Effect of stress on the performance of university academic staff

Stress has become a pervasive trend among academic staff of universities in Nigeria which emanates from excessive workload and pressure. This has led to the deteriorating level of performance among academic staff in the area of teaching, research, and community service. Thus, drawing from person-environment fit theory, this study investigated the effect of job stress on the performance of university academic staff in Kaduna State University. Survey research design was adopted for the study. A sample of 321 academic staff were drawn using Stratified sampling technique from which data were collected through questionnaire. The hypothesis developed for the study was tested using Simple linear regression and Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 22 was used for the analysis. The result of the study revealed that stress has a negative significant effect on the performance of academic staff in Kaduna State University. Consequently, the study recommends that university management should find a way of minimizing the occurrence of stress among academic staff in order to solve the problem of declining performance. The study therefore concludes that academic staff are excessively suffering from job stress which negatively affects their performance.