Work-related stress among construction professionals in Yemen

Abstract

As a result of this rapid development witnessed by the world and the technological revolution, construction professionals face many problems and risks that lead to harm to their health and affect the level of productivity and quality and also affect their daily lifestyle negatively. Stress is the emotional, physical, and mental response of a change to a situation that occurs in people's daily lives. Stress includes workload, demand, anxiety, fatigue, conflict, panic, depression and helplessness. Stress if left untreated can cause a variety of illness and adversely affect our body. This study investigates strategies that can be implemented in organizations and daily life in constructions projects in Aden city south of Yemen to minimize stressful conditions affecting construction professionals physically and mentally. The main objectives of this study are to identify the personality types of construction professionals, to explore the level and symptoms of stress within the construction professionals and to examine the construction professionals coping strategies to minimise the stress. The methodology of this study includes literature reviews, data collection, and data analysis. A questionnaire survey was performed electronically. The data was analyzed using the average index, frequency rate, reliability Index and scoring by SPSS and Excel software. The results of the study indicate that the respondents are with different types of personalities which confined between type A, AB and B personality characteristic. The level of stress of the respondents is recognized between moderate and low. As well as the symptoms of stress like physical, sleeping, behaviour, emotional and personal habits indicators are between dangerous, very high, high, medium and low. Construction professionals chose turning to pray to Allah, thinking in positive way, spending time with friends and family and sleeping adequately as common stress coping strategies. The identified key stressors could be used as a road map for stress elimination, and, hence, improve the performance of construction professionals. At the same time construction firms should improve the employees' working environment to reduce stress by providing training sessions on managing and coping with stress.