Occupational Stress among library personnel in public universities in Nigeria

Omobola Olufunke Adewoyin, Maria Ehioghae and Joseph Olubunmi Olorunsaye
Keywords: Library personnel, public universities, stress, workloads, inter-personal relationships
Library and Information Perspectives and Research 2020 2(1), 1-17. Published: September 11, 2020

Abstract

Occupational stress, which is stress experienced by employees at the workplace, is increasingly becoming a challenge. It is often the case that when employees are confronted with work demands and pressures beyond their knowledge and abilities, stress may be the outcome. Due to their role expectations, paraprofessional and professional librarians are susceptible to occupational stress which could lead to a decreasing commitment to the organization. The study adopted a survey research design to investigate occupational stress among paraprofessional and professional librarians in public universities in South-West, Nigeria. Total enumeration was used to cover all professional and paraprofessional librarians in the study area. Out of the 280 copies of questionnaire administered, 268 (95.7%) were retrieved for analysis. The findings revealed that male library personnel experience more stress in public universities than their female counterpart. Specifically, the precursors to stress among library personnel, with high mean scores, include sourcing of funds for career development (x the quest for promotion (x , excessive workloads (x , and broken interpersonal relationships with management (x . The study, therefore, recommends equity in the sharing of responsibilities between the male and female genders to partly reduce pressure due to excessive workloads. Also, library personnel should have access to research funds to facility upward mobility in their career. In addition, interpersonal relationship workshops should be regularly conducted for allcadres of staff to promote team spirit.