Occupational Stress and Demographic Characteristics among Information Technology Professionals

Abstract

Occupational stress among information system professionals is gaining more recognition because it may lead to high turnover and less productivity. The present research focuses on software development professionals to examine their occupational stress and demographic characteristics in India. A questionnaire was developed to identify the occupational stress among software development professionals (SDP) using dimensions such as age, average daily working hours, gender, training and nature of work. Data from 156 respondents working in information technology companies in Chennai and Bangalore was collected. It was found that those who were more than 30 years of age have stress due to work family interface. Employees working less than 10 hours daily experience more stress due to fear of obsolescence, individual team interaction, work culture, lack of family support and technical risk propensity. In terms of gender, men and women professionals do not differ in their occupational stress. However, employees who had computer training especially in software programming in addition to their engineering degree face more stress due to fear of obsolescence and technical risk propensity. Software development professionals whose nature of work is purely technical experience more stress because of fear of obsolescence than others. The results are discussed and based on these the relevant implications are suggested.