Research Proposal

On

Stress Management in an organization through HR

interventions

Supervisor:

Ms. Kishwar Sameen Gulzar

Submitted by:

Anum Ahad (01-120082-011)

Ayesha Saddiqua (01-120082-016)

Bilquees Fatima (01-120091-020)

Mehreen Abbasi (01-120082-031)

MBA IV-A

1
Introduction to Habib Bank Limited:
HBL is one of the largest Banks of Pakistan, established in 1941,
having its registered head office in Karachi. It was nationalized
in 1974, but was privatized by Government of Pakistan on 26th
February 2004 and taken over by Agha Khan Fund for Economic
Development (AKFED). They acquired 51 percent of shares of HBL.

It is the prime Bank in country with 1466 branches inside country

and 112 overseas offices (presence in 25 countries) at different
destinations around the world covering 5 continents. It
internationally operates in countries including USA (New York),
United Kingdom (London, Manchester, Birmingham), Scotland
(Glasgow), Belgium (Brussels), France (Paris), Lebanon (Beirut),
Netherlands (Rotterdam), Turkey (Istanbul), Kenya, Mauritius,
Seychelles, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Oman, UAE, Iran, Sri
Lanka, Sudan, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Egypt, Hong Kong, Singapore,
Maldives, Indonesia and Australia. Currently HBL is having
customer base of over 6 million [1].

HBL in Pakistan:

At the time of partition, there were 38 financial institutions,

out of which only two were the commercial banks and HBL was one
of the twos. HBL was established by Mr. Ismail Habib on August
25, 1942 on the desire of Quaid-e-Azam with paid up capital of
Rs. 2.5 million as the first Muslim bank of Sub Continent. Quaid
was the first person who opened his personal account in HBL.

The first branch of HBL started functioning on 30th August, 1942

at Muhammad Ali Road Bombay, In 1942, on the desire of Quaid-e-
Azam, Habib family migrated to Pakistan and later on shifted the
Bank's Head Office from Bombay to Karachi on 7th August, 1947 just
one week prior to independence, to play its pivotal role in the
development of this newly born country.
2
In early 90’s after the failure of nationalization policy,
Government went for privatization of financial institution. In
last ten to fifteen years banking sector in Pakistan has shown
tremendous growth. Due to its remarkable growth, banking sector
of Pakistan has become very attractive for foreign investors.
Many investors have already invested and still many more to come.
On December 29, 2003 Pakistan's Privatization Commission
announced that the Government of Pakistan had formally granted
the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED) rights to 51%
of the shareholding in HBL, against an investment of PKR 22.409
billion (USD 389 million). On February 26, 2004, management
control was handed over to AKFED. The Board of Directors was
reconstituted to have four AKFED nominees, including the Chairman
and the President/CEO and three Government of Pakistan nominees
[1,2].

Mission:
“To make our customers prosper, our staff excel and create value
for shareholders”

Vision:
“Enabling people to advance with confidence and success”

HBL Brand:
HBL’s brand identity is the outward expression of what we stand
for as an organization. This is summarized in vision, mission and
is supported by values of HBL.

Values:
The values are the fundamental principles that define our culture
and are brought to life in our attitudes and behavior. It is our
values that make us unique and unmistakable. HBL values are
defined below:

3
 A. Excellence

B. Integrity

C. Customer Focus

D. Meritocracy

E. Progressiveness

Human Resource Management:

HBL is an organization that provides opportunities for its staff

to have a challenging and rewarding long-term career. To this end
the Human Resource Group (HRG) encourages and motivates its
employees to excel in the responsibility that they have in the
organization. It believes that creativity and innovation comes
from talent, knowledge and experience and it is HBL’s endeavour
to provide and maintain an environment which not only nourishes
these strengths but also provides opportunities for the staff to
have a career which has multidimensional growth opportunities
[2].

In doing so, HRG has been restructuring and redesigning the

overall structure of the organization, which includes
rationalization, cutting down the decision layers, improvement in
staff training and hiring professionals and MBAs at entry-level
management.

The overall direction of HRG has been towards nurturing the

strengths of the human capital to its maximum with a defining
principal to help create a progressive environment and sustain a
thorough commitment of our staff towards focused customer
service. The bank has allocated huge budget for Training and

4
Education of staff at Habib Bank. HRG aims to maintain and
further improve the service-oriented culture and to make
employment not only satisfying but also enjoyable.

Problems and Opportunities:

Banking sector is competitive and technology is ever changing.

The effects of current trends in employment practice and
consequences on individual physical and mental health have been
an issue for some time. Research interest in the area has
increased rapidly in recent years. It is commonly accepted that
organisational factors play a significant part in contributing to
an individual’s experience of stress. In such circumstances, the
stress management plan will actually help the employees and
organization would be able to retain them for a longer period of
time. Training workshops and coaching clinics should be
considered as an option that would provide adequate result. Apart
from stress factors, the organization is a victim of political,
legal and socio-cultural pressures. The policy making is a tough
process as they require alignment from the international and
local practices. Organization can have short term interventions
or long term interventions to cope up with its arising problems.

