Social Work Response to Stress and Employees’ Health Status in Banking Industry: an Analysis of their Coping Measures

This research determined stress factors and their implications on the health of employees; the coping strategies adopted by the employers and employees and social work response to the stress management in banking industry. The study adopted a descriptive survey design of expost facto. Random sampling technique was used to select three banks in Ogun State. The banks are Keystone Bank, Guarantee Trust Bank and Zenith Bank. The entire population of the study comprises of 150 management staff and security personnel. A questionnaire tagged “Banking Industry Stress Scale” demonstrated high internal consistency of Cronbach alpha of .72 in this study. Frequency counts and percentages were used to analyse the data. The result revealed that role overload (61.3%) and workload (55.3%) were the major factors that contribute to the increase in the level of stress. It further found out that majority of the employees (86.7%) respondents perceived that work stress affects their health, (67.3%) perceived that work stress was the major cause of the illness they had it the past. Stress management training, work leave for staffs, regular exercise, sharing responsibilities with spouses, observing break periods were perceived as the significant steps that should be taken to help the bank employees cope with stress. It also proffered multidisciplinary interventions and collaborations.