decided that the employers of 54.80% of the respondents organised outings or events to reduce the stress faced by their employees. This confirms the recent surge in programs and policies formulated to safeguard and protect school teachers from distress.

16.
Are the efforts of your school towards the reduction of occupational stress amongst teachers significantly helping you to overcome stress?
• Strongly disagree • Disagree • Neutral • Agree • Strongly agree Inference: From the information displayed in the chart it can be assumed that 29.80% of people remain neutral as to whether the efforts of their employers towards the reduction of stress help them to overcome the same or not. This implies that schools are effectively trying to counteract the occupational stress experienced by their teachers. However, since these policies and programs to curb stress are relatively newer, it will take time and a considerable amount of effort to put into effect and witness favourable results for the same.
17. What kind of efforts have you put into becoming more efficient at work as a measure to reduce stress?
• Improve time management skills • Learning how to handle students • Becoming more technologically advanced • Other Inference: From the information given in the chart it can be inferred that the majority of the teachers who took part in the survey were actively trying to become more technologically advanced to be more efficient at work and thereby reduce the stress that they face daily (62.50%). This suggests that the majority of the teaching professionals at schools are not only trying to manage stress in their own way but are also trying to become more efficient and effective at work by continuously upgrading themselves and their skills and strategies.

What kind of initiative have you taken to induce a stress-free environment at school?
• Speaking about it to the management • Taking steps to eliminate toxic positivity • Trying to reduce workplace hierarchy • Other

• No initiative was taken
Inference: The information given in the chart suggests that 26% of teachers at schools did not feel the need to take an initiative to induce a stress-free environment at their workplace. This implies that teachers are not given much authority or a platform to speak out their opinion which is why most of them do not find any need to take any initiative.

Does occupational stress have a negative impact on job performance?
• Strongly disagree • Disagree • Neutral • Agree • Strongly agree Inference: From the information given it can be decided that a majority of the respondents around 40.40% agreed with the fact that occupational stress has a negative impact on job performance. The next majority of around 25% of the responses strongly agreed with the same while very few responses were received in which people were either neutral or completely disagreed with the fact.

Does your productivity get hampered due to excessive stress in the working environment? • Yes • No • Maybe
Inference: The information given in the chart implies that a majority of 50% of the respondents believe that an individual's productivity gets hampered if there exists excessive stress in the working environment while 32.70% of respondents were uncertain and 17.30% did not believe the same.

According to you, who is the reason behind the increased occupational stress amongst the employees of the education sector?
• The government • The management • The students • Increasing societal expectations • Other • Prefer not to say Inference: From the information given above it can be implied that around 27.90% of respondents consider the management of their specific schools to be the reason behind the increasing occupational stress that they are facing as employees. However, around 21.20 % of respondents decided not to speak on this matter mainly due to the risk of social appropriation despite the anonymity of the survey.

Does teaching as a profession suffer from increasingly worsened cases of employee turnover? • Yes • No • Maybe • Prefer not to say
Inference: From the information displayed in the chart it can be implied that 40.40% of respondents were unable to give a proper answer when asked whether teaching as a profession is recently suffering from increasingly worsened cases of employee turnover and job dissatisfaction. This suggests that even as employees of the education sector they are unaware of the recent surge in employee attrition in the sector.

If you have an opportunity to change your profession, will you still choose to be a teacher? • Yes • No • Maybe • Prefer not to say
Inference: The information given in the chart implies that 38.50% of teachers are still willing to be a teacher if allowed to choose in the future. However, what is alarming is that around 18.30% of people would choose not to be a teacher any more if given a chance. The fact that only 40 respondents out of the total of 104 respondents were able to properly give an affirmative answer to the above question in the survey shows how much uncertainty and confusion there is in the market regarding the future of this profession.

Secondary Data
The purpose of this study is to recognise the factors that are responsible for occupational stress among school teachers and to understand how stress affects the productivity of teachers. In other words, this study aims to find out the sources of stress and whether this stress has a positive or negative impact on the expected job performance of school teachers.

Stress and Occupational Stress:
Stress is considered to be the mental, physical and emotional strain caused due to certain unfavourable and unfortunate circumstances. Occupational stress is one of the many discovered forces that engender aforementioned stress. This type of stress is specifically caused due to the occupation a person is engaged in.
Occupational stress can be triggered by various elements present in the workplace i.e. the job condition, the job security, the working environment, relationships with co-workers, and so on. Experts have witnessed a rise in the trend of occupational stress in recent years thereby increasing the chances of job dissatisfaction and employee turnover. Researchers from all around the world have conducted various studies and concluded that occupational stress is the predominant type of stress that working individuals are facing nowadays.

