Job Performance in the Context of Workplace Friendship and Job Stress: Evidence from the Self-Reports of Public Employees

This research aims to establish a direct correlation between work friendships, job-related stress, and performance. The investigation also explored whether job stress mediates between workplace friendships and job performance. A self-administered questionnaire was utilised to gather data from 125 public employees as part of a quantitative, cross-sectional study. The participants comprised 76% women and 75% married couples, with age x- = 37.71. Regression analyses revealed that workplace friendship is negatively related to job stress and positively associated with the task and contextual performances. Counterproductive work behaviour is positively correlated with high and low job stress levels. Equally, task performance is negatively correlated with high levels of job stress. The findings significantly confirmed the inverted-U theory, which states that performance increases as arousal increases, with performance decreasing only up to a certain point when arousal becomes too high. The mediation result revealed that stress mediates between workplace friendship and job performance. The study explains that increasing the employee’s experience of workplace friendship impacts job performance and job stress in an organisationally desirable direction. It also provides a practical guide on the level of stress that benefits organisations in terms of employee performance.