Background: Occupational stress is becoming an issue of concern for employees and employers across sectors. Though employees are working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, they are overloaded with work and are stressed out. Amid the emergence and re-emergence of Covid-19, and with the advent of the mass work-from-home, distance between office and home has blurred, which, in many ways, is taking its toll on employees.
Objectives: Hence, this study aims to assess the effect of gender, marital status and family type on prevalence of occupational stress among employees in Delhi-NCR during COVID-19 pandemic (work from home) situations.
Methods: Data was collected from 60 employees using Occupational Stress Index Scale (OSI Scale) and demographic information sheet. Continuous variables were presented in the form of mean (±sd) and categorical variables were presented as number (%). To find the association between categorical variables, the Chi-Square test was used. A p value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results: The participants had a mean age of 38.62 (SD=8.79) years. 71.7% (n=43) were male and 28.3% (n=17) were female, 70% (n=42) were married and 30% (n=18) were unmarried. Further, 65% (n=39) were living in a nuclear family and 35 (n=21) in a joint family environment. Majority of the participants had moderate and high levels of occupational stress. A significant association was found between marital status and occupational stress but gender and family type were not significantly associated with occupational stress.
Conclusion: The results indicate that married employees seem to experience more occupational stress than unmarried employees. Policy makers of the organisations should make efforts to reduce occupational stress among the employees, especially for married employees.
