Effect of Work Stress on Library Professionals’ Performance and Health

A Perspective from Karachi, Pakistan

Abstract

This study aimed to scrutinize the effect of work-related stress on job performance and health of library and information professionals’. The study utilized a survey research approach; the participants of this survey were the LIS professionals working in various universities of Karachi. They were approached to record their views via a self-developed questionnaire, with a response rate of 76%. The collected data was scrutinized using SPSS through various descriptive and inferential statistical tests. The outcomes of study affirm that librarians experience a modest level of stress and it adversely affects their work performance such as negligence at work, difficulty in decision making, fear of failure, and late sittings at the office, but they consider stress did not affect their normal routine activities, errors at work, meet work deadlines. Job stress has a strong relationship with work performance, which means that academic librarians’ job performance is affected by work stress. Work stress has effects on library professionals’ health at a moderate level, and found that work stress has a positive relation with health of librarians. The respondents were on the same pitch because there is no substantial change found in their opinions with respect to their gender and type of institutions. So the study found that work-related stress has effects on work performance and library professionals’ psychological and physical health.