A Psychological Study of Job Stress and Effectiveness of Employee Grievance Handling; A Case Study on a Private Sector Company in Colombo District, Sri Lanka

Job stress is a kind of stress which builds up in our body over a particular period of time and it can happen to either a person who is already employed or to a person expecting a job. It affects the mind, body and behavior in many ways and everyone experiences stress differently. In today's world, employee grievance handling is an important component in every company, which is conducted by Human Resources Management. Problems are often aggravated in most organizations because of ineffective grievance handling. The Managers from the supervisory level to the senior management level should have a sound knowledge in employee grievance handling. In this study, the researchers have studied the effectiveness of the employee grievance handling to reduce their stress at work place. This study focuses on identifying the employee grievances experience in an organization in Sri Lankan context. In addition to the main objective, the sub-objectives are to identify symptoms and causes of excessive job stress, to identify the employee grievance management techniques used in practice and to identify the importance of employee grievance handling to encourage relationship between employee and employer relationship. The sample included 200 employees as 100 females and 100 males. Methodology followed for this study is quantitative in nature and both primary and secondary data collection methods were used. The main finding of the research was the majority of employees are stressed at work. Therefore grievance procedures are necessary for any organization because it gives employees an opportunity to voice out their problems whether it concerns occupational health & safety or complaints concerning harassment, discrimination, and any problems within the work area. Once we able to identified the employee grievances, it is very important to develop an appropriate techniques as early as possible, to provide proper solutions for their matters on time.