Methodology of Measuring Stress – Effects on Motivation & Performance in Public and Private Organisations in Kosovo

Stress has emerged as an increasing problem in organisations and companies over the recent decades. The workplace has become a place of rapidly changing forces, such as increasing competition, quality pressure, innovation and increasing pace of doing business. As a result, employees’ demands have increased dramatically and this has led to the creation of stress at work. Despite the awareness of the importance of occupational stress, the growing number of stress research and stress measurement methodologies at workplace, there are still major empirical gaps in Kosovo, where this topic is not explored enough. Therefore, the present research seeks to provide scientific contribution to the spread of stress among organisations in Kosovo and to identify factors that cause stress among public and private sector employees. To achieve this goal, as part of the Doctoral Thesis, a methodology of measuring stress has been applied in organisations, and the effects of stress on motivation and performance of employees has been studied. The study has shown that there are several stress factors in organisations, and managers need to undertake specific interventions to manage the occupational stress. Findings of this paper suggest that occupational stress is mainly caused by job insecurity, lack of information on developments in the organisation, work overload, inadequate treatment by the employer, destructive relations among colleagues, lack of general working conditions and resources. The findings also show that occupational stress negatively affects the employees, in particular by reducing employee performance, reducing work efficiency and decreasing their motivation. Furthermore, the results indicate that both public and private sector employees consider similar factors as stressful and experience relatively similar levels of stress. Based on findings from primary data collected through surveys and secondary data from international literature, it is recommended to undertake periodic stress tests, engage senior management level in re-designing jobs, increasing decision-making authority of the employees, reducing workload, reducing role conflict, and continuously providing training.