The research project is based on stress factors and their probable

prevention and management mechanisms that may be introduced by the
organization in near future for the remedy of its stress related
problems. The opportunities was working in an area with less
information and research done previously and develop interventions
for an organization based on real time issues and factors that are
plaguing the organization.

5
Rational for project research:

With the serious financial crisis that began in late 2000, many
banking service personnel lost confidence, which even influenced
their job involvement and job performance. The purpose of this
study is to explore the causal relationship among the stress
factors at work, job involvement, and job performance of banking
service personnel under the economic depression. Basic emphasis
is to develop tools for recruitment and selection and screen the
potential candidates that are good at stress management according
to the work environment.

a. Motivation for research problem:

The motivation was the idea to work with the banking
industry, keeping in mind their organizational needs,
internal and external environment and bringing innovations
in the stress management mechanisms/policy. These mechanisms
are intended to reduce stress factors at work by introducing
tools in recruitment and selection process to screen out the
right candidates for job, better suiting the stressful work
environment. The proposed project is intended to play a
vital role in defining policy of organization for stress
management. This policy would be implemented in
organization, in near future.

b. Importance of the proposed work/why the project is

worth doing:
In present scenario, stress has been increasing due to
recession and its related elements in business world. There
is a need to develop mechanisms to cope up with them
effectively to enhance efficiency of the organization.

c. Author’s contribution/originality to existing

knowledge on the topic:
6
 Bankers are under a great deal of stress and antecedents of
stress. It is a vigorous state which leads to undesirable
responses at workplace. There are very few organizations in
Pakistan, which are working on stress management for
enhancing its efficiency. International practices are
different in this scenario. The originality of this project
lies in developing a screening test for potential employees
to evaluate their capacity to deal with stressful
situations, which is novel. This tool will help
organization to select the right candidate for job and
would be aligned with international practices of Human
Resource Management for stress within industry.

d. Benefits of proposed plan:

Proposed plan will help organization improving their
recruitment and selection process. The designed individual
approach will help in selection of the candidate who is
strong enough to cope up with the stress factors in
organization.

Literature Review:

Stress can be defined as “condition of strain on one’s emotions,

thought processes and physical conditions”. Davis (1981:52).
According to Di Martino (2003:1) stress is the physical and
emotional reaction that occurs when capabilities of the employee
don’t match with the requirements of the job.

Job stress is an employee’s awareness or feeling of personal

dysfunction which could be because of perceived conditions or
happenings in the workplace, and these uncomfortable, adverse, or
threats in the employee’s immediate workplace environment can a
cause of employee’s psychological and psychological reactions
(Montgomery et al., 1996). Job stress is related to job and
7
organization; it is very much an individual reaction and is
different from general stress (Montgomery et al., 1996). A number
of factors of working life can be linked to stress namely work
overload (DeFrank and Ivancevich, 1998; Sparks and Cooper, 1999)
and role-based factors such as lack of power, role ambiguity, and
role conflict (Nelson and Burke, 2000). Other aspects can be
threats to career development and achievement, including threat
of redundancy, being under-valued and unclear promotion prospects
are stressful (Nelson and Burke, 2000). Stress effects the
individual functioning in the workplace. Negative effects include
reduced efficiency, decreased capacity to perform, dampened
initiative and reduced interest in working, increased rigidity of
thought, a lack of concern for the organization and colleagues,
and a loss of responsibility.

If stress is intense, continuous or repeated, and person would

not be able to cope it or not enough support is provided, then
stress becomes a negative phenomenon that leads to physical
illness and psychological disorders (Di Martino, 2003). According
to (George and Jones 1996), the excessive high level of stress
can affect the managers’ performance that leads to absenteeism
and turnover.

According to Karasek Model cited in Di Martino (2003) Stress is

intensified by three variables:

Demands (psychological demands):

The pressure of work on individual that comes from the work

environment including workload, pace of work, length of working
hours, time schedules, tight deadlines, etc.

Control (decision latitude):

It is the individuals’ ability to respond to work pressure and

work demands, including autonomy, responsibility, skill,
training, experience, etc.

8
Support (social support):

The social environment of the work place where job is being

performed that includes organizational culture, working climate,
management style, help from co- workers, involvement,
participation, teamwork, etc.

Research Objectives:

The study is intended to achieve the following objectives:

• To explore the stress factors in organization.

• To find out the relationship of stress factors with job

performance and organizational performance.
• To develop HR interventions and practices for reducing the
stress factors from the organization’s environment based on
the organization and industry needs.
• To develop and test tools in recruitment and selection
process to screen out the participants/potential candidates
who are unable to handle the job stress.

