Bankers' job stress, job performance, and job commitment trajectories during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Author: Roy, Sanjoy Kumar

INTRODUCTION

The banking and financial service sectors are among the most stable and growing industries worldwide (Khan et al., 2022a). The transition to a world economy and deregulated marketplaces has resulted in many significant improvements in the direction (Khan et al., 2022b; Khan & Arif, 2023). Because financial institutions have been organized and offered in past decades, this is especially noteworthy of the industry's structure and performance of work (Hassard et al., 2018; Hossain et al., 2018; Khan & Sharma, 2020). The way banks are structuring and changing dramatically by adopting new technology and structures significantly impacts bankers' job performance (Giorg et al., 2017). Besides the technology disruption, the current ongoing pandemic situation has also created a considerably negative effect on bankers' mental health (Marcu, 2021). The two vital potential sources of stress are organization and personal life. However, the maximum amount of mental stress originates from the workplace (Griffin, 2021). The American Institute of Stress and the UK Workplace Stress Survey consecutively found that 61 percent and percent the stress is caused by the working organization (Mahmud, 2020). A recent study by MetLife revealed that 67 percent of the top decision-makers were not interested in continuing their banking job in the upcoming year if the levels of job stress would not be improved (Pilcher, 2021).

Nowadays, stress is an emerging and worldwide increasing phenomenon for every organization (Ekienabor, 2016; Khan & Rammal, 2022). This universal substance can be expressed in various workplaces and works differently for diverse workers (Michael & Petal, 2009). The organization's size does not matter; stress most significantly impacts employee performance, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction (Li et al., 2021; Wu et al., 2021). In the present era of business, organizations are always looking for multitaskers (Briining et al., 2021). However, that multi-tasking ability often creates several workplace responsibilities to work for a more extended period and also dedicates them to gaining the expected level of work performance (Ekienabor, 2016). However, when the management authority or the organization does not properly appreciate the hard work of employees' contribution, it generates stress for the employee, and most of the time, they feel the intention to leave the organization (Stamper & Johlke, 2003). Thus, stress can be considered the employee's dynamic condition that may deal with resource, demand, opportunity, and/or the employee's wishes for the perceived result of vague or vital (Bashir & Ismail, 2010). Such high phases of stress without a managerial solution create a situation of degrading employee performance, jeopardizing an organization's reputation, and a significant failure to retain skilled employees (Ekienabor, 2016).

In the banking sector, almost every level of employee has to face stress (George & Zakkariya, 2015). Bankers are dealing with a massive amount of work stress, and the authority does not measure the effect of stress on job performance (Khalid et al., 2020). Researchers seriously scrutinized the stress-related issues to determine the employees' job performance and commitment that caused high turnover and hindered the organization's objectives and goals (Rizwan et al., 2014). The COVID-19 outbreak wreaked disaster on society and disrupted standards for everyone (Khan, 2020). However, the impacts on frontline workers, such as doctors, healthcare workers, police, volunteers, etc., have been incredibly intense (Rodriguez-Rey et al., 2020). Working physically as frontline workers or working from home, enormous anxiety affects workers' mental health (Galanti et al., 2021). Unlike the other developed countries, in Bangladesh, the lists of frontline workers are comparatively extensive. Besides the medical and healthcare facilities, most of the grocery shops, banks, financial institutions, and garment shops remained open due to energizing the wheel of the national economy (BetterWork, 2020). Till now, 25,399 bankers have been infected during the pandemic, and 133 have passed away; the regular work stresses add more anxiety to bankers' physical and mental health during the COVID-19 outbreak (Prothom Alo, 2021).

