Gender and generational perspectives of occupational stress among university staff in Ghana

Universities have become more stressful due to rapid technological advancements, rising student enrollments and extensive changes. The study examined the prevalence of stress and its impact on staff performance and how gender and generational perspective contribute to influence the incidence of stress among staff. The study was guided by Lazarus and Folkman’s transactional stress model. The quantitative research approach and the survey design were adopted for the study. Three universities were purposively selected, and stratified and random sampling techniques were used to select 182 permanent staff to fill the questionnaire distributed. The collected data was analysed using descriptive statistics and cross-tabulation. The study revealed that most of the staff perceived themselves to be stressed because of job-related factors and financial problems, but health and family life issues were not predominant stress factors. The male staff, academic staff and Gen Y (22–43) staff were more stressed respectively than their counterparts. The management of universities should formulate and implement policies and training programmes that would equip the staff with the requisite knowledge for their jobs, match jobs with competencies, enhance financial education among all staff, and improve remuneration and working conditions.