Theoretical Framework:

Existing Literature so far reviewed and organizations’ feedback

supports the notion that main reasons for employee deviant
behaviour due to stressors are:

• Work load

• Less growth chances

9
 • Generation gap
• Unable to meet deadlines

Independent Variable Dependant Variable

Work load

Less growth
chances
Stress
Generation
gap

Unable to meet
deadlines

Methodology:

Introduction:

Pakistan’s financial sector consists of Scheduled Commercial

Banks which include nationalized, foreign, and private banks; and
Non-banking Financial Institutions (NBFIs) which include
Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), Investment Banks,
leasing companies, modarabas, and housing finance companies.
10
Habib Bank Limited commonly referred to as "HBL" and head-
quartered in Habib Bank Plaza, Karachi, Pakistan, is the largest
bank in Pakistan. The bank has a network of over 1450 branches in
Pakistan and 55 branches worldwide.

Population:

The research is aimed at calculating ratio of relationship among

the stress factors at work, job involvement, and job performance
of banking service personnel under the economic depression. A
considerable number of respondents will be taken in order to
carry out a successful and influential research on the topic. The
sample comprised of participants from different departments of
HBL regional office Islamabad with different job posts.

Pilot Sample:
Sample size I: (for focus group) 4-5 groups with 6-8
participants each.

Sample size II: (for interviews) 12-15 participants from

different job posts.

Sample size III: (Questionnaires) 100-150 questionnaires filled

from Regional Headquarters and different branches of Islamabad.

Sample size IV: (Silent Observations) 5 groups having 6

participants each from different departments of HBL.

Type of Research:
Primary Research:

Primary research (also called field research) involves the

collection of data that does not already exist, which is research
to collect original data. Primary Research is often undertaken
after the researcher has gained some insight into the issue by
collecting secondary data. There are basic approaches to data
collections using primary methods in our research project are:

• Qualitative Research:

11
Qualitative research includes interviews, focus groups and
participant observations.

Focus Groups: A focus group is a form of qualitative research in

which a group of people are asked about their perceptions,
opinions, beliefs and attitudes towards a product, service,
concept etc. Questions are asked in an interactive group setting
where participants are free to talk with other group members.

Interview: An interview is a conversation between two or more

people (the interviewer and the interviewee) where questions are
asked by the interviewer to obtain information from the
interviewee. They can be structured, semi- structured or
unstructured interviews. Initial semi structured interview was
taken from Kashif Mehmood, Manager Human Resource (north).

Silent Observation: It permits researcher to study people in the

surrounding in order to develop understanding from their
perspective. Silent observation requires the researcher to spend
considerable time in the field for better understanding of the
people being studied.

• Quantitative Research:

Quantitative research includes questionnaires. For evaluating the

changes in skills and behavior of the workers, questionnaires
were used.

Secondary Research:

Secondary research (also known as desk research) involves the

summary, collation and/or synthesis of existing research rather
than primary research, where data is collected from, for example,
research subjects or experiments.
12
Secondary research done for the assigned projects includes:

• Evaluation forms from assessment centers

• Psychometric test samples

Expected outcomes:
The research is entirely based on working with industry and
playing role in developing policy or mechanism for an
organization. Expected outcome is designing an approach for
stress management in an organization based on the stress
variables observed during research, aligning them with existing
organizational policy and practices.

Timelines:
The proposed research project is intended to finish in duration
of 4 months i.e. November 2010 to February 2011.

References:

• www.hbl.com

• HBL Annual report 2008 and 2009.

• Montgomery D.C., Blodgett, J.G. and Barnes J.H., 1996: “A

model of financial securities sales person’s job stress”,
The Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 10 No. 3, pp. 21-34.

• DeFrank, R. S., and J. M. Ivancevich. 1998: “Stress on the

Job: An Executive Update”, Academy of Management Executive.
12 (3), pp. 55-67.

13
• Sparks, K., and Cooper, C.L., 1999: “Occupational
differences in the work-strain relationship：Towards the use
of situation-specific model”, Journal of Occupational
Psychology, 72, pp. 219-229.

• Nelson, D. L. and Burke, R. J., 2000: “Women Executives:

Health, Stress and Success, Academy of Management
Executive, 14, pp.107–21.

• Elizabeth I. Ugoji & Godswill Isele 2009: “Stress

Management & Corporate Governance in Nigerian Organisations
“ European Journal of Scientific Research ISSN 1450-216X
Vol.27 No.3 (2009), pp.472-478.

• Yenhui O. 2009: The Mediating Effects of Job Stress and Job

Involvement under Job Instability: Banking Service
Personnel of Taiwan as an Example, EuroJournals Publishing,
Inc.

14