A few studies have explored frontline employees' work health during COVID-19 (Galbraith et al., 2021; Yasmin et al., 2021). In earlier studies, most researchers tried to explore the mental health condition of bankers during the Covid-19 crisis, such as psychological impact, performance hampering, work-life balance, work engagement, job satisfaction, digital capabilities, distance leadership, etc. (Khan et al., 2022c; Saleem et al., 2021). A few such earlier kinds of research were also conducted in the Bangladeshi bankers' context. However, separately the components of stress, such as work-related stress (Jackson & Maslach, 1982), acute stress (Kleber & van der Velden, 2009), and job performance-related stress (Coffey et al., 1988), did not measure. Hence, the literature shows a gap between each sort of stress and those impacts on banking job performance and commitment during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The primary aims of this research were to unearth the relationship between job stress, job performance, and job commitment of a COVID-19 frontline workers' class group and, particularily, narrow down the research on bankers (as frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh). In addition, stress-based job performance and its impact on job commitment during pandemic situations would also be a fascinating investigation.

The authors tried to develop a conceptual framework for selected variables (see Figure 1). The model was tested with the help of 287 Bangladeshi bankers' work experiences during the COVID-19 situation. To unearth the research, the authors attempted to unveil the following three research questions:

RQ1) Which job stress affects bankers' job performance during the COVID-19 pandemic?

RQ2) To what extent does each type of job stress affect bank employees' job performance and job commitment during the COVID-19 pandemic?

RQ3) How the stress-based job performances affect bankers' job commitment during the COVID-19 pandemic?

The underpinning sections have been designed as the literature review and variable definition; the third section explains the research methodology. After that, the fourth section contains results and discussion. Finally, the study ended with implications, the future scope of studies, with concluding remarks.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Job stress and its consequences in an organization

Stress is a reality in everyone regardless of age, religion, gender, organization, or nationality (Iyayi& Kadiri, 2020; Pervin & Khan, 2022). In the research domain, stress in the employed is ambiguous and contradictory and is hardly defined (Kemeny, 2003). The oldest definition of stress is that the body and mind's nonspecific reaction to any stimulus is stress (Selye, 1956). In psychology, stress is defined as the perceived threat accompanying anxious discomfort, emotional strain, and difficulties in adaptation (Fink, 2016). In contrast, Griffin (2021) defined it as an individual's reaction to a potent stimulus (known as a stressor). This stimulus is a major worldwide challenge for employees' physical, mental, and organizational health (ILO, 1986). Stress is an employee's accustomed or coping reaction or a result of negative emotion that affects psychological and physical symptoms or demands (CahayaSanthi & Piartrini, 2020).

In modern times, job stress is one of the most common job-related diseases for the organizational citizen, affecting employees' feelings (Iyayi& Kadiri, 2020). Typically, job stress originates when the workplace demands are not matched by the employees' ability to overcome such expectations (CahayaSanthi & Piartrini, 2020). In such times, job-related work or responsibilities become troublesome and disgusting, which generates harmful effects on the physical and mental willingness of the employees. Also, role-related factors significantly impact job stress (Rhineberger-Dunn & Mack, 2019). Job stress is a psychological pressure that affects a worker's ability to respond, work participation, physical illness and injury, hypertension, drug abuse, alcoholism, cardiovascular problems (Meneze 2005), family exception, job performance, time to work, grievances, absenteeism, turnover, health care costs, productivity, morality (Ismail et al., 2009; Bashir & Ismail, 2010; Ekienabor, 2016). Those consequences impact job performance and commitment (Summers et al., 2020; Li et al., 2021).

Employee performance

Performance refers to an individual's outcome or competence during specific times of employment compared to the job standard. The objectives or standards were set in advance and are essential for organizational work outcomes and success. Job performance determines an employee's and organizational performance (Khan et al., 2019; Al Ahad & Khan, 2020). Employees can do any work successfully through job performance, which contributes a good role in achieving organizational goals and objectives (Ekienabor, 2016). Job performance is an individual variable or something that a single person can do, and it is a primary affected outcome of stress (Bashir & Ismail, 2010). If the stress level is high, the performance level is low. That means a high-stress level affects employee performance, loss of employment and goal achievement, job satisfaction, and employee commitment (Ekienabor, 2016). Nevertheless, positively imposing human resources can strengthen employees' mental and psychological abilities or capacities and efficiently meliorate their job performance (Law&Guo, 2016).

Organizational and job commitment

Commitment means employee engagement for the employing company or organization; for committing or perceiving (Al Ahad et al., 2020) to...