Ravalier PhD Theis.pdf - Anglia Ruskin Research Online

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2b) Research Question 2
“What are the sources of day-to-day stress (i.e. ‘daily hassles’) for employees in the borough
council.”
This second research question sought to discover the sources of everyday stress, or ‘daily hassles’ (hassles
are first introduced in Chapter II, Section 1a.3.2), as experienced by employees within the participating
organisation. These sources of daily stress were investigated primarily via two of the three qualitative aspects of
the study: daily logs and interviews. Analysis of daily log results revealed a large number of daily hassles were
impacting upon individuals’ experiences in the workplace. The predominant daily hassles found were done so with
respect to issues with IT systems, high workloads, communication problems between employees and management,
and problems with training dissemination and targeting.
The first of the three concordant areas from the two phases of the study was related to IT systems and
training available to employees within the organisation (see Chapter VIII Part 4, Section 8). The most
commonly and passionately cited IT problems were a lack of IT infrastructure, or IT systems which do not work
adequately. Individuals throughout the log and interview phases often related to the daily stress associated with
having to wait for IT systems which are working much slower than they should be, or IT systems which inhibit
individuals’ abilities to be productive and efficient. A separate yet related issue regarding IT infrastructure is the
training available to existing employees. It was widely agreed that throughout the participating service individual
employees have a range of IT skills and abilities, and while basic training was available for all employees for a
range of IT systems, more intense training should be targeted toward those who have poorer IT skills thereby not