Effect of occupational stress on school teachers:
As a profession, teaching involves bestowing knowledge to future generations of the world by providing them with a proper platform to attain knowledge. Teachers must guide and motivate their students to persevere in their journey of becoming the pillars of the world in the future. With the emergence of the modern education system, there has been an increase in the presence of various educational institutes that provide varied levels of knowledge to their students. This separation of educational institutions into distinct entities has helped in formulating a proper course of study and curriculum based on the ages of the students. As a consequence students, nowadays, can gain vast levels of knowledge due to the timely provision of schooling over the early years of their life.
From the age of 3 to 18 years, children go to schools where they receive their primary and secondary education. During this time, due to the impressionable nature of children, the knowledge that is imparted to them stays with them for their entire life. The morals and intrinsic values they learn at school at such a young age act as the foundation for the behavioural nature of each child. Thereby, teachers at schools need to adopt a completely different set of techniques to guide and counsel the early development of students.
In recent years, due to the surge of social media and other forms of distraction, young children have developed various behavioural issues which are left to be tackled by school teachers. This has caused the teachers to work for longer hours which has ruined their work-life balance and due to the non-availability of proper resources, the amount of stress and professional burnout experienced by teachers has significantly increased thereby leading to widespread job dissatisfaction in the market. However, such a great source of concern is usually overlooked by the government and the education systems of different countries in the world.
In most countries, teachers are known to receive substantial remuneration for their work, however taking into consideration the amount of stress they have to encounter at their workplace due to lack of resources and amenities, increased work pressure and mentally taxing physical environment, the monetary incentive can be deemed to be severely inadequate.

The Indian Education System:
There have been various debates in the past regarding the approach of the Indian education system towards providing education to their students. In India, education is provided by the way of rote learning; this means that students in our country gather more knowledge rather than experience while they are in school.
In other words, the 14 education system in India primarily focuses more on knowledge-based learning rather than practical-based learning. While some people may prefer the knowledge and hard work-striven approach of the system, some may argue that this results in the doom of creativity.
However, one thing to note is that every time an argument is placed in or against the favour of the education system it is inevitably from the perspective of the students. The opinions of the people who are in fact imparting the knowledge to the students are mostly disregarded and overlooked without any consideration. This has increased the amount of occupational stress that is being faced by teaching professionals in the Indian educational sector. This study, therefore, proposes to highlight all the factors relating to occupational stress and their impact on productivity among school teachers in India.

Responsibilities of school teachers:
In ancient India, imparting knowledge was considered to be the greatest ability in existence therefore, teachers were referred to as Gurus (A Sanskrit term meaning mentor or master or guide or expert in a certain field). The major task that a Guru had was to guide his/her pupils to persevere by providing them with knowledge of life. However, as the modern system of education was introduced in India with distinctive educational levels, set curriculum and subjects, the role of the teachers at schools were not just limited to bestowing knowledge. Presently, a few of the roles and responsibilities that teachers at schools need to perform include: The amount of work that teachers at schools need to perform is significantly progressing as the government keeps on formulating more policies and programs for the students. In the wake of this new era of privatisation and globalisation where Indian students are in demand in the global market, the government and the system find the need to continuously keep the prior educational policies in check and devise any changes, which requires a completely new method or technique to be adopted by the teachers to educate their students. This has created great discontentment and an increasing amount of work-related stress among school teachers in India.

Sources of Occupational Stress:
The aforementioned duties that school teachers need to perform are just the principal daily basis tasks. This does not include other responsibilities that the teachers might need to deal with on an urgent or critical basis. The majority of the stress that school teachers experience is due to the immense work pressure that they are forced to deal with. However there are other sources of occupational stress that they have to deal with as well: • However, although management of stress is required, prevention of stress should also be taken into account. All the contributing factors of occupational stress in school teachers have greatly impeded the ability of these individuals to enjoy a normal life. This is specifically the reason why school teachers themselves take up certain hobbies as means of preventing and reducing the strain they encounter at their job like: Furthermore, there has been a substantial amount of reduction in the willingness of the current generation towards becoming teaching professionals. This along with the increase in staff attrition has at long last come to the notice of the system, and they have formulated various programs and policies to help reduce this dissatisfaction that teachers face towards their job.
As a part of the National Education Policy 2020, several initiatives were taken to ensure the reduction of stress among teachers and to enhance their efficiency at work. Some of the initiatives in question are: • Ensuring the quality of individuals entering the teaching profession by providing scholarships and monetary benefits • Ensuring a sufficient number of teachers at every school for each subject to reduce unnecessary distress due to massive workload among teachers • Ensuring the provision of proper facilities and amenities to school teachers by providing them with an inclusive and non-judgemental work environment • Preventing teachers from engaging in administrative tasks which are not related to teaching • Ensuring that the opinions of teachers are taken into consideration and they are given autonomy to take certain decisions within their authority without any intervention from the administration or management of the school • Ensuring that proper training and opportunities are provided to the teachers for self-growth and up gradation in respect of the modern tools and techniques of provision of education • Ensuring that proper monetary and non-monetary incentives in terms of promotions and salary rises are provided to teachers who have shown an outstanding job performance

Effect of Occupational Stress on Job Performance:
The main aim of the study is to understand whether occupational stress has a positive or a negative impact on job performance. However, the question remains whether a minimum amount of stress is required to be efficient at work or not. According to subject matter experts, stress is of two kinds: good stress and bad stress.
Good stress are those forces that act as small hindrances in our daily lives but in reality pose no threat to our goals or tasks; rather this kind of stress is important when a person is required to achieve difficult goals. This stress helps an individual to be aware of the danger but still continue to work towards hard-toreach goals.
Bad stress is those forces that impede an individual's ability to obtain their goals or tasks daily. This type of stress poses a threat to unattainable hard-to-reach goals. It majorly hinders a person by causing them to fear and be anxious about a particular situation or circumstance; which ultimately might take a toll on the health of that individual.
Precisely whether a minimum amount of stress is required or not depends on the individual himself or herself. Not everyone is alike, therefore they might react to the same kind of stress in a different way than another person would. As a consequence, there are no set examples of what type of stress is good or what is bad, it depends from person to person. Similarly, how that stress affects job performance will also depend from individual to individual. Some may witness a positive effect, while others may not, this is the reason why this study prioritises more on the primary perspective of the data rather than the secondary data that has been gathered from prior studies.

Conclusion
In conclusion, it is oddly discernible how much stress teachers face nowadays in schools mainly due to students' unruly behaviour and excessive workload. The very fact that this has gone unnoticed for such a long time in itself is pretty deplorable, however, it is a relief that the government and the system have stood up to protect the very core of the Indian education system -its teachers.
In this random sample of 104 school teachers, it is evident that they are trying very hard on their own to prevent or reduce the stress they encounter daily by primarily engaging in meditation. This however, does not mask the fact that around 18.30% of the respondents did not want to continue their career as a teaching professional any further if given an opportunity i.e. around 19 individuals out of all the respondents failed to find teaching attractive as a career anymore.
This is a very concerning issue because just as students are the fundamental blocks and future citizens of our country, teachers, on the other hand, are the ones who are pooling in every ounce of their effort to prepare the students to face the world as adults. Without proper guidance from the teachers, no student will be able to persevere in their fields of work; which has become increasingly difficult to provide given the circumstances that the school teachers are facing now. Continuous rise in the levels of occupational stress and other work-related factors has not only affected the productivity of the teachers but also made it tough for them to fulfil their expected duties.
Therefore, it can be concluded that not only does occupational stress have a direct negative impact on job performance but also deters an individual from meeting their expected performance standards. This is the reason why it is necessary for the education system and the government to take initiative to defend school teachers from the negative impacts of occupational stress and create a working environment that aims to be stress-free, healthy and professional.

Limitations
• Small sample size -Being a small-scale study, it is impractical to base the entire spectrum of school teachers in India upon the findings of this study.
• Time constraint -The time spent on developing the study is relatively less than the time spent on prior studies having the same research problem. Therefore, the inferences of this study might have been affected by the time constraint that was faced.
• Social appropriation -Even though anonymity was maintained during the survey, there is a probability that the respondents have favoured certain arguments for the sake of social appropriation.
• Skewed perception -Even though the study has been conducted in Pan India, most of the responses (approximately 40%) have been received from the state of West Bengal and the rest from the other states resulting in a skewed perception. I would also like to thank all of the school teachers who took time out of their busy schedule to actively party participate in the questionnaire which is the code of this entire research paper I would especially like to thank the teachers from my school who not only participated in filling up the questionnaire but also took the initiative to send the questionnaire to teachers from various other schools for my project to be more insight Nobody has been more important to me in the pursuit of this project than the members of my family. I would like to thank my parents whose love and guidance are with me in whatever I pursue. They are the ultimate role models who provide unending inspiration for me to achieve my dreams.