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.

(2) 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.

(3) 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.

(4) 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.

(5